$9.99Teslagrad A Wordless Tale of Magnetism
Explore an abandoned tower in a steampunk kingdom, solving electricity and magnetism puzzles to uncover a buried conspiracy.
Is Teslagrad worth it?
Teslagrad is worth it if…
- you like puzzles built on one clever rule pushed to its limits
- you enjoy stories told through the world itself, not through dialogue
- you want a Metroidvania about thinking rather than fighting
- you have a soft spot for hand-drawn art and a rainy, old-Europe mood
- you don't mind retrying a tricky sequence a few times to get it right
Screenshots
The story is told without a single word
Teslagrad has no dialogue, no text, no cutscenes. Everything it wants to tell you, it shows: murals in abandoned halls, puppet theatres, illustrated scrolls tucked into corners, and the slow decay of a kingdom that once worshipped its Teslamancers. A boy flees soldiers into the ruins of Tesla Tower, and from there the conspiracy around a tyrannical king unfolds entirely through what you see, and sometimes what you notice is missing. It asks you to read the walls the way a detective reads a room. If you like piecing a story together instead of being told one, this is a quiet pleasure: by the end, the picture clicks into place, and it feels earned.
Magnetism is the whole toolbox
The puzzles run on one rule: opposite charges attract, like charges repel. Early on you get gloves that magnetize objects; later, a cloak that flips your own polarity, shoes that let you dash through the air, and more. A typical moment: you flip your charge, a magnetic stream grabs you and pulls you across a chasm, and mid-flight you flip again to let go at exactly the right spot. New items genuinely change how the tower plays, which is the Metroidvania promise kept: old areas hide things your new powers can reach. The puzzles range from quick warm-ups to ones that will have you pacing the room. One honest note: the physics have momentum, so movement feels weighty rather than pixel-tight.
What should you know before playing?
How long does it take to finish?
A first playthrough usually lands somewhere around five to ten hours, depending on how much you explore. There are 36 collectible scrolls hidden around the tower: you only need some of them to reach an ending, but finding all of them unlocks the true ending, and some are tucked away in places that take real thought to reach. Once you know the tower, it can be replayed in a fraction of the time.
How hard is it, really?
The puzzles are the fair kind of hard: the logic is always there to find, and solving one feels good. The difficulty spikes come from the platforming, especially later on, where one mistake sends you back to the start of a longer sequence. If you can accept some trial and error, the game stays rewarding; if precision platforming frustrates you quickly, expect a few sore spots.
What does it look and sound like?
The whole world is hand-drawn, in a style closer to an illustrated storybook than a typical game, set in a rainy, steampunk vision of old Europe. The soundtrack is orchestral with a distinctly Russian flavour, and it carries a lot of the atmosphere. There are no loading screens or interface cluttering the screen: just the tower, the art, and the music.
