Praise the Gods of gaming, they have looked down upon my retched digital soul and have lifted me and redeemed me of my platforming inadequacies. Lo! As the CRT lights of their brilliance shone upon me, they placed in my palms the grail of Platform Puzzle gaming “Marblize”! PRAISE YE THE GODS!!!!
Marblize is a 3D platform puzzler that really brings nothing new to the genre but it’s done it so well it really dose feel like a fresh coat of paint.
You, as a marble (Man, have I got one big ball), roll, skid, jump and slide your way through beautifully rendered platforms, some in woods, metals and even some as old fashion wooden colour blocks. On each level you will need to think and explore you way, finding triggers to push or set, or find powers to unlock alternative paths. In amongst this you have the choice to find coins and/or paints & patterns to unlock so as to customise you marble and deadly traps with no escape.
To move around Marblize, requires you to use your mouse for looking (you are just above and behind your marble) and your WASD keys for movement but where ever you are looking with your mouse, it is the forward direction you will travel, so a bit of hand-eye co-ordination is needed (and some real cool Drifting will your ball(s) hanging off the edge). LMB to jump over obstacles or chasms and Q to steady and slow your movement on narrow ledges or paths. If you do get stumped upon a section of the level, you can zoom out, albeit a limited distance, with the Z key to find a route and X to zoom back to your marble.
If you fall, you die and re-spawn to the last checkpoint you touched, and the death will get recorded on your stats for that run of the level. Get caught in a dead end trap or simply get too confused with an area, you can press R to re-spawn to a checkpoint but that also will be counted as a death.
Yes, racing through the levels to set the fastest time is a good thing but Marblize encourages exploration, which is fun, rewarding and dangerous at the same time. Every block or path you see is solid game area, there are no fake background blocks or invisible walls, so the temptation to jump to them is so overwhelming you just have to try. Cheer if you succeed or laugh as you miss and die. Or, as you fall to your death, you can get very lucky and happen to land on a very narrow ledge and then fight you way back up to the play area (do-able but frustratingly fun). But if you want those coins or want that paint or pattern for your Marble, the game taunts you to try, nay, it double dares you to.
That is another thing, there is no quit rage on this, when you die or fail, you are having too much fun, you just laugh at yourself, dust yourself off and go again.
Traps and triggers are not a simple ‘hit that button and go’ affair. You need to actually stop and think through each piece of the puzzle presented. You will have Timer, Toggle, Hold and Permanent triggers to play with. Also some of the powers will be Freeze (to cross over water), Magnet, to climb and/or roll along walls, Radio Powers that you can flip through to turn on/off certain coloured walls and floors and finally Jump/No-Jump that will mess with you ability to jump over obstacles or chasms. You will even have to backtrack over certain areas of a level to unlock new areas to advance, so you will need all of you Vulcan logic in this game.
The Menu Options are chock full with graphic, lighting, rendering options that even a low end computer can enjoy very beautiful graphics, still rendered shiny and pleasing to the eye, even at the lowest of settings. Sound can be turned off or scaled down to your pleasure and the music is pleasing and suits the mood of the game but over time may become monotonous (to counter this, I recommend anything from Nine Inch Nails). It is all very neat and tidy, gorgeous.
Customisation of your Marble is a welcome sight, and there are so many combinations of colours (64 in total) and Patterns (168 to choose) that you unlock as you find them throughout the game. The tutorial (comes in three sections, Basic, Logic and Power Ups) is wonderful and explains the mechanics of the game very well.
There are four sections in game containing a total of Sixty levels (there was eighteen levels in the first sector alone) so this game is no quick walk in the park, and replay value will give you hours more, trying to better your time or finding all the hidden/missed items.
There was only one niggle glitch through the whole time I played. That being your marble would sink into the floor once in a while, a small clipping error, but it is one that you can live with and dose not detract from the game.
Plexagon Studios has put together a game that will stay on your drive and be played for the next ten years. If you love 3D platform puzzlers, buy Marblize. If you don’t love 3D platform puzzlers (Like me) buy Marblize. If your a complete, heartless, penny-pinching, green blooded bastard, go and mind meld with a Targ!
Original review posted here:- https://cassus.org/muut/#!/puzzle for all your Indi gaming discussion.
