| Magnetic: The Game of Games | Peter Hewitt / Mulawa | 2003 | |
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Magnetic is the second independently developed adventure from Australian Peter Hewitt, the creator of Xiama—and just like his previous game, this time the tag of "adventure" may be stretching it just a bit. Xiama was a puzzlefest, pure and simple, and if you loved tons of puzzles of great variety strung together with little to no storyline or relevance, it was a game for you. Magnetic is a game in which, to be successful, you have to be really good at games. One welcome refinement is the addition of an in-game assistant. Rather than enter your name, you select from one of six digital sidekicks. You simply click on your chosen sidekick at the start of a session and away you go. Be advised that your digital buddy is responsible for autosaving your games and keeps track of both your successes and your failures. Your digital buddy also serves as a docent who, if asked, will provide hints as to how a game (or puzzle) works and what must be done in order to beat (or solve) it. Even with the hints, there is plenty of "I wonder what will happen if I do this?" in Magnetic as one attempts to dope out the mechanics of the various games and puzzles. There are 31 challenges in all, some slight, some substantial. Once Magnetic's first big challenge has been beaten, players must locate and beat 15 simpler stumpers to gain access to the 15 major challenges. Once a major challenge has been reached, even if it has not been beaten, Magnetic provides a visual menu that allows players to return immediately to it for another go. The photographic backgrounds are quite attractive, the individual games and puzzles have a bit more polish than those found in Xiama and the soundtrack is sufficiently subdued (birds, surf, an occasional musical flourish) to allow one to concentrate on the tasks at hand. In 2010, an entirely redesigned and rewritten version named Magnetic Revisited was released. On Jan/2017, the developers games were made freeware. | ||
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