Marrow

This game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. However, a decent amount of that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is actually quite fun, which is why this review is positive. Do not go into it expecting it to be a well designed and curated experience. Many, many things in this game are, as stated before, complete and utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. It's strategizing, adapting, and overcoming the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is the fun part, along with some surprisingly satisfying platforming, music that fits well in context, and jank being the primary skill to master. It's almost necessary to use a map or a guide to progress in a reasonable timeframe, unless you feel like spending hours searching for hidden upgrades and the path forward. Overall, a perfect 5/7.

Best game i have ever played 10/10.

Amazing atmosphere and music, but it's too difficult. I doubt even 100 people could defeat this

I dont understand why the ♥♥♥♥ anyone would ever want to play this game. 10/10 im suicidal now

If you are reading, I NEED YOUR HELP, I am locked in this dudes basement and he forces me to play Marrow everyday! All we get to eat is BEANS, I cant stand it anymore, and he doesnt stop singing about being "lost in necropolis", he is genuinely crazy! There are others here, one of them refused to play by his rules, so instead he pulled out an ultra dense cube and just caved their skull in!! Please I dont have much time left, I have been stuck on this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ invisible boss for the past few days and he is getting impatient...

I really like the feel of the game and soundtrack and 2D horror of way the game depicts Eldritch monstrosities in the dark as if there is more to there form that we are not seeing a other worldly strangeness if only we looked past the shadows to see the depth of the strange horrors beyond the depths of monstrous void and fleshy horror of unseen creepiness.It truly is very neat game hope yall going to put the soundtrack on steam I would buy it really fast.

Great presentation, sound design and atmosphere (music was a bit odd) but the gameplay really holds it back As much as I want to enjoy this game, I just don't Shout out to @horrorvisuals on Twitter for showing me this game

