Marrow

I really, REALLY wanted to like this game. But it's just too in love with its own difficulty. I've owned this game since 2017 and have tried to play it Four separate times. Each time I went in with a determination to finally finish it, and each time dropping it at the third area "Honoured Refuse". The nonsense just becomes too intense for me to go on. Imagine, if you will, a Metroidvania with no map, no pause button and where checking your current HP is A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CONSUMABLE RESOURCE. Add to that the fact that the entire game takes place in near total darkness and the first enemies in the game are semi-invisible, take three stabs to kill, are too tall to jump over and can match your running speed. Got it? Now imagine that in this hypothetical game, there are hallways down which you must run, fighting the aforementioned semi-invisible enemies. while pits in the floor keep opening up, dropping you into traps that permanently reduce your light level. Causing these already hard-to-see enemies to become even more so. Then make sure that the area is also patrolled by additional legitimately invisible ghost enemies that sprint across the screen, infinitely respawn and only become visible when they are about a foot away from you; Constantly hitting you and knocking you into pits while you try and deal with the semi-invisible ones. Now imagine, dear reader, that just past this hallway of horseshite is a section where you have to transform into a defenceless rodent creature in order to crawl through miles of tight tunnels that you normally wouldn't be able to fit into as a human. In this form you must race around looking for levers while being pursued by unkillable floating monsters that can move through walls and are always aware of your location. Also, you are basically blind in this form and can see even less of the world than you normally can (Note that your health pool is shared between this form and your human one so that all the health you lost in the hallway of invisible enemies is still gone). Well Imagine no longer. Marrow is this game. Despite everything I've said so far. the game has fantastic atmosphere. The sound and enemy designs are top-notch. exploring the world felt fun at first, and what little lore the dev has made public is grim and paints a horrifying picture of eldritch forces and forbidden experiments. It seems like Fever Dream Gameworks wanted to go the FromSoft route of backstory and watch from the sidelines as the playerbase discussed and interpreted the games lore with each other. unfortunately it looks like the game didn't do so well and none of that actually ended up happening ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Regardless, I still wish the Dev well. Someone was clearly passionate about this project and it shows. I just have a real hard time appreciating it while I'm busy raging at being bumrushed by invisible ghosts.

