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Teslagrad is a 2D steampunk puzzle/platformer in the vein of Braid

"Keyboard-smashing, controller-chewing frustration," due in January.

Teslagrad, a 2D puzzle/platformer about altering the world with magnetic charges, is one of the better looking indie titles to catch my eye recently.

You play as a "strapping young lad" ascending the Steampunky Tesla Tower solving puzzles with your "Teslamancer" technology. Or, in actual words, you'll reverse the charge of magnets to manipulate the environment. As we all learned in primary school, two positive charges repels objects from one another, while mixing a positive and negative charge brings them together. Take that, ICP!

You'll have to use this to shift platforms and walls around, or even float around the environment. Puzzles will range from "pff, that wasn't so bad" to "keyboard-smashing, controller-chewing frustration," according to the developer, Rain Games on its IndieDB page.

While the hand-drawn art resembles David Hellman's work on Braid, Teslagrad won't adhere to that game's purple prose and will instead rely purely on visual storytelling. "Teslagrad features not a single snippet of text or squeak of dialogue," said Rain. "Everything is purely visual, and its entire story is told through what you see (and sometimes what you don't see)."

Teslagrad is due on PC in January. For now, check out four and a half minutes of gameplay footage below.

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