[h1]Marrow[/h1] I think this is a game that almost justifies supporting the developer for. It is everything I hoped it would be. I also do not think it is a 'good game' and I don't even think the majority of people should really play it at all. I think the average person would get more out of playing something like Yume Nikki (or its fan games) which offer similar experiences executing a singular author's vision without restraint, they just also sidestep the frustration and suffering inherent to playing Marrow. Much of this review is going to read as negative (I stand by it) but I ultimately do recommend it; specifically to the type of person looking at a decade old indie with under 50 reviews and who after reading those reviews thinks to themselves, 'this sounds good, actually'. [h1]Short Advice[/h1] If you feel like attempting to play: [list] [*]Read the controls screen in general. [*]Jump while attacking to avoid recovery. [*]Mash left and right while jumping to hit things multiple times. [*]Knockback pushes you away from the way you are facing. [*]Backdashing is mostly useful as a way to damage boost. [*]If you get a piece of jewellery and see a white house, pay attention to what's on screen. [*]It has two of the worst designed bosses in video games. [/list] [h1]Visuals[/h1] The visuals are almost certainly the reason you have any interest in Marrow, there's unabashed creativity on display for basically every aspect of the game. If you want to see what you're doing you might need to close your curtains and turn out the lights but sitting in the gloom is certainly appropriate for the game. [h1]Sound[/h1] Sound design is strong throughout. There's high quality, distinct area themes for all the locales which never really grate or feel out of place. The enemies generally have unique, fitting sounds and ambient audio is normally well chosen. Some effects have a 'stock' feeling but they never take you out of the experience. [h1]Platforming Fundamentals[/h1] The platforming is completely competent, if you mess up it's probably your fault. Falling from height causes you to take damage and has a fixed recovery duration which can lead to having a bad time especially in the game's progression curve. Hazards wise there's spikes and damage pools in a lot of areas which make things awkward but mostly don't feel unfair. There are rare cases of actual instant death which are not even slightly communicated as doing such and these do feel unfair when you 'interact' with them. [h1]Standard Combat[/h1] Combat is bad and could generously be described as 'worse castlevania'. Attacks are slow to start and lock you down for a recovery duration that lingers far beyond actual animations. Your attacks are cancelled on taking damage and which often leads to you being stunlocked. You will spend most of your time learning to avoid these 'features' by jumping, doing anything else will doom you. The backdash is useless during combat and cannot be chained from anything, if it could cancel attack animations the gameplay might have been more responsive but instead it's simply a tool for knockback abuse. [h1]Enemies[/h1] Enemies themselves completely lack in any form of response to you landing a hit beyond a visual tell and you never have a real ability to punish foes for anything. You will spend a lot of time backpedalling while trying to deal damage. Enemies often have identical visuals despite differing HP - sometimes even on a single screen - this is likely intentional to add 'stress' but it mostly results in you having to play very slowly until you memorise enemy health because your options for dealing with them before they force you into a bad situation are often tantamount to 'nil'. Some enemies have pretty awful behaviours tied to RNG and there's attacks which reach beyond their visual tells damaging in spite of not touching you. Dying enemy corpses continue to deal damage in spite of you having killed them. There's several sections with respawning enemies, early encounters are basic reaction tests but later ones are somewhat egregious and feel like they can genuinely end up impossible depending on the way the dice falls. The correct play is often 'reach them with the health to damage boost' and naturally 'always be jumping'. [h1]Bosses[/h1] The bosses are visually interesting but as actual encounters they range from bland damage sponges to unforgivable messes that feel maliciously designed. Saves are generous on every single boss encounter which is nice, losses rarely feel like a skill failure and more like poor luck stacking up due to the bosses being dire. The worst bosses in the game are respectively a blend of multiple layers of pure RNG held together by dysfunctional AI that rarely allows you to actually engage with the encounter. One is always invisible. It's shocking that someone so clearly overflowing with creativity landed on such unimaginative, bad ideas. They come across as intentional animosity towards those playing. I would even go so far as to [i]hope[/i] it's malice, because the alternative is an display of absolute negligence for even the slightest of testing during their creation. [h1]Level Design[/h1] All areas have distinct visual identities and are fairly easy to memorise for navigation. The lack of a map could easily have been a pain point but there were enough landmarks to be able to find my way wherever I wanted to. For the most part the raw platforming feels solidly designed around the actual game's limitations. Some simple things such as 'ladders' or 'low height corridors' genuinely feel worse than the platforming ever does because of them hard limiting your actual options. There are a fair few pratfalls, these never bothered me even when they resulted in my death despite a few borderline nasty ones. Exploration itself is fairly rewarding albeit basic, a large boon during initial exploration is that every time you get health or magic upgrades you get a full refill from doing so, granting precious quantities of always finite resources. Traversing the world got tedious in a few stretches with sparse save points and bad enemies leading to something akin to 'navigation paralysis' where even being aware of things you want to do you will simply choose backtracking to save what you have actually accomplished. [h1]Overall Feelings[/h1] I think marrow would be wildly better if had been created with an extra set of eyes on it and doesn't need a lot changed to actually end up something genuinely very good. It falls short of that mark and is a rare game where I think less 'core gameplay' would have been better. A heavier focus on the platforming and puzzles would have been a much better fit. You could claim Marrow to be an auteur's vision with zero compromise but I think that's overly generous and collaterally applying unrelated value to 'poorly balanced and minimally play tested with unsteady pacing'. Many retro games are said to be unfair by default rather than from purposeful design due a lack of anyone giving pushback on bad choices. A developer doesn't play the same game as a player. Developers know the secrets, every enemy behaviour, that the 3rd enemy in a room gets extra health to mess with you and where every platform is. I feel like Marrow is a combination of this sort of closed circle inevitability combined with an unfortunate attachment to difficulty for the sake of it, with an end result oftentimes resembling 'malice' over 'intended friction'. The game isn't of 'kaizo' difficulty - though the RNG based encounters get close - but shares a lot of DNA with that design space which puts it at odds with any attempt to be 'actual art', unless the intention was 'everyone should suffer for my art'. Really, I feel like that's a solid encapsulation of Marrow much more so than any score could ever be; [b]if you want to suffer for someone's art, this is your game[/b].

Uniquely jank with questionable design choices, but i still love it

What can i say about this 'game' its so strange and odd looking and sounding but at the same time it really is this work of art that continued to blow me away. One thing for sure i have to say is yeah, its difficult, in that its enemies are trying to stop you from progressing because you are the biggest threat to them, its confusing as in its not telling you what to do AT ALL, everything is told to you through what you see, there isnt a single word uttered past the beginning text , you dont even learn the main chars name until the ending credits and i just took it as that, this adventure i was learning by experiencing and it did a great fuggin job doing that. There were times with the bosses i thought the dev was actually just having a laugh but with the right positioning and attack pattern everything is beatable and after i beat it i really didnt understand how i had so much trouble to begin with. In short this game is going to kick your ass just like dark souls kicked your ass the first time but then something clicked and suddenly you got it, then you got better at it, then it wasnt a problem ever again and i absolutely loved that. just give it a shot.