[h1]Playing Marrow was a road of thorns[/h1] I was divided between giving it a thumbs up or not until the last moments when the credits rolled, but fact is, after a 20 hour playthrough, I realized that giving it a positive meant ignoring that I woud only recommend Marrow to 3 people out of 100's. For all that is worth and speaking with total nostalgia, the dev absoluted NAILED several aspects of those games in visuals, gameplay, progression and most important --- the FEELING; like you are playing an old gen metroidvania for Dos/Master System/Pc Engine. Monsters and enviroments feel really gritty and muddy in a good way. Marrow definitely feels like it belongs into one of those creepy, forgotten games iceberg on youtube. Unfortunately, all the praisable aspects aren't enough to make a chip on the mountain of flaws the game got buried underneath for all those years. [h1]Progression is hard[/h1] No boss you beat, no powerups, puzzles, areas or teleporters are acquired or unlocked until you save, something that might sound just a bit off considering the modern gaming standarts, but turns out to be incredibly challenging because Marrow is the Scrooge Mcduck of the save points. From the start of the game you already have the ability to teleport back to your last save, but unlike the expression saved by the bell, you are killed by it. In-game, a bell will ring after about 4 or 5 minutes since your last save, trying to teleport after this sound will instantly melt Daniel. You can speedrun to accomplish something or grab an upgrade then use the teleport, but in 90% of your playthough you won't be able to do so. The trek back to a save point will probably kill you many times and start a sequence of failed back-and-forth loops that will grind your teeth to dust - which makes HP and MP upgrades quite valuable and those'll be what will make-it or break-it to progress further, doubling as soft-checkpoints by recovering all HP and MP. Praise where it's due --- the game got some well thought level design, secrets are defintely well hidden, there's plenty of puzzles and powerups DO matter a LOT. Unlike other games it's incredibly hard to progress beyond some areas if you haven't gathered enough grit and clarity upgrades. But the problem lies on its execution. [h1]"Sounds like my kind of game" [/h1] Nope. More than likely, it's not. Marrow's core issue is how it's flawed by design. It's intentionally unpolished in a half-assed mimicking attempt of the old gens. Its an indie dev's first game who left things as they were and kept on trucking until he finished creating it. Then left it unpatched. It's admirable and deserving of praise. It's a pain in the ass. At some point I didn't felt like I was playing challenging, hard game that felt unfair like La Mulana, no, I was fighting for my life agaisnt a hair-pulling amount of jank that felt surreal. By squinting my eyes, I swear I could see the spectral form of the developer right by my side shrugging and whispering in a raspy creeping voice "it feels more cheaEEaallEEeenginiinggGGggg tHis WaeeeeeAyyy". Enemies can't called unpredictable, they are downright SPASTIC and got one of the most insane randomly programmed AI I've ever seen. They got shots that fly with mach speed. Shots that can cross through WALLS. They can shoot you from a hundred miles away before you can even see them. They can shoot you BACKWARDS. Mages will blast you with fire magic that you can't predict. Some will jump like fleas. Enemies will teleport in a milisecond and appear over your head to hit you with no counterplay. Two enemies of the same type in the same screen will take a different amount hits to kill because their HP was differently assigned. Your character will flinch and get stunlocked endlessly. Hitboxes are wonky, sometimes you won't hit, once-in-a-lifetime you'll get blessed with a double hit because the hitboxes malfunctioned --- --- but sometimes you won't have any issues at all because the AI won't trigger and the monsters just wont do much. You'll be flipping coins at the mercy of RNG and this isn't good gameplay design. Take note: facetanking is a tactic that is approved by the dev. At a point, you'll get to save more hp and time just by backdashing on enemies so you get damage boosted in the other direction (another protip by the dev) instead of fighting them. By backdashing, I mean dodging backwards. You won't use the dodge for 99% of the game, the way it functions and is integrated is a bad joke. The weirdest thing that happened, is that past mid-game, everything becomes incredibly easy. It was unnerving how the last few areas of Marrow are chill compared to stuff like the reservoir and necropolis. If you somehow manage to get past those two areas, the rest of the game will feel like a breeze, and you'll be callused enough for what it's left. At this point the dev had more than likely got the hang of creating stages --- or simply got tired of his antics in the startingr areas. [h1]Puzzles WILL get you stuck[/h1] Fireflies are your major source of cues as to how to progress by hovering important stuff, where to find items and solve puzzles --- until they aren't enough anymore. Some of the late puzzles go way past simple abstraction, the hints of how to solve those aren't properly contextualized, scattered through the map in ways that will make them hard to be connected. Saving all orphans is a must to properly finish Marrow and one was bugged for me, I had to use the music orb to play a song and the hint didn't played in the place it was supposed to do so. I ended up mashing directionals until I broke the puzzle somehow. The best weapon of the game is unlocked by finding three items that are very, very badly hinted of their locations and it's literally IMPOSSIBLE to beat the final boss if you don't have it. But before talking about the last boss, let's talk about [h1]The lore[/h1] I don't really think Marrow got a proper lore at all. It doesn't exist inside of the game. It's not integrated by any manner. I can't even say that enviromental lore exists because there's barely any of it and you aren't given any proper context or idea of what you are looking at. All of the game's context is present in the game's store page, that's all there is and without it you wouldn't even know the protagonists name because he's not mentioned anywhere outside of the credits. To be more precise, the only text in the game are the name of the areas and a number of items that can be counted on fingers. The so called "lore" are a bunch of unasorted posts on steam plus a gamedev forum, and those read as an afterthought. [h1]Okay, last boss[/h1] It's an experience similar to finding out that your drink got spiked and your are spinning in circles of the worst dance floor to ever exist, you shriek for help while drowning yourself in loud music and noises --- then someone kicks your nuts. The last boss is invisible. It can teleport randomly to any part of the arena. It can shoot match-speed disco balls. It can fly above a point you can hit. You are supposed to use the magical orb to see where it is, but due to buggy coding this doesn't work as it should. It also got the highest damage in the game and you can't even TOUCH it since this damages you. Beating it is a matter of praying so its wonky AI gets it to stay in a sole place without teleporting and having RNG bless you with double hits on its not-so-functional hitbox. So yeah. Beating Marrow is an euphoric experience because it means you'll never have to play it again. Still, I do admit that its definitely a game that will remain on your head for a long time. It's also a lot better than the dev's other game, Exoder. And while it's weird for me to say this, I would love to play the developer's next game because Marrow definitely got a lot of heart at its core despite of all iits flaws.

