<--- Back to All Reviews

Marty the Mole by Mercerenies, Alicia, Cora

Time Played: about 34 minutes

Overall Gameplay (9 / 13 points)

Comments: I cannot believe I spent over half an hour on this - it didn't feel like I spent that much time! Overall this was a solid puzzle game. The difficulty ramp was nice, but it got kinda crazy for me around level 20 (I think it was level 21 where I tapped out?). Props for engineering such difficult levels, but man I was exhausted by the time I called it quits! While I think on a foundational level the mechanics worked well to create such intriguing puzzles, they weren't the most intuitive. The way stacks of objects would sorta just roll away depending on how they were supported on each side felt strange and I never fully got the hang of how those rules worked. Bees flying through dirt to attack you because they fell one tile at the other end of the screen, yet being totally chill with getting pushed and rolled around, took some getting used to! In the same vein, gravity-changing cabbages added an excellent layer to the puzzles, but they came somewhat hilariously out of left field compared to all of the other puzzle elements! The undo and start-over mechanics were fantastic and I would've rage-quit far earlier without them.

Theme Inclusion (3 / 6 points)

Comments: I dunno man... "your wife was kidnapped and now you're a mole who needs to eat cabbages and not get stung by bees in order to rescue her" feels like a pretty big stretch to me!

Overall Presentation (7 / 10 points)

Comments: Visually this game was fine. The graphics did the job but not much more. The arrows on the gravity cabbages were a bit small though! It's nice having the controls (literally) spelled out for you in the dialogue, and not having to reference the README. The intro and dialogue overall were both very good additions. Huge credit for the voice recordings! The 8 bit sound effects did not fit at all with the rest of the audiovisual style, but I liked the voice recordings too much to dock any points for that.

Final comments: This was a really solid entry! I wish there was a way to skip levels so I could see the ending. One more note: I mentioned this in my video, but there were some odd sexual undertones in the dialogue. Given the way the rest of the game was presented, this didn't feel intentional, but the mood of the dialogue overall was incredibly strange. My wife has been kidnapped by a dangerous character, meanwhile there's relaxing music playing in the background and Grandpa's over here talking very casually about how kids have it so much better these days. It was all quite odd!

Total Score: 19 / 30

<--- Back to All Reviews