Marble Computing Reviews

Feels like a Flash game I would have played the heck out of back in the mid 2000s. Simple, yet engrossing and fun.

This game isn't even with its $1 price tag. It is one of the least polished, most buggy messes I have ever played. From one indie dev to another, do better.

Marble Computing is a tiny game in which you lay tracks for marbles and solve logic puzzles. Though its aesthetics are somewhat bland, the game hyper-focuses on one aspect: creating engaging computer-related puzzles. A few of these are quite interesting—mixing a 3-bit adder and an XOR gate with the physicality of marbles going around tracks is fun and makes you think about those problems in unique ways. The physicality is really what shines here: you have very limited space, marbles bump into one another if you place tiles haphazardly, and conditionals and synchronization are purposefully cumbersome. Simple elements, like XOR gates, become quite complicated yet manage to avoid being overwhelming. This is aided by the fact that there’s usually a few levels you can tackle in any order, so you’re never really stuck on any sections. You know a game is good when its negatives seem more like items on a wishlist rather than true drawbacks. All of these are work-aroundable, but also annoying and worth mentioning. This is one of those games that deserves that extra polish. A worse—or longer—game would’ve had me really complaining about this stuff, but not here. Here’s the wishlist: Features like undo and redo, saving and loading solutions, histograms that track more than just piece count (why not measure speed?) are obvious improvements. Also, being able to see the marbles while under the panels could improve visibility and debugging. There’s a weird timing quirk when they go under, which was always strange to work around. A feature for remembering the best score on solutions after altering them would be helpful; currently, not being able to save can be really annoying and often requires taking screenshots before editing anything. Lastly, the ability to set a default exit for splitters could streamline the puzzle-solving process. As it stands, this seems to force players to construct more convoluted solutions than necessary, slightly detracting from the game's smooth flow. Again, this game is good, quick, and cheap. It deserves a solid recommendation as something to do in a weekend. If you’re a fan of puzzle games. This is [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/92800/SpaceChem/]Spacechem[/url]-lite. Which is a great thing.

[quote] Follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44326719-Uncharted-Depths-of-Gaming/]Uncharted Depths of Gaming[/url] for more reviews! [/quote] [b]Premise[/b] Design-based puzzles. Sort of a "Zach-lite." [b]Deep Dive[/b] Satisfying physicality sets it apart from more abstract puzzle games. The marbles behave pretty much as you would intuitively expect. [b]Regrets[/b] Not many "surprise" mechanics (but not none). Definitely a lot of room to develop the concept more in Marble Computing 2. [b]Assessment[/b] Difficulty ramps up fast and builds on itself nicely. Won't change anyone's mind about puzzle games but a quick and pleasant (and cheap) snack for anyone who is a fan of the genre. Also when I asked for colorblind support the developer had a patch ready within 3 hours, which was pretty awesome!

I wish I had never bought it. I see what it aims for and kind of like the idea, but the resulting ruleset is poorly explained and painful to reason about. I got the most unfun puzzle experience I had in long, long time.

Is there anything more satisfying than watching marble run vids? - Yes, when you actually build one! Despite the game has some bizarre settings different from the real world physics, like the marbles vaporized when they collided. But the devs did turn the setting into some usable methods and created incredible possibilities for marble computing machine. Totally recommend.

Mechanics are a little too fiddily, but that would be fine if any of the 3 color options helped me see which order to put these in. There are two levels that block progression where the entire puzzle is order the 8 and 12 colors in order and I couldn't get past them because the order they come out isn't clear either. I assume it's right to left top to bottom like reading but by not being able to see the color I just didn't really feel like continuing.

Have currently finished all but the last two or three levels (still working on those). There's some polish this could use - On the simpler side, I wish it would save working solutions so if you try to optimize later and mess it up, you can restore your last working solution. On the more complex side, it would also be nice if this had zachtronics-style histograms. That said, the game still feels pretty good and I'd say it's definitely worth it, especially given the price point. Some of the reviews mention few puzzles, but I believe more were added in 2022. The later ones are extra hard (like binary addition) and will require quite a bit of thinking, even if you already know exactly how binary addition works in a non-marble-based-world. Also a tip: On Principle 6: When the game says right click, you have to right click a node and then drag it onto the junction. This wasn't intuitively explained so I couldn't quite figure it out until rewatching the game trailer.

A unique puzzle that's well worth the cost of just $0.99

This was a marvelous little puzzle game! Such a unique concept and wonderfully executed. It really makes you be creative and to think ahead. My only disappointment is that there is so few puzzles. I finished the game at its release in a few hours and was left wanting more. So excited for future expansion!