Puzzle games have a hard time of it, all things considered. They’re ignored by people who consider themselves ‘serious’ gamers, and ultimately overshadowed by the giant in their genre, known as Tetris. In fact, the puzzle genre is a good example of how having one truly popular video game can wreak havoc on the rest of the genre. It’s a sad trait of the last 25 years that many puzzle games can simply be described as ‘Like Tetris but...’, and a new game in the genre would have to be something truly different to avoid Tetris coming up at least once in a review. With that said, Magnetis is essentially 'like Tetris but' with magnets.

Magnetis is a puzzle game coming from Developers Yullaby, makers of such other massive hits as Horse Life 2 and Pékin Express. The basic gameplay is hard to describe, but consists of three types of block – left magnets, right magnets and conductor blocks. To score points you have to connect a left magnet to a right magnet, with the more conductor blocks in between giving you more points. However, rather than controlling where you place the blocks directly (they come in pairs), you control a conveyor belt which is constructed in an infinite loop. As a result, if you move the belt all the way to the right, you’ll just return to the same place as you were when you started.

Obviously, this being a puzzle game, there isn’t simply one aspect to the entire game. Instead, it introduces another colour into the mix after about level 4 (the levels increase in much the same way as Tetris, with each new level bringing a faster speed for the player to work with), and another at around level 20. These new colours cannot work with the first colour, and if you accidentally join a line of two different colours it will turn unusable until you join another line nearby. The game also encourages forward thinking by introducing combo scores for completing more than one line at once.

The idea is a bit basic, then, but with puzzle games this is often for the best. After all, nobody could really claim that Tetris or Bejewelled are especially deep games. However, while both of those games are instantly addictive, Magnetis seems to be missing something vital. It has all the components of a good, or possibly even great, puzzle game and yet still falls short in some way. It could be the cramped feeling you get from playing in a looping area, or the lack of variety in the way you play, but I doubt that anyone purchasing the game will really get more than a couple of hours of mild amusement out of it.

There are some other game modes, admittedly, in the form of a time trial and a limited block mode, but they don’t really make any difference to the way you play. The only real saving grace is the local multiplayer modes, which offer a brief respite from the rest of the game through the simple virtue of human contact. Other than that, the average player will soon lose interest with Magnetis while Bejewelled continues to be played.

For £3.49 on Steam, Magnetis is at least priced well, being cheaper than any of its major competitors. However, I would still suggest to the prospective buyer to try the demo first (also available on Steam).

6/10