Marooners PC (P)Review by K3W3L
Genre: Action, Casual, Indie, Early Access
Developer: M2H Publisher: M2H
Release Date: Mar 24, 2016
NOTE: This review was done using the beta build V.1253 of the game, and hence is a reflection of the game’s state at that particular time.
Multiplayer party games in recent times have seen some sort of a resurgence on Steam. We’ve had wildly successful games like Duck Game and Move or Die. Now, Marooners is a new entry into the genre, from the developers that brought to you Crash Drive 2 and (more famously) Verdun.
Gameplay revolves around players trying to collect as many coins as possible, while trying to survive as long as possible (or eliminate the other players). There are a few different game modes to play, ranging from a mode where tiles sink for a while after you run over them, to a mode where you have to hold onto a trophy to collect coins, and pass it on to another player when it is about to explode. You can also hit other players to make them drop coins and steal them as well.
Marooners’ standout feature, though, is the fact that these game modes can switch at any moment. Picture this if you will – you and your mates might be playing through maybe the mining mode for a while, and then without warning the game switches to a rock shower mode, and so on and so forth. This is akin to games like WarioWare where games switch every few seconds. It introduces a level of unpredictability into the game as you will not be able to predict just WHEN and WHERE the game switches modes.
Besides that, it’s incredibly impressive that the game can support multiple local players in an online game. This sounds a bit confusing, so here is an example – 2 local players on computer A can play an online game with 2 different local players on computer B, via online.
Music and sounds are okay. There’s music for each game mode which is nice, though I note here that if you start joining a match then quit out to the menu, the menu music doesn’t start playing again.
Because it’s in Early Access, there are some planned features that are not implemented yet. For instance, there definitely needs to be more bonus stages, and, as I’ve concurred with the friends I was playing with, we feel that there definitely needs to be more characters and more game modes. The ones that are currently in the game are cute/fun and all but it does kind of get repetitive the longer you play.
Other planned features that are currently not in place yet are voice chat, achievements, and trading cards. I hope they’ll add the latter 2 items soon – most games now have achievements and trading cards, it would be extremely rare to see games without these now and card sales will always help to generate more revenue.
ALSO, because it’s in Early Access, there’s a whole plethora of bugs and glitches, as well as what I feel are design flaws. I’ll start with the design flaws that I’ve noticed. Firstly, when a new game mode starts, the brief instructional screen obscures the playing field slightly, BUT characters can start moving before the instruction screen completely disappears. I find this in a sense slightly unfair as it may sometimes obscure where exactly your character is, but other players can more easily identify where their characters are. To that end, I suggest that there be a countdown before a new mode starts, directly after removing that instructional screen, just to make it more fair for everyone to quickly find their characters.
The other main design flaw that I noticed has something to do with the Flower Falls mode – the one where the lotus pads (?) fall a short while after you run over them. It is when the game switches that this mucks things up – if the game mode switches while you are on a pad that has already started to fall downwards, once the game switches back to the mode, you’re standing on air, and instantly fall and lose. Quite unfair.
Now I must say that while I consider these design flaws, for all I know the devs might have intended this behavior on purpose, so I will respect their decision if they keep these ‘flaws’ that way, as all it just means is that players will have to work around them. What I’m sure they did NOT intend though are these glitches that cropped up during gameplay.
Let’s start off small. In two modes (the mining mode and the falling square blocks mode) sometimes I’ve observed that you can squeeze your character through two blocks that are diagonally apart from each other.
Then we go to the multiplayer – if you have multiple local players on one computer join an online game, when they disconnect from the game, it is not “clean”. That is, suppose 2 local players join an online game, and then disconnect. The other players will still see that there is 1 of these local players remaining in that game, and chances are the local players that disconnected are likely to reconnect to that game and observe that glitch (due to the online playerbase which will be elaborated on later) – they will not be able to control that remnant character.
The biggest glitch that was found thus far was that sometimes the game would remain stuck displaying the loading screen…BUT, the game modes themselves would still play out without any of the players knowing what was in fact actually happening. This in fact led to serious consequences in the Rocky Road mode where we were greeted with the end of the road and nothing after it. We made our ghostly characters walk and fall off the end of the road into the white void of nothing. Eventually we were left with nothing but that mode left and had to leave the game. The game did not recognize, for some reason, that all of us were dead, and refused to end the mode.
There was also one occasion where my brother, who was playing local on my end while connected to the online game, changed his character and yet ended up as the initial character he was playing.
There are probably more that we did not manage to find while we were playing, but these are a start, and I hope they get fixed in due course.
Lastly, the real problem of this game is that there is absolutely nobody playing online. I feel there needs to be more publicity done, more copies sold or distributed, in order to build up an online playerbase. Ironically though, the non-existent playerbase did prove to be a silver lining – where the friends mode did not work for me to link up with my Steam friends, online mode actually did (because we, and one other player, were the only people playing online).
Pros:
Still in Early Access – means that there is still a lot of room for improvement
Very fun fast-paced gameplay
Can simultaneously support multiple local players in an online game
Active developers; weekly updates with countdown timer to next update
Good amount of game modes and characters…
Cons:
…but it needs more of them!
No bots
Lots of bugs and glitches, coupled to a few fundamental flaws in some modes
Small (non-existent) online playerbase
K3W3L gives Marooners a Drastik Measure 6.7 out of 10 (67).
The low-ish score doesn’t mean it’s a bad game – rather, it’s genuinely a whole ton of fun with friends. However, the fact that it is in Early Access really shows due to the number of glitches that my friends and I experienced while playing. That’s good, though – I hope that during Early Access they will polish and iron these out while they can. To that end, I recommend picking it up for short play sessions with like-minded friends if you don’t mind the glitches (which aren’t as much detrimental-bad as they are unintentionally hilarious).
Personally, I would recommend to the devs to get a 4-pack option available on the Humble Store, so people can buy multiple copies and play with their friends. Yeti Trunk’s Wanderlust Adventures did it that way because Steam discontinued the multi-pack options – this move should definitely satisfy those looking to buy copies in bulk at a small discount!
Check out the play testing session that I did with Who’s Gaming Now?! – you can see all the hilarious fun and glitches mentioned in the review.
https://www.twitch.tv/whosgamingnow/v/65781947
http://store.steampowered.com/app/423810/
