There’s been a couple of duff entries into the Indiana Jones film series, not least of all 2008’s catastrophic alien outing. Aside from occasional alarming nonsense such as surviving a nuclear blast in a fridge, the films have long been considered the cinematic peak of excitement, delight and childhood nostalgia. Channelling all the best parts of the classic Indie escapade, the team at game developer studio Lightning Rock have delivered their own take on the thrills and spills adventure genre in the form of Marble Mountain, a new 3D platformer for iOS. This time though, instead of the whip-cracking Dr. Jones, our protagonist is none other than a child’s marble.
Taking some stylistic cues from 80s cult arcade classic Marble Madness, the premise of the game is deceptively simple. You manoeuvre a marble down a treacherous obstacle course (the titular mountain) by titling your iPhone or iPad in the direction you want the marble to go. It’s next to impossible to stop the marble completely, but the system is extremely sensitive, allowing you to wrangle a good amount of control over your heroic glass ball. It needs to be that sensitive, because the obstacles that the game has in store for the player, ranging from wire-thin ridges to bottomless pits, require almost gymnastic-grade balance to overcome. Not that this is a bad thing at all. Marble Mountain is an absolute pleasure to play. The controls are beautifully adjusted as well as being instinctive. You can pick this game up and play without needing to sit through any tutorials.
Interestingly, the game takes the form of an adventure, and after a while you really feel like your little marble is on a daring quest to escape the relentless horrors of the mountain. The game skilfully induces this effect without any back-story or exposition, so can rightfully claim its place in the genre of action-adventurer as well as platformer. It’s a tricky field to succeed in, but much like the best of Indiana Jones, this is adventuring in its purest form, and an epic triumph in that regard. A wonderfully engaging experience, the game’s simplicity is endlessly addictive without being monotonous. This is helped in no small part by the sumptuous graphics. Each different level is its own little world, the designers again working wonders with effective simplicity. Secret areas and optional routes breed longevity. The soundtrack is equally infectious, another example of where this game succeeds where lesser offerings might falter. Marble Mountain has a vaguely Eastern feel about it, one of those imaginative and endearing little platformers that the Japanese excel at. More Raiders than Crystal Skull, I can highly recommend this game to anyone looking for a simple, intricate, handheld adventurer. Grab your fedora and get rolling.
Download Marble Mountain for free on iTunes, Google Play or Windows.
