MotionRec is a fantastically designed, must-play puzzle platformer.

MotionRec from HANDSUM and publisher PLAYISM is a brilliant, deeply original 2D puzzle platformer. Built around an ingenious movement-recording mechanic, the game challenges players’ spatial reasoning with puzzles that are consistently clever and immensely satisfying. Its minimalist narrative casts you as a tiny robot navigating a ruined, lifeless world ruled by machines, providing just enough context and mystery to frame the experience without distracting from the puzzles.

Your robot’s basic abilities are deliberately limited: walking and a short hop with modest vertical reach. Here’s where your secret weapon comes in: the power to record and replay your movements. Once you record a sequence, you can replay that exact motion path from anywhere, ignoring gravity and conventional physics until you collide with a solid surface. There’s an important limitation, though. Playback can only be activated once while airborne, and it refreshes only when you touch solid ground. This restriction is key, forcing careful planning rather than brute-force experimentation.

The level design fully commits to this core idea. Early stages introduce simple setups, teaching you to record movements in one location and replay them elsewhere to access unreachable platforms. As the game progresses, puzzles grow more intricate, often spanning multiple screens and demanding carefully choreographed recordings that incorporate environmental gimmicks. Moving platforms allow for circular motion paths, while elements like bungies and airborne loop switches enable new, impossible trajectories. The toughest puzzles are optional, often hidden in secret rooms. I tried to get all the collectibles, but a few puzzles left me completely stumped.

New mechanics are introduced at a steady pace, continually expanding what’s possible with the recording system. Each addition feels like a natural extension of the core idea, ensuring the game never becomes stale with new puzzles that feel fresh.

The striking, detailed monochromatic pixel art uses dithering to create texture and atmosphere. Red and green are used sparingly, onle as accents to clearly communicate recording and playback states. The precise, tiled 2D visuals ensure perfect readability of the environment, crucial in a game that demands exact spatial understanding. The art never gets in the way of gameplay.

MotionRec deserves far more attention than it’s received. Games this inventive are rare, and even rarer are those with level design sophisticated enough to fully explore their central mechanic. This is a must-play.

MotionRec is available now on Steam and is coming soon to PlayStation 5.