Video games news, releases, esports and culture — all the biggest gaming stories in one place.
This week’s most compelling new Steam game is Horse Magnifier, which is about magnifying horses
Horse Magnifier: The Full Horse, an unusual puzzle game centred on distorting images of horses, has launched on Steam and quickly attracted attention. PC Gamer argues that its early reception shows there remains an audience for deliberately strange, small-scale games alongside more conventional releases.
Players use different magnifying glasses, each producing a distinct visual distortion, to make one horse image match another exactly. The premium Steam edition contains more than 50 levels, Steam Workshop support and a launch discount; it had received over 250 “very positive” reviews shortly after its Monday release, following an earlier version on Itch.io.
In short
- Horse Magnifier is a surreal image-matching puzzle game.
- It earned over 250 very positive Steam reviews shortly after launch.
- The Steam edition includes 50-plus levels and Workshop support.
Explained simply
Steam is a digital shop and community for PC games, including large releases and small projects made by independent developers. It also lets players review games and create or share user-made content through features such as Steam Workshop.
Puzzle games ask players to solve challenges by spotting patterns or changing parts of a scene. In Horse Magnifier, the challenge is to use different magnifying glasses to distort horse pictures until they match a target image.