Marble Mountain Reviews

Great game! I've been loving my Vive and VR in general for a little over a week. Roomscale is amazing and the games that utilize it have been awesome. However I still yearn for some good sit down games in VR. Let's face it, with all the current popular roomscale games out there you can only play them for so long in one go before you get physically tired. Marble Mountain has helped fill that yearning for sit down VR goodness. The game isn't that difficult, but it definitely delivered a fun, enjoyable, and memorable experience. It brought me back to my NES days playing Marble Madness but on a whole new level. Props to the devs for their hard work and also I loved the tribute song in the ending credits :). Bottom line in my opinion: It's a good solid game worth picking up. It's only about 3 hours long, but still worth the $10.

Nice game overall, music and level design was pretty good but the camera needs serious work to prevent motion sickness in VR. Specifically when the camera angle is changing and you are moving your head looking around at the same time. Perhaps instant cuts would be better than sweeping angle changes? Would not recommend until they fix this.

Great concept, fun little game, could definitely be expanded with DLC with more challenging levels. Only issue is there is a fair bit of discomfort with this title, not sure if it's the speed of the computer controlled camera or another factor. Maybe a bit of camera smoothing would help, or less severe transitions?

Motion Sickness Warning! I want to love this game, but the automatic camera makes me sick like no other game has. PLEASE give us manual camera control with the right stick! Without it, I'm not going to be able to play this game and can't recommend it to others. :(

I love marble games, but as is so often the case with these sorts of games, I spent my entire time fighting the interface and the camera angle. Contrary to the claimed blurb, the camera did NOT automatically adjust to show me the best angle - it frequently left me playing completely blind. And why the actual F..., when 99% of the movement in the game is made along the four cardinal compass directions (NSE and W), are the controls mapped to the four diagonals? The challenge should come from the layout of the game, not from the fact that you have to simultaneously press two buttons to move in a straight line! A badly designed game created by someone who clearly thinks that crippling the player is the same thing as challenging him. Really disappointing.

Watch my video review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/9f8Agtqnbs4 [h1]Experienced on the Oculus Rift with Xbox One Controller[/h1] This is the the most fun marble run / platforming game I have played in VR to date. It took me approximately 2 hours to finish the game (did not get Gold on each level though). Please be advised that this game is geared for the casual gamer and not for the hardcore gamer. Checkpoints are very generous, you get unlimited tries to complete a level, and resets are pretty quick. However, if you want to climb the leaderboards by speedrunning the game then it can become hardcore. Each level does increase the difficulty. New elements are introduced to keep the gameplay interesting. Each level does look absolutely beautiful and the game ran smoothly. The controls did feel a little bit floaty, as there is some momentum, but you get used to the handling. There is no jumping although you will have to jump via momentum up inclines in some parts. There is no fighting but some enemies do try to knock you off the ledges. I did not have any issues with the camera (95% of the time it was moving appropriately to get a good view). I do wish you could move it around though. If you experience nausea in VR, the automatic camera movement may make you sick. I experienced one crash in my playthrough. I did notice that if you start the game from the Steam library it gives you the option of Steam VR or Oculus VR. The problem is that if you choose Oculus you run into some fatal errors so you do have to choose the Steam VR mode. The good news is that the game runs smoothly when you pick the Steam VR mode. [b]Rate 7.5/10. I paid $2.49 USD for this game during a recent Steam sale. I would say that I got more than my money's worth. I had fun. [/b]

The sensible negative reviews seem to focus on the motion sickness and the weird camera moves, but if you can hack these (I actually found all the swinging round pretty cool after the first couple of minutes) then this is the one of the best 'casual' VR games I've played so far. It's not long, I beat it in under 2 hours and that included stopping for every bonus, and letting my kids have lots of (unsuccessfuly) goes. Neat, fun and I hope hope hope they do more levels soon. Even if it was paid DLC I would get it - loved it.

Good variation on the typical marble game, though shorter and easier than I might have hoped. It took me around 3 hours to get gold on all 20 levels. Do not expect an ultra hard precision marble platformer like in Marble Blast Ultra or similar games. The gameplay is almost relaxing and without the typical marble game frustration, though there are a few tricky parts. There are also some differences from other marble games: - Camera movement is scripted. This generally works well since you can almost always see where you're going without having to manuever it yourself. - Marble moves slower and with better control than some other games (much slower than Marble Blast, better control than Marble Madness). Even going downhill the ball can slow if you stop pushing it. - No jumping. - Marble breaks if you fall from too high, and sometimes when hitting a wall too fast. Basically, if you like roll-a-ball games or Marble Madness/Super Monkey Ball clones, but wish they were less frustrating, this game is for you. Haven't tried it with VR support yet so I can't comment on that, but may update this when my Rift arrives in a month or two. Finally, was initially unable to play the game due to it crashing Steam on startup, but developers were responsive in getting it fixed. Solution was to hold left alt on launch to bring up the configuration menu, after which I've been able to start it fine.

I just can't play this game in VR. I thought "Oh this will be cool" and at first it is... but this game makes the first cardinal sin of VR: they take control of the view away from the player... It's like you're sitting in a chair, and someone grabs your head, drags you around the corner and forces you to look at something... oh but your body is still in the chair...and now you want to puke. If they could get away from the problem of taking control away from me when they want to change the view, OR at the very least, make it slow, gentle and not jarring at all, THEN this might be worth playing in VR. As for non VR? Well it's just a marble madness clone. You're better off playing the remakes of the old arcade game unless you think fancy graphics is going to make a difference in the gameplay. Pros: [list] [*] I fuckin' love Marble Madness [*] it looks pretty damn neat in VR [*] has potential to be awesome [/list] Cons:[list] [*] It's not marble madness [*] It throws away all the "it looks neat" by making you feel naseous. [/list] So yeah... Maybe I'll try playing it without the VR. OR maybe one day the developers will realize that taking control away from the player in VR is like forcing a dog to take medicine by sticking your hand down his throat. Maybe you think it's for his own good, but it's gonna come right back up when he pukes.

an excelent example of how not to design a vr game. opens with a camera move backwards to reveal the title/menu. So instnatly feels dissorienting. But it at least prepares you for how the rest of the game feels. I bought it on sale because i loved marble madness. had i paid full price i would have been annoyed. It is unplayable for me and pretty much everyone i have shown it to. the camera (your head) moves with the marble, if the marbel twists and winds around a rail, you follow it the whole way, swaying side to side. The dev has said they have attempted to make the movement system work for as many people as possible but the intro and the fact the camera is really locked to the marble says otherwise. hopefully one day they will make this game mor eof a roomscale experience with no forced movement or someone else will make that game, because right now i cannot recommend this unless you have no vestibular system.