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DeMagnete VR - new Portal-inspired VR puzzle game

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Trailers:

 

 

 

More info here:

 

https://demagnete.com/

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/995270/DeMagnete_VR/

 

The game has been made ground-up for PCVR, no Quest version seems planned, but devs have mentioned focusing on making a PSVR version after launching the PCVR version. 

 

Some screenshots:

 

ss_0b5ce0d6acb580d35692a2d3e95f8daf17a81226.1920x1080.jpg

screenshot-01.jpg

screenshot-04.JPG

screenshot-07.jpg

 

This game was originally announced for Vive and Rift, thus I do believe oled hmds were the target - it also explains the focus on these hmds for the system requirements:

 

RECOMMENDED:

  • OS: Windows 10
  • Processor: Intel Core i5-7700k
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: Nvidia GTX1060 or equivalent
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Storage: 2 GB available space
  • Sound Card: DirectX compatible sound card
  • Additional Notes: VR-Ready PC and an Oculus Rift or Vive Headset

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

8 REPLIES 8

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

The game is now out on Steam:

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/995270/DeMagnete_VR/

 

I just asked the devs if there's native Oculus drivers support. Not sure I'm going for first dibs - I'll probably be awaiting reviews/user ratings. 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Btw, just noticed that the devs launched a new trailer a few hours ago:

 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

Devs just wrote to me that native Oculus drivers are supported - awesome, I just bought the game! Won't be able to test it for some hours though, my 9-year-old son is playing Vacation Simulator right now and does not seem wanting to stop anytime soon, sigh... 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

 

Tried the game, first Index, then Rift CV1 just to be sure. My rig: i9 10900K, 32GB 3200 MHz, Asus Strix OC RTX 3090, Asus Z590 mainboard, Win 10 Pro. Latest drivers.

 

There're few graphics settings (bloom on/off, antialiasing on/off, some lighting on/off), I activated them all. I set SteamVR to res 200% and then 144 Hz - and got reprojections. But 120 Hz res 200% worked fine. Not sure that the game is that greatly optimized - I get solid 144 fps using res 200%, 8xMSAA and all other settings maxed in Boneworks - so DeMagnete performs significantly worse than Boneworks, and DeMagnete looks much worse too. I'll get back to that latter.

 

Really wanted to like this game, and it does have some original content, but it also has many shortcomings.

First of all this does not feel like PCVR - it feels like low-end PSVR (PSVR = PlayStation VR).

 

Textures are way too low-res, I really don't understand why devs didn't try to do better, this isn't 2016 anymore. Even if the game isn't anything close to a king of polygons, ultramersion textures like in Boneworks could have done so much for this game. But no, we got some very low-end textures - your gloves do have some smaller markings, but it's not going to impress anyone. Many surfaces look much like the usual even-colored Quest surfaces.

 

There are some dynamic shadows at least, but deactivated in some locations - I'm not sure why.

 

There's no finger tracking. In fact you can't even close your hand. Also verified with Touch - same thing. Would have loved some finger tracking. Or just being able to close your fingers - feels like two big dead hands when not engaged in magnetism. Like in Alyx you only got hands and no body.

 

I guess I'd rate graphics like this:

 

  • Textures: 3/10 (really poor)
  • Lighting (volumetric I think): 7/10 (looks nice/great here'n there)
  • Dynamic shadows: 7/10 (sometimes pixelated res).
  • Polygon levels: 5/10 (really low-end even for PSVR, at least compared to Moss and Trover)

 

The low-end graphics make the game look rather bland, even somewhat blurry. Then I thought maybe the antialiasing was temporal antialiasing (TAA) which looks blurry using lcd hmds, but deactivating antialiasing did not do much for clarity. My best guess is that the antialiasing might be 2xMSAA (on/off). I even tried the Rift CV1 to see if the game profited from oled and maybe even some SDE (some low-res textures can look more high-res due to SDE), but the game looked a lot worse using CV1 (even with super sampling set to 2.0 = 17 mill pixels per image, which is close to the Index res 200% = 18 mill pixels per image). I even tried Index res 300 % to see if I could get the game to look more sharp, but no - the game looked about the same as res 200%, but performance got worse, lol.

 

The puzzles are based on you having 2 magnetic gloves - one pushes certain cubes away, while the other one pulls/attracts. Maybe there're some Portal vibes, but the content is far from the Portal.

 

Currently my overall rating would be 8/10 due to the fun puzzles, not the graphics. 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

Yeh keep me updated. I seen that on steam.. 

Will do 😉 My 9-year-old son says the game is 7.5/10 - so we're keeping it. The game is too hard for him, so I need to help. Apart from the graphics the gameplay isn't bad - and I like the voice-over by Ashley Burch:

 

Ashly_Burch.jpg

http://www.ashlyburch.com/

 

Of course doing a voice-over may be a very cheap and simple way to avoid having to animate many npcs. It's also a cheap way to add a social element to otherwise totally dead-ish Myst-like worlds. 

 

Btw, just saw this review on Steam:

 

"It's... an okay game. The puzzles are fun though most are pretty simple. The graphics, while also simple are pretty. But the game has some serious bugs. At least for me on my Index, I was using continuous motion, and I could not turn right at all. Clicking my analog stick would do nothing, however I could turn left just fine.

The game also needs a lot of work on collisions, as they'res a bunch of doors you can just walk through like it's not even there. Peaking your head through walls or objects, lets you see right through them as there's no fading to black or anything similar.

In the end it's again, just an okay game, as another reviewer said, it feels more like a PSVR game than it does a PCVR game."

https://steamcommunity.com/id/cman2pt0/recommended/995270/

 

Just wanted to mention that I've got no problems turning with the Index controllers - but I'm using smooth turning, not snap turning. I does seem that snap turning may be affected:

 

https://steamcommunity.com/app/995270/discussions/0/3056240606700998647/

 

I never use snap turning unless forced to do so, lol. 

 

Maybe I did encounter some collision failures, but so far not for the cubes - thus I couldn't cheat, lol. I didn't lower my rating due to a few and so far harmless collision failures, but I've only played the game for 90 minutes so far. This error does seem worse - but then you do have a way out if everything else fails 😁

 

https://steamcommunity.com/app/995270/discussions/0/3056240606701146736/

 

I'm confident devs will get that fixed soon.

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

I've just changed my rating from 6/10 to 8/10. I do like the little AI and Ashley Burch's voice, and the puzzles are great and fun, at least to some degree. I like the physics too - and the dynamic shadows. Textures are really poor, but I'm playing for the puzzles. So would be fair to rate this game 4/5, also for the kinda unique puzzles. 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

DeMagnete just got another update - now Index controllers should work perfectly, also for those who prefer snap turning. More info here:

 

https://steamcommunity.com/app/995270

 

Remember there's a free demo to try for all the tire-kickers out there:

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/995270/DeMagnete_VR/

 

download.jpg

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Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"