Marfusha

Roguelike games are very much in vogue within the gaming community after quite an extended period of time being a genre that was much loathed by the community. We gamers can be a fickle bunch but when we like something, we tend to go all in on it and that is why so many Roguelikes are appearing in the mainstream gaming community. Marfusha is the next big Roguelike to hit the digital shelves in the Summer of 2021. Offering a point and click style shooter experiences inspired by anime and offering a pixellated 2D art direction to boot.

This game plays like other Roguelike games such as Rogue Legacy, Hades, Dead cells, Enter the Gungeon, Slay The Spire and Faster Than Light. This game aims to offer a simplistic FPS meets roguelike experience for gamers while still delivering a compelling story. However, does this game manage to marry these two entities together successfully. We find out in our preview of Marfusha.

Far From Pixel Perfect

Let’s begin with the visuals and overall presentation of this game. While the art direction certainly isn’t the worst, it’s far from the best, even within the confines of pixellated, retro style games. This game decides to go with a neon heavy colour palette and a art style that tries to marry manga with arcade graphics. While its certainly an interesting and compelling idea, it doesn’t really work in practice. The 2.5D rendering does help some segments pop during battle scenes and whatnot. However, as a whole the presentation is a small step up from a well made flash game. The high octane musical score does help to soften the blow but even this becomes repetitive after a while.

Then moving on to the gameplay. This game was intended to be a simplistic and accessible game and while that is absolutely the case, the gameplay is quite dull. The point and click action doesn’t offer a great deal of strategy or choice for the player in battle. You simply click on where the enemy is and the cursor means that your attack will autofire at this area until you move the cursor. It leads to a lot of sitting around and waiting for things to happen and in games of this nature, that is as good as signing your own death warrant.

The one upside is that the game does deliver on its promise of a compelling dystopian storyline. The player will have seven unique characters to play as and interact with, the game has a rather interesting world to explore and in the down time between battles, your conversations will probably provide the more enjoyable segments of the game. That’s perhaps not what the developer would have wanted but that’s the reality.

The Verdict

Overall, Marfusha is a game that tries to do a lot of things and ends up not really offering all that much. The world and story that you will experience in this game are great but aside from that, the game is lacking in most other areas. Most notably in the gameplay department which is slow and barely requires any player interaction.

Pros:

• Story, characters and game world are all great
• Upgrades and weapons are well implemented

Cons:

• Visuals and audio won’t blow you away
• Gameplay is stale and lifeless