Mind Over Magnet Steam Charts & Stats

The visuals and score are well-tuned, but the game still lacks content and is a little too easy (except for the last chapter, which is perfect). It makes the other chapters feel like just a tutorial.

As someone who has followed the development of this game through the GMTK YouTube channel, I was very excited to finally play it. It has a simple story, but what you're really here for is the puzzle-solving. Mind Over Magnet has very clear mechanics and just enough of them to keep every level unique. Levels build off of each other to ensure you're never too far behind the learning curve, and when the combinations of mechanics start to run out before it's time to introduce a new one, the game throws in a puzzle using the physics engine as a solution that makes you go "huh, that was pretty clever." In fact, I found myself thinking that a lot. The puzzles are never so difficult that they leave you stuck for too long, but they are also interesting enough to take a moment of thinking and experimenting to solve. They perfectly straddled that line of not being frustrating, while not being a walk in the park either. The game can be started and completed in one sitting as it is pretty short, but if you're a designer, you'll be taking that time to appreciate some excellent communication of concepts to the player, heaps of polish, and lots of subtle design details that help make this game, while short, feel like a complete product in a way many games struggle to. On top of that, the game offers a developer commentary. No more needs to be said! And once you're done with that, Mark Brown's YouTube channel will teach you a whole lot more!

It's a good puzzle game, but it's really short. If I could give a neutral review I would.

A fun little puzzle game. Lacks replay-ability, but for a small price this game is worth your time.

I am an avid GMTK watcher for years. I always enjoyed his videos escpecially his dev diary episodes which makes it all the more disappointing that I just couldn't enjoy this game. ill start with the good things first: the sprite art is charming and the animation is fluid. it was fun to move and interact with things as the characters the soundtrack was chill and fit the mood sadly these are all the good things i have to say about this game The puzzles the main attraction of this game were easy, way too easy there was maybe one room in which i was stumped for a moment. its sad that even by the end of the game there wasnt a single puzzle which really made me think. GMTK liked talking about the AHA moment in a puzzle game, i got maybe a single one in most puzzles the aha moment came as a quick as the problem... i really missed having maybe an optional objective to give the game a bit more depth like for example going somewhere tricky to find some collectable. the difficulty curve was so smooth it seemed like a line where i dont feel i am doing something more complicated every stage feels the same difficulty... the story is there... its too simplistic for it to add anything but an intermission between worlds. if you have played any puzzle games in your life this may be too easy for you,,, i dont mean to be harsh but i know free flash games which were more fun and expansive puzzle experience than this. 10$ isnt a lot but i was genuienly bored right up until the end ( i didnt speedrun the game and if i wanted to i could refund it even after i completed it this is how short it is)

Simple, short and sweet. Nothing live changing or mind blowing, but it's pretty chill and fun. I had a good time.

I followed this game's development on the GMTK YouTube channel and have been looking forward to trying it ever since! Absolutely fantastic YT series that I highly recommend for anyone wanting to learn to make their own games. It's a very short game, finished it in 1 sitting. But I enjoyed it! Puzzle games are always fun as a variation. Great art style, cozy soundtrack and good level design!

Really short game with an interesting hint system and some fun puzzles. Grabbed it while on sale and it was worth my time! Give Mark Brown a dollar, he deserves it

Let's face it, the main reason to play this game is if you've been following Mark's journey on Youtube/Nebula. I don't think a single-person developer has ever so well documented the entire gamemaking process, from initial conception to execution, reworking, and testing. is this a good game? Well, actually, yes! Quite. Yes it's short, but you need to understand that Mark put scads of time into the parts of the game that you don't see. Menus, physics, music (which he contracted out, but knocked it out of the park) accessibility options, tutorials, and overall POLISH; all that stuff takes so much time and is often the most challenging and underappreciated part of the development process. A normal developer that set out to make a game of this length would not have spent so much time getting those details perfect. Who cares if the menus look cool if the game is so short no one will even use them? Why does a 2 hour game need accessibility options? But the point of this exercise was to explore all aspects of the gamemaking process, so enormous time and energy went into the smallest aspects of this game, giving Mark a chance to try his hand at all these development challenges. I defy you to find another 2-hour indie game anywhere on Steam with this much attention to detail and polish. In its current state, the game simply needs to be handed over to a small team of trained monkeys to start busting out levels. Level design is the "easy" part once the look, scope, tone, texture, physics, and feel of the game are all in place. And Mark made many far-sighted tweaks to the game engine to ensure that future coders, if ever there were to be any, would be able to hop into Unity and easily pick up where he left off. While they're making levels, Mark can be coding an in-game level editor and BAM! MoM suddenly becomes a very respectable indie title. In one of his recent GMTK posts, Mark mentioned that he might return to the game to add some more levels and features. Mark, if you're reading this, I highly recommend you hand this game off to a small team of level designers. It would be a great coda to the gamemaking experience to watch this team fill your world with 5-10 hours worth of quality levels. Documenting this part of the design would be interesting as we would see the level progression process, what is kept, what is cut, how they are ordered, what new mechanics are added to keep things fresh, and the challenges with outsourcing and keeping your team connected with their goals in alignment. Don't worry, those of us that have been following you would still give you spiritual credit for making a one-man game :) Seeing the work that went into this really makes you appreciate something like Balatro, which was also made by a single, crazy-dedicated person. Imagining how a single person can make not just a cute, decent game, but game of the friggin year is bonkers. Hopefully, following Mark's journey during the development of this title has helped many people appreciate the genius of LocalThunk and the creative juices required for a dedicated team of people to make even this most humble of games. If you call yourself a dedicated gamer or are interested in learning more about a career in game development, you owe it to yourself to pull back the curtain, watch Mark's video series, and play this game for a behind-the-scenes look at the creative and development process.

I wish I could give a neutral review, because it's not a bad game, but it really is a pretty short experience, even if you replay it with commentary. That wouldn't be a problem if there was a level editor with workshop integration, because that would drastically improve replayability, but alas, it doesn't. I understand why it's this way, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed.