Games worth discovering

After ten years, a unique puzzle platformer returns...with a sister - Teslagrad 2 Quick Impressions

2K View2023-04-21

During Nintendo’s April 19 Indie World stream, developer Rain Games made a series of startling announcements: The studio had remastered its 2013 puzzle-platformer Teslagrad, made a sequel called Teslagrad 2, and was launching both games immediately. That’s a lot of Teslagrad news after ten years of near silence!

While Teslagrad Remastered doesn’t make any radical changes to the original, that’s not really a problem: It features a timeless hand-animated look that calls to mind classic Don Bluth feature films like Anastasia and The Secret of NIMH. Now that it’s available on modern consoles (as well as PC via Steam, where any old Teslagrad saves you have will automatically appear in the updated version), it’s a great time to revisit this overlooked classic.

The central idea in Teslagrad is polarity. By altering the polarity of objects in the environment, our young protagonist can navigate around obstacles and defeat enemies. Instead of north and south, Teslagrad displays these as red and blue, but it’s nonetheless crucial to always remember that opposites attract, and likes repel.

A box energized with blue, for example, will stick to a floor that’s powered with red energy, but by hopping on top and swapping the polarity, our hero can ride the box as it’s pushed away from the now matching floor tiles. Teslagrad throws in additional abilities too: For example, a special pair of boots provides a “blink” ability that makes it possible to pass through gates or clear wide gaps.

There’s a story too, but I’ve never made it far enough into Teslagrad to find out where it goes. It seems as though society has divided itself into red and blue factions, with the blue wizards on one side being the custodians of this magical electrical power while the red faction is more concerned with building armies and ruling the country.

The two sides do not see eye to eye, despite the maxim about opposites attracting. Ten years later, the reds and blues are still at each other’s throats, and our new heroine’s dirigible is shot out of the sky by marauding reds as Teslagrad 2 opens.

Right away, I’m pretty taken with Teslagrad 2. It’s playing with the same basic premise, but off the bat I have some cool new abilities. Young Lumina is a bit more capable in the wild than her predecessor was: she can crouch-slide through narrow passageways and starts out with the blink boots, and the cloak she finds in the opening level allows her to charge herself with blue energy. This allows her to pull herself toward red surfaces and walk on walls and ceilings powered with that energy, creating some fast-paced puzzle solutions that look great when I pull them off.

Teslagrad has always been somewhat physics-based, not just in principle but in how its puzzles are designed. That means there’s some wobble to getting components into place sometimes, like boxes that get hung up on each other or tumble irretrievably into pits. I’ve found this frustrating several times—generally I want a puzzle game to behave precisely and predictably, so that when I’ve worked out the solution it’ll work every time I perform the correct sequence of moves. For want of a better term, Teslagrad needs me to “bump the table” a bit sometimes, shaking things loose until I have them positioned for the next impossible jump or action sequence.

And you know what? Frustrating as that is at times, I kind of like the overall vibe it adds. There’s a pleasant sense of physicality to Teslagrad that makes the whole thing feel a bit like drawing on an Etch-a-Sketch tablet, which had two knobs that controlled an internal stylus that scraped aluminum powder off the back of a glass screen, creating a weird single-line drawing. I’d draw something, or at least make an attempt, and then turn the whole thing upside down and shake it to re-coat the glass and start again.

Would you look at that? It’s “I’m old” o’clock already! How does this keep happening? Anyway: Teslagrad Remastered and Telsagrad 2 are available now on Steam, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. Not only has this surprise launch reminded me of how cool Teslagrad was, it’s brought me a sequel I didn’t realize I wanted.