The negative reviews and low player count are understandable. This game's difficulty goes beyond that of most other difficult platformers out there, and not always for the best reasons. I finished a 1st playthrough after 30 hours and several ragequits. Things to note: - There's no map of any kind. - There's no item menu either, or even a pause button. - You can only view your grit(hp)/clarity(mp) a limited number of times per save point. - Save points fully heal, but also respawn enemies. - Everything is very dark until you get more upgrades, and even then it's still dark. Things I like/don't mind: - No map is fine. This is one of the rare games where you may need to draw your own, and my scuffed mspaint maps helped out in the long run, especially with larger areas like [spoiler]necropolis and laboratories.[/spoiler] - I found the limited access to your grit/clarity easy to get used to. - Control over your character is good and responsive, making any platforming fails your own fault. - There are teleporters for easier backtracking. - Great music and creepy sound effects. - Excellent visual style. The monster designs are spectacular. - The lore seems interesting, although almost nothing is explained via dialogue. - The luminous orb is a cool and unique item, and it's useful in both puzzles and combat. - 2 of the last areas are weirdly easy compared to the rest of the game, giving you a well-appreciated rest break ([spoiler]malignance and the red tower[/spoiler]). - Only a couple of the puzzles are too cryptic (Just because of this I liked marrow a lot more than la mulana). - The bosses aren't that tough, aside from two of the final ones ([spoiler]seer and familiar[/spoiler]). - Areas can be fun to explore at your own pace. - The difficulty really makes you appreciate every save point and moment of progress. Things I didn't like/question: - Why is there no pause button? I don't see how a basic feature like this was left out. - Offscreen enemies/projectiles and RNG. At times you just have to accept you'll be taking unavoidable damage. - Some very long stretches where any other game would have given you a save point (notably the run from [spoiler]reservoir to necropolis[/spoiler]) - Unclear gates. This is my biggest gripe when it comes to the puzzles. It's established early in the game that green gates are opened by hitting switches. But then in a later area, you have to open green gates by killing a specific enemy. There's also a green gate that's opened by using the luminous orb. If these were different types of gates, I feel like it would be a lot clearer you need to do something different instead of looking around everywhere for a switch. The worst case though is the orange/yellow gates in [spoiler]laboratories[/spoiler]. These can be destroyed with fireballs, but they also disappear after hitting a switch in one of the upper rooms. If you fireball the nearest gate before entering the switch room, then you'll have no idea what the switch did and how important it is for entering the northeast part of the region. Again, if this were a different type of gate, I feel like it wouldn't be an issue. - Enemy's bodies can damage you during their death animations. This is especially annoying with flying monsters. - Most hitboxes are fine or even generous. But "Lamb's" colored projectiles feel a bit too big, and the "God's Eye" laser hitboxes are absolutely terrible. - [strike]You couldn't pay me to do survival mode.[/strike] Edit: Ok never mind that last one, I just beat survival mode. Anything is possible. Overall I have a lot of respect for this game for sticking to its guns, and I like it more after repeat playthroughs. At the same time, I think its difficulty could have been handled a bit better without hurting the overall experience. Still, in the end this is a unique, very challenging, and unforgettable horror platformer.

A Very fun metroidvania that is probably the hardest metroidvania i have ever had the pleasure playing. This game will require the highest level of skill from you so please do not go into this thinking the game will hold your hand. This game will not hold your hand, this game won't even look back to make sure you are okay. But if you can get past the high difficulty and punishment a fun game with an excellent atmosphere, good music, responsive controls and basic combat lays in wait for you. TL;DR: If you like very hard games then get this gem of a game that has flown under the radar.

I think Marrow is objectively bad, but it's the best objectively bad game I've played. Marrow is hard, and the problem with it is that it's hard in the wrong sort of way. It's not hard because it demands a high level of execution or strategy, as your skills will help you a bit but not as much as you might want. It's also not hard because of its obtuse puzzles or trial-and-error traps - it does have those, but those aren't the primary reason it's hard. No, it's hard in a way you might be familiar with if you've played some zero-budget games before - it's hard in a "this wasn't playtested" way. In short, that means the levels and enemies were put together in ways that may look good on paper, but do not take into account how the player is actually going to interact with them. There's probably a dozen things I can complain about here, but the biggest one is that you cannot consistently avoid damage from several types of enemies. Their attacks are just too fast and erratic to dodge, so dealing with them mostly comes down to hoping they don't decide to hit you too many times. When combined with the confusing world design, long distance between checkpoints, and lack of renewable health sources outside of save points, progress often feels reliant on getting easy enemy patterns so you aren't worn down by attrition and wind up dying to something you couldn't reasonably avoid. This also applies to the bosses. If a boss wants to hit you, it'll hit you, and if wants to not be hit, you won't be hitting it. When I won against them, it felt more due to them giving me easy attack patterns then anything I did. I think the developer even knew that this was a problem, since you have way more health than you'd expect the protagonist of a horror game to have, but you'll wind up losing it all to random projectiles anyways. Marrow is unfun and frustrating, not in a cool artsy way but in the way a Mario Maker level made by your little cousin might be unfun and frustrating. While I think this precludes it from actually being considered good, I'm still going to recommend it. I suspect anyone reading a review for a game this obscure is the sort of person who has evolved past the desire for games that are simply good and is now looking for ones that are interesting, and Marrow is very interesting. Marrow displays a very strong sense of style and an unwavering commitment to an artistic vision. Said artistic vision involves it being opaque and unfair, (in a very intentional way, unrelated to the stuff I was complaining about above) but if that isn't a dealbreaker for you you'll probably get something out of it. You many not enjoy it, but you'll certainly find it memorable.

