The Mobius Machine Review
Developed and Published - Madruga Works
Discover a vast alien world. Fight the ferocious local fauna and killer machines.
Reveal its secrets and find a way to escape.
The Mobius Machine is a side-scroller action platformer with dynamic combat and a heavy emphasis on exploration.
Engross yourself in a new Sci-Fi side-scrolling, Action-packed adventure game.
Crash landed on an abandoned moon, all alone, with your only companions are the hordes of alien lifeforms that want to eat and spit at you, you must quickly find a way to escape.
Exploration is heavily invested, which is of no surprise, there are hidden items and secrets for you to discover!
Will you be the one to navigate the unknown?
Gameplay
The Mobius Machine offers a short tutorial teaching you the basics of controls, which leads you to wake up from a dream. A dream of you being eaten alive that is!
Upon waking up, you find yourself talking to your robot friend who states that the rules of answering distress signals are of utmost importance, reluctantly you agree, and end up stranded all alone on what should have been a deserted planet.
Gather your thoughts, because this game will make you choose where you want to go at every available opportunity.
From the very get-go, the game enthusiastically encourages us to explore. You can tell that this aspect has been heavily invested in when you come across items that allow you to scale walls, or use thrusters to cross certain platforms.
This kind of genre does not usually pique my gamer interests, but there was something that drew me to it, perhaps it was the emphasis on exploration, perhaps it was the vast open world or the puzzling routes.
Maybe it was all the above and more, but I felt compelled to play this game, despite my voice sounding like I was bored, I enjoyed it.
Along the many routes that can be taken, you'll find scrap which can be used to buy blueprints, which give you more variety of weapons, you'll find energy which is used to heal, and you'll find many encounters of ladders, water, fauna, traps and enemies for you to navigate through.
On the odd occasion, you might even run into a boss.
Without expecting it, I ran into a boss, it was not hard to beat at all, maybe because it was my first encounterable boss. Who knows.
I was fully aware that I could use my map to move around, but I wanted my instincts to lead the way, perhaps I should've used it more, in fact, I don't think I used it all...
Most routes will lead you back to the area where the upgrade machine is, but I wouldn't count on it being an easy journey.
You can swim, and there is no fall damage, but you better watch out for those traps, I stumbled on some during my playthroughs.
Final Thoughts
The graphics are interestingly enough of decent quality, and enemy design and attack patterns are also of a high calibre.
Sound effects and Ambiance set the mood perfectly, or at least in my own opinion, they do.
With the release coming on March 1st, I want to be able to complete this before then, perhaps I will continue to record it, and make more use of that map!
Rating
I'd rate this a solid 4-star game, for a Metroidvania game, it lives up to the genre, I had hoped there could have been a little guidance in the right way to go, but I'm also aware that the game is also exploration-based, so I can't complain.
In my hour of gameplay, I came across a boss and a bunch of puzzling designs, so I can't fully complain all that much about that either.
Links
(OPTIMISED FOR XBOX SERIES X AND S)
The game is also available to play on Mac operating systems!
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