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Marble It Up! Review

by Amr (@siegarettes)

• Marble It Up!
  
• Developer: Bad Habit Productions
  
• Publisher:
  
• Switch, PC
  

Marble It Up! is at once familiar and strange. It’s a ball rolling puzzle platformer that alternates between open ended puzzle levels and fast paced time trials. While it might initially bring to mind to mind SEGA’s Monkey Ball series, it follows directly from the Marble Blast series, a PC series which shares some developers with Marble It Up! The devs’ experience comes through here, making it clear they know how to make a good momentum based platformer. 

Meanwhile, Marble It Up!’s PC origins are clear in both philosophy and the nuances of control. Movement is more in line with controls seen in third or first person shooters, adding momentum to the direction the camera is pointed. The left stick can still strafe and brake, but you’ll need to aim around corners as you advance to turn. It’s not immediately intuitive, especially if you expect regular platformer controls, but it works well enough considering that the featureless marble you play as doesn’t exactly have a way to tell you what direction it’s facing.

The control scheme does cause some idiosyncrasies, especially during the more open ended puzzle stages. These puzzle stages almost resemble pinball tables, with ramps, bumpers, lifts and special gimmicks that you roll through as you collect the gems that open up the goal. There’s some expected tricks–like precarious layouts that test your ability to balance on the stage without falling out–and some more novel ones, such as the anti-gravity pads that change the direction of gravity and allow you to stick onto the stage while moving at all kinds of strange angles.

The variety is commendable, even if the stage concepts don’t always work. Some gimmicks work better than others, and others, like the anti-grav pads, become limited by those camera idiosyncrasies. Looking up and down quickly snaps the camera back, and taken alongside the way forward momentum is added to the camera direction, it makes it difficult to get a complete look at a stage layout. Most stages are straightforward enough where this doesn’t come into play, but in the latter, more ambitious stages involving multi-tiered layouts and gravity loops it makes it difficult to get your bearings.

The time trial stages fare a lot better. There’s still the same sense of inventive platforming, but the layouts are tuned towards making a clean line through the stage. Some of them really let you go all out, reaching max speed and using boost powerups to roll up loops and launch off of ramps. The level design for them is often more organic as well, utilizing hills and curved surfaces more, letting you smoothing curve around corners and utilize momentum better. The sense of speed is wonderful, and these stages were undoubtedly the highlight of the game for me.  Sadly there’s not many of these–or at least it felt like that since they’re over so much quicker.

That feeling extends to the game as a whole. When I thought I was about halfway through the game it abruptly ended, sending me back to the first stage with little fanfare. The game had up to that point just started getting really ambitious with its level designs, and felt like it was building up to some interesting ideas. Instead it ended, leaving a lot of concepts it previously touched on underexplored. At the least, it felt like it needed another chapter or two to flesh out its ideas and get more time trial stages in.

It’s a shame since the stage design, when it’s on point, is really enjoyable. It’s lighthearted and inventive, and often builds to a satisfying mechanical climax of you rolling at high speed towards the goal. There’s a definite sense that the designers have a strong grasp of how to pace a level. The art direction is minimal, but uses texture and materials in a pleasing way, which would have been nice to see in more configurations.

As it is, Marble It Up! is a varied and stylish momentum platformer that cuts itself a little short. It would have felt more complete had it taken more time to explore its own ideas, becoming a truly great game. Instead it’s an enjoyable one, that left me wanting more.