dank physics | Marble Marcher
1no bananas around here
REVIEW
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Course based time trials is not a foreign concept, especially in the form of rolling around a ball or marble. Many niche titles take advantage of this design to provide interactive challenges or puzzles, a notable example being Super Monkey Ball. But to 1-up this formula with the introduction of complex 3D environments that doesn't rely on traditional geometry is not something you see every day. Marble Marcher teases us with a taste of what that is like.
No plot, just a simple objective of making your way from point A to B. Trials in a nutshell.
Gameplay at its core is straightforward. You roll the ball from the starting point to wherever the flag is located while traversing the creative yet uncanny landscapes spawned by fractional dimensions. Environmental hazards such as holes, getting squished by moving surfaces, low gravity and inopportune bouncing will serve as obstacles to the player but is manageable (despite some mald from my end). When you look past the depth of the level generation, the game doesn't require much. Spatial awareness of your surroundings is a common theme for all games and this one is no different.
This technique of irregular procedural generation is a very distinctive thing to implement in a video game. Most games fall upon restricted concepts to keep things logical, that when space gets taken up, nothing else happens within that occupation. So when this rule isn't respected, we see what happens as a result when the levels load in Marble Marcher (or fluctuate during gameplay). Considering how it would be used in a game and adhering to a specific genre, I imagine it would be pretty demanding from a developer standpoint, how to justify synergy of game mechanics and this type of design. Not to mention optimization as when it rendered at times, my FPS dipped and the recordings were massive for being just under a hour too. A very cool idea but may leave a bit to be desired.
A common trope but unique execution, games like Marble Marcher highlight the prowess of software/hardware capabilities and developmental inventiveness. Even if an idea does not go anywhere anytime soon, I always welcome an attempt to explore different possibilities of what a game can do.