Dash and roll your way through 60 fast-paced levels to try and find the way back home after a magic exam goes wrong, leaving a young mage stranded in a strange dimension. Marble Mage offers classic marble-rolling platforming with a unique twist: Charge up and release to blast off in any direction!
Positive
13 Steam reviews
| LANGUAGE | AUDIO | SUBTITLES | INTERFACE |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Y | Y | Y |
Originally wasn't expecting much from game, but I am positively surprised. I think it is underrated. simple game, yet handles mechanics/graphics/layout with class. Intuitive design/layout and easy to follow. charge feature is good addition. it has unique elements without trying too much. and a step in right direction of stepping away from standard smb we've been used to. colours toned down and don't clash in eyes too much. a good short game to have. only change I think it I would like more upgrades. short/sweet/positive. levels well set up.
A totally playable "Super Monkey Ball" clone that is unfortunately not perfectly designed and occasionally broken. The broken nature of it actually made it more fun to play, kind of like how in Mario 64 you can often come up with your own solutions because the game is so free and open with the controls. You're just trying to reach the exit portal, and/or collecting all the gems and finishing within a certain time limit. Usually in games like this you tilt the environment but here you control the ball, which is fine except the controls kind of are terrible. The marble mage can boost by holding a button and the speed stacks, but it can be taken away at any time for seemingly no reason because the game can't seem to grasp the concept of acceleration. Beyond that you can even boost in midair and flip directions in midar which breaks the game since sometimes you can cheat and completely go over obstacles whereas other times you will just fall to your death.
I enjoyed figuring out tricks to get through certain parts, like bouncing off a certain wall to bypass an area or charging at the top of a ramp to fly across the map. The game doesn't seem to encourage or condone this, it's just sort of in there for you to decide at your discretion. I also really like the music, so even though it's pretty busted and dumb it's also kind of fun to play, but I was 100% done with it in three hours.
fun
While looking for a marble-game to scratch my marble itch, I found this little gem. It's short and sweet, and has a lot of small features that really make it shine compared to other marble games:
- You can slow time and pivot on a dime. This completely changes how the game feels (and makes it more like a golf game than a marble game IMO)
- Many levels contain guard-rails. This reduces the frustration of falling off and restarting.
- If you fall off, the level instantly restarts, which is nice - saves time/effort when repeated a lot.
- Slow-motion while aiming, makes aiming much easier, and lets you pull off cool mid-air tricks
- Each level has three separate goals (complete, time, collect) which you can complete indepdently - so you can focus on finishing, exploring, or racing as you like
- Levels are quite short and fun
- It has an actual story!
- It runs natively on Linux
The only thing I didn't like, is that sound didn't work for me (on Arch).
the concept is interesting, a mix between mini-golf and monkey-ball, the game itself is cool with nice graphics and nice music, but it's not my cup of tea, at least i unlocked all worlds and tried all levels, that's ok
This is really good.
this game has me hooked. super fun and unique charge mechanic sets it apart from other marble games, while working extremely well. as a speedrunner, it opens up TONS of cool tech, and it's enjoyable casually as well. controls very well, just takes a bit of getting used to. the star system encourages the player to explore different ways of playing the game (raw speed vs collecting crystals), the level design is really fun, the music is jammin', and your character is just a cute lil cat fella!
any cons i could think of really just pertain to the lack of options when it comes to display/audio. it'd also be nice to be able to navigate menus with the controller. but that's not really taking away from the gameplay itself, which is superb. and at $3 for 60 levels, you're basically robbing the game devs. GET THIS GAME
Marble Mage is a really short cute indie marble roller with something that can only be described as a "golf like" twist. Coming from a very experienced monkey ball, paperball, and rolled out player I can attest to the controls feeling very good and up to snuff with the other really well designed marble rollers out there and the stage design plays around the charge mechanic extremely well. The game is a blast to go through and only took me a couple hours to fully 100% it. The only couple of complaints I had were small but I feel they are worth noting and hopefully will be addressed in future updates of the game to make it a cleaner experience.
1. Gaps in music: The music tracks just aren't positioned correctly in respect to one another so when a song ends you'll be sitting with just game noises for much longer than feels right.
2. Gem Routing is repetitive: Oftentimes in these levels you will be greeted with 2 paths that are completely the same, sometimes more. In order to get all of the gems which is required for 3 starring each level, you will often have to backtrack and do the exact same obstacle twice on different parts of the map and that just feels extremely boring to do, and makes deaths even more frustrating for no real payoff. I loved the levels where there were more gems than you needed so that you can simply take a single path through a level and beat it in one fluid motion without the need to backtrack.
Outside of this, I found no other faults with the gameplay, felt really good and was very satisfying to try and find new ways to play levels faster. The charge mechanic is super busted in the best way and allows for so much freedom of movement and skips.
Fun game! The art style is very cute and concise (especially the 2D art). The little intro story is a nice addition. I viewed it from the menu before playing any levels. Playing the first level did not show the story - I'm not sure if thats because I already viewed it or because it just doesn't show at that time. I'd suggest showing it when playing the first level as long as it is skippable. The gameplay was enticing. I ended up using both mouse and keyboard at the same time, as well. It felt most comfortable for the style. Although, when I played the first level it prompted me to choose an input device and I'm not sure why despite more than one working at a time.
It seems like the game was made for mobile and the PC build was an afterthought... I'd like to see it a bit more refined for this platform. Things I'd suggest: *A volume slider in the settings. *Faster UI transitions on the tutorial (they were super slow). *The buttons at the end of the level seem oddly placed (next level should be an arrow on the right but its on the left of the retry button which just feels weird).
Cute little Monkey Ball like game. Had fun getting all the stars on every level and trying to deduce the shortcuts to meet the time requirements on some of the levels. The music was relaxing and I enjoyed boosting around the levels. Hope that more levels can come out in the future and I definitely got my $3 worth
Well I thoroughly enjoyed the nearly two hours spent on this game. It's cute, simple, and effective in sating the Monkey Ball itch on PC. I did have some very minor complaints (for instance, on some levels it's not exactly clear how to get the par time), but none really hamper the experience. For a debut project, Marble Mage shines in a gentle way that completely caught me by surprise. I very much hope if/when there's DLC levels, that those will flesh out the levels in a way that provides interest and challenge.
Anyway it's $3! What's stopping you?
How convenient for a Monkey Ball clone to come out a whole month before the remaster, lul. Is it good though? ...kinda, I guess? One of those times I wish there was a neutral option for reviews tbh.
I'll be blunt here... Honestly my main problem with this game is the boost/charge mechanic; kinda takes the feel of "freedom" away. Instead of being able to build up momentum on your own, you're basically forced to use this mechanic to do everything, since you can't really move forward without it. Yes, its fun to mess around with starting out, but honestly becomes a bit frustrating come world 2 due to the harder level design (ESPECIALLY if you want every collectible). You'll be flying all over the place and it's not really the most fun thing ever. Actually I don't think level design was that great in general tbh. It is for a decent chunk of the levels, but the rest are just either boring or bad, no offense. Will probably try to finish it at some point though to get my money's worth. I think this game would be a lot better if the boost thing was an OPTIONAL way to build up momentum, besides the normal way you would do in a Monkey Ball game. That's just my take on it though.
Worth trying out since it's super cheap though I'd say. Go crazy.
It's a little bit easy, on account of the very broken charge mechanic - but despite that, it's still a fun, charming experience that is easily worth the pricetag. Hope the devs work on it a little bit more to refine the mechanics, because I'd love to come back when I have a reason to navigate the level design instead of blasting over all the pits and going directly to the goal.
