Solvimus Review

A Ten-Hour Friendship Test, Built Strictly for Two

Solvimus is a two-player cooperative puzzle game with a premise that doubles as a warning label: "do you like bad jokes, hard puzzles, and have exactly one friend? Get ready to lose that one too." Set inside the fictional I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E. Initiative — an absurdly over-acronymed research lab that tests minds and, more pointedly, tests friendships — the game delivers 30 puzzles spread across five themed zones with names like Vertigo Venture, Beam Bafflement, and Chrono Conundrum, each introducing its own twist on gravity manipulation, laser-and-mirror logic, or time-loop synchronization. The developer pitches it as a "10+ hour" experience, and reviewers largely confirm that runtime holds up, especially for a genre where padding is a common complaint.

The structural hook is strict asymmetry: this is not splitscreen, and the developer's own FAQ explains why — many puzzles depend on separate perspectives, asymmetric roles, and visual isolation that splitscreen would undermine. Each player needs their own copy of the game and a stable connection, playing from their own device with their own view. Built-in voice chat, a ping tool, and over thirty emotes exist specifically to manage the communication breakdowns the whole premise is built around, alongside a hidden Easter-egg treasure hunt and a global leaderboard for efficiency-focused duos.

A Small, Nearly Unanimous Launch Pool With One Real Complaint

Solvimus launched September 10, 2026 to a promising reception — thirteen total reviews, twelve of them positive — and the developer has already pushed five post-launch updates in the first week, including an FOV slider, voice chat improvements, an achievement bug fix, and a "Grey Spectrum Rework," suggesting active post-launch support rather than a drop-and-abandon release. The praise is consistent and specific: one reviewer calls it "one of the most challenging and interesting cooperative puzzles I've ever played," another describes it as starting like Portal before it "quickly evolves into its own thing with new mechanics, gorgeous end-of-chapter levels and just an overall more challenging experience," and a third frames it more bluntly as "Gaslight Portal," praising how the game's own voiceover needles both players as "dumbasses" while they work through puzzles together.

The lone negative review singles out a specific late-game sequence — a "RUN" segment involving a precisely timed cube-throw with no checkpoints — calling it "one of the worst things I have ever experienced in 20 years of gaming" and reporting quitting on the spot. It's a sharp outlier against an otherwise glowing pool, but the specificity of the complaint (a single unforgiving, checkpoint-less sequence rather than a systemic issue) suggests a real design rough edge rather than a general dealbreaker.

The Puzzle Design Earns Its Portal Comparisons, and the Communication Tools Matter

What comes through clearly across the review pool is that Solvimus's puzzle design is the genuine draw. Multiple reviewers independently reach for Portal as the reference point, and just as consistently note that the comparison only holds for the opening stretch before the game asserts its own identity — new mechanics, harder spatial and timing puzzles, and level design that leans into full asymmetric roles rather than symmetric side-by-side problem solving. One reviewer who disclosed having playtested the game specifically praises the emote system as "honestly the best way to communicate within the game," which matters more than it might elsewhere given that the entire structure depends on two people who can't see each other's screen working out what the other one is looking at.

A reviewer who name-checks Will You Snail — a well-regarded cooperative platformer built around exactly this kind of friendship-testing frustration — as a spiritual predecessor gives a useful signal for who this game is actually for: players who enjoy productive frustration with a trusted co-op partner, not solo puzzle fans looking for a single-player Portal-like. The five-zone structure, each with a distinct mechanical hook, also means the difficulty curve keeps introducing new problems to solve rather than simply scaling up the same one.

A Two-Copy Purchase, No Splitscreen, and One Unforgiving Late-Game Wall

The most consistent practical friction is the purchase structure itself: both players need to own a full copy at $19.99, which the developer addresses directly rather than obscuring, but which still roughly doubles the effective cost of entry for a couple deciding whether to try it together. The deliberate absence of splitscreen or local co-op — again, an explicit design choice rather than an oversight — narrows the audience further to players who both have their own device and a stable internet connection, cutting out the classic couch-co-op use case entirely. And the specific "RUN" sequence flagged in the one negative review is worth taking seriously as a genuine difficulty spike: a checkpoint-less, precisely timed physical challenge dropped into what's otherwise a logic-and-communication puzzle game is a jarring shift in what the game is asking of its players, and it's exactly the kind of moment that can end a co-op session on a sour note regardless of how good the preceding hours were.

Verdict

Solvimus earns its Portal comparisons early and then spends the rest of its five zones proving it doesn't need them, building a genuinely inventive, communication-dependent puzzle experience around a strictly two-device asymmetric structure that most co-op puzzlers don't attempt. The nearly unanimous launch reception, the developer's active first-week patching, and reviewers' specific, detailed praise all point to a well-crafted puzzle box built for a very particular kind of friendship. The catches are real, though: both players need to buy in at full price, splitscreen was never on the table, and at least one late-game sequence seems to trade the game's careful logic-puzzle pacing for an unforgiving twitch-timing wall. Bring a patient co-op partner and a full wallet for two, and this is one of the stronger puzzle launches of the month.