This game is truly a form of torture... I love it.

It feels strange to say that I "recommend" this game. It has some very unusual sensibilities, which have already been elaborated on well enough in other reviews, and its difficulty is brutal in ways that sometimes feel arbitrary. However, overcoming Marrow's challenges has given me a feeling of accomplishment rarely found in games. Every inch of progress was well earned and precious, and I appreciate that. Beyond that, the atmosphere is phenomenal. Art and music are top notch. Also, dev, I don't know if you read these reviews, but since I can't find any other line of contact I have to say it here: I am BEGGING you to release this game's OST on Bandcamp. I'd pay money for it.

A game that I really wish I could give a neutral vote. Despite a cheap price tag I don't think this game is really worth your time unless you've exhausted all other metroidvania options. That isn't to say the game is entirely bad, merely that there are plenty of other indie metroidvanias who are simply better at the genre and less janky: Axiom Verge, Iconoclasts, La-Mulana, Rabi-Ribi and Environmental Station Alpha to name just a few. The controls are terrible and based on the "Controls Info" page in the main menu, most of the alternate key bindings don't even work. And the ones that do are badly chosen and will actively get in the way of your game. Especially the final boss. I'd say use a controller but for some reason it doesn't work in this game, assuming this game actually has DS4 support. This game is absolutely full of bugs and other odd behavior. You won't go an hour without seeing a least one but probably several issues. To name but a few, being able to right-click at the edge of the game's screen which causes a "restart game" dropdown box to appear (which unfortunately I can confirm does restart your game), the constant stuttering that occurs when the camera tries to pan or the audio cues for important secret bosses and collectibles don't often work correctly. This game is difficult and that appears to be the main selling point other people play on but don't be confused, this game is difficult for the wrong reasons. The game will constantly nickle and dime your health with cheap hits that aren't really in your control. Projectiles from off screen, spawning/teleporting enemies right on top of you, platforming segment cut short because there is an enemy that locks on to you with AI designed to block you so you have to take the hit and use your invulnerability frames to continue on, etc. This is all normal for Marrow. Which becomes especially apparent in the later half of the game. The one exception goes to the Laboratories area. Which is (almost) free of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that to literally no one's surprise makes it both a more enjoyable area but also glaringly easy compared with the absolute nonsense that are the areas immediately before and after. If the developer had instead taken the opportunity to shore up the unfair stuff there would have been plenty of room to make the game actually challenging but in a good way. However artificial difficulty by way of RNG is what passes as good "hardcore" design now I guess. Visually and musically the game is fantastic and rarely falls below that high standard. Which is unconditionally the best part about Marrow. However that's not really enough to carry this game. You'd be better off just listening to the soundtrack or watching someone play through the game.

Invisible enemies hit you when you try to do jumps and there's no explanation or reason for it and the game is way too dark and I don't know why I should care.

This game is excellent. Not being ironic or sarcastic here. If La Mulana could be considered the pinnacle of the puzzle aspects of Metroidvanias, and Hollow Knight could be considered the combat pinnacle of Metroidvanias, then Marrow can be considered the atmosphere and setting pinnacle of Metroidvanias. Marrow is intensely imaginative and demanding and every design decision is carefully crafted to use the gameplay to cause fear/stress/dread etc. It's one of the most laser focused games one can try. I wish I had more reviews so I could give Marrow four thumbs up. Tho I do have to say COLORBLIND WARNING! If you're significantly color blind portions of the game may be significantly more difficult for you than otherwise. Some parts of which are action scenes where you can't have a non-colorblind person really help you thru (unlike say, the puzzles and stuff). Quick shout out to Mr. Doshington for spreading the word on this experience.