Marooners Review

Those known as party games are always welcome at friend gathering evenings. That is why the departure of any exponent of this aspect is always well received, although it is a humble independent development. And the appearance of Marooners, a simple game that can still be sent to compete with a stream of other contenders. It's a great project for the Xbox console and for all the friends who wanna play together and just play for fun.

Duration

You are facing a game, that you can enjoy all it's potential and duration, if you play in online mode or with friends, if you don't have friends who have the game, you can play by your own, but you will fall in the constant repetition and with that, the boredom of the player.

Gameplay

Marooners is based on 25 minigames, that will entertain crazy games in sessions of up to six simultaneous players. A party game of pure strain, that moves away from any type of board or movement system between games, and simply alternates them one after another, to see who gets to win with each one of them. In each game, you will participate in a random selection of the total of mini-games, and the player who gets the most total coins, will be the winner.

The main objective is to get coins in each minigame, but it will not be an easy task. Each of the 25 mini-games differs radically from the rest, offering diverse and very challenging playable mechanics. You have minigames in which to dodge obstacles that rain from the sky, others in which to dig down faster than your rivals, in others you will choose between two platforms to see if you are lucky and doesn't fall to the sky, you will avoid balls of fire, you will slip for a snow ring, etc. And of course, all accompanied by other rivals whose goal isn't only to survive the stage, but also try to hit some rivals to snatch a coin.

Therefore, there are several ways to get coins, for example taking the coins by the scenario, or you can take coins from a rival player, and of course, being the only survivor of a minigame, being rewarded with a good amount of coins. The funny thing is that the people eliminated from the minigames don't have to wait around with their arms crossed or are waiting for the rest to finish the game, but that they return on stage in the form of a ghost, with the sole purpose of annoying the players who remain. That is, as ghosts, you can no longer collect coins or win the minigame, but you can hit and hinder to cause the failure of a player.

If you don't have a friend or someone to play, you can always use the CPU to complete a group of six, and there will be the possibility of competing in all against all or form two groups to join forces. You must bear in mind that there are two ways to play, the linear mode, in which you play the minigames one after another until there is a winner in each of them; or the Chaos mode, one of the novelties of Marooners.

Chaos mode, as it's name suggests, can be as extremely chaotic as it's fun. It consists in that you will participate in mini-games, but in fragments of just 10 seconds of game. The current minigame will pause and "jump" to the next. In this way, you will alternately play 5 or 6 mini-games in fragments of just a few seconds, always continuing at the right moment where the action was paused, causing to continually remember how things were and with hardly any reaction time. This crazy idea may be too confusing at first, but you must recognize that if you want to laugh a bit is especially fun and competitive.

Marooners has no other ways to play a series of mini-games locally or through the internet, but it does have a quite curious unlockable catalog. Based on playing, you will get experience that will make you level up, and in doing so, you will get new characters and more than 70 hilarious weapons. The weapons don't have any functional difference and it's only an aesthetic change, but it's really surprising the amount of surrealistic objects that you can equip to stir up the rivals.

Graphics & Design

Technically, it's a game that complies with what it offers in a very solvent way, but without great fanfare that makes it stand out on a visual level. Some mini-games are more colorful than others, but in general it shows that humble touch of indie developments and doesn't shine in particular. Nor does music stand out excessively, which correctly accompanies the mini-games. Therefore, this totally depend on it's gameplay to find the virtues, and luckily with this it manages to trace the general result.

Conclusion

Logically, the success of Marooners will depend on if you have the friends to play with. Playing alone in this game, the action will deflate too quickly, and playing against the CPU is never as fun as against a human who can scream with rage before a victory on your part. I also miss some kind of preamble between minigames, like some board with dice to move and choose minigame, or some formula derived so that it's not a "simple" succession of events one after another. Of course, the Chaos mode has seemed an interesting idea that moves away from the classic and gives that own and charismatic touch to the game.

*Game was provided for this review