Marrow

About

Marrow is a single-player Horror Action game with a fabulous atmosphere and great soundtrack. Explore a menacing mountain filled with crypts, a rotted town, and a Manor, all serving as a burial site for cosmic crimes. Leap, crawl, slash, and blast through challenges, puzzles, platforming, combat, and navigation to find your lost friends and uncover noxious truths.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player Play through the game's story or campaign solo

73%

Audience ScoreBased on 41 reviews

atmosphere13 positive mentions

story3 negative mentions

Marrow features an incredible atmosphere and unique art design that immerses players in a creepy, eldritch world.
The game offers a challenging experience that rewards perseverance and skill, making progress feel meaningful and earned.
The sound design and music are top-notch, enhancing the overall experience and contributing to the game's unsettling ambiance.

The game suffers from poor design choices, including a lack of a map, limited visibility, and frustrating enemy placements that can lead to unavoidable damage.
Many players find the difficulty to be excessive and often unfair, with mechanics that feel arbitrary and poorly implemented.
Controls can be clunky and unresponsive at times, leading to frustrating gameplay experiences that detract from the overall enjoyment.

atmosphere
23 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
57%
30%
13%
The atmosphere of the game is widely praised for its unique style, immersive sound design, and exceptional art direction, creating a deeply engaging and often creepy experience. Many reviewers highlight how the atmospheric elements, including music and environmental design, enhance the overall gameplay, making it a standout feature despite the game's high difficulty. Overall, the game's atmosphere is considered a significant strength, contributing to its appeal within the metroidvania genre.
- “The atmosphere makes up for every flaw people seem to encounter with this game.”
- “The atmosphere in this game is absolutely amazing!”
- “If La Mulana could be considered the pinnacle of the puzzle aspects of Metroidvanias, and Hollow Knight could be considered the combat pinnacle of Metroidvanias, then Marrow can be considered the atmosphere and setting pinnacle of Metroidvanias.”
- “The other benefits to the oppressive atmosphere is the sound design for monsters, giving a fair share of anxiety both from their first encounter and every run-in with them.”
- “The music helps support this notion, with synthesized melodies supporting a near alien atmosphere.”
- “The atmosphere is really creepy.”
music
22 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
36%
14%
The music in the game is generally praised for its quality and atmospheric contribution, enhancing the eerie and eldritch themes throughout. Many players appreciate the soundtrack's ability to create a foreboding ambiance, with standout tracks that resonate well with fans of atmospheric music. However, some critiques mention a monotonous quality in certain parts, which can detract from the overall experience.
- “Art and music are top notch.”
- “The music helps support this notion, with synthesized melodies creating a near-alien atmosphere.”
- “Visually and musically, the game is fantastic and rarely falls below that high standard.”
- “It's an experience similar to finding out that your drink got spiked and you're spinning in circles on the worst dance floor to ever exist; you shriek for help while drowning in loud music and noises --- then someone kicks you in the nuts.”
- “A game designed by someone who knows nothing about game design, that isn't fun, has a monotonous soundtrack that goes on and on and on... even if the theme of weird (almost Lovecraftian) horror is there, all the other negatives I listed make it a no-buy for anyone who wants to actually stay sane and not descend into madness for real - even at deep, deep discount - do not buy!”
- “You'd be better off just listening to the soundtrack or watching someone play through the game.”
gameplay
11 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
27%
45%
27%
The gameplay is a mixed bag, with some players appreciating its nostalgic metroidvania elements and imaginative design that evokes strong emotions, while others criticize it for frustrating mechanics, such as punishing save points and a reliance on trial and error. The overall experience is hindered by inconsistent combat and missing features typical of the genre, leading to a divide in player enjoyment.
- “The environment doesn't grow stale and neither does the gameplay.”
- “Marrow is intensely imaginative and demanding, and every design decision is carefully crafted to use the gameplay to evoke fear, stress, and dread. It's one of the most laser-focused games one can try.”
- “The fantastic and creepy art style drew me in, and the challenging gameplay kept me hooked until the end.”
- “You'll be flipping coins at the mercy of RNG, and this isn't good gameplay design.”
- “The game is a bit weak in regard to gameplay, with combat being terrifying in the sense that if you die, you're sent back to a save point an hour back, becoming especially infuriating when you would find a save point not too far off, something that was quite common later in the game.”
- “There are gameplay elements that I would've expected from an action/platformer (health meter, map, etc.) that aren't there.”
graphics
9 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
33%
33%
The graphics of the game are highly praised for their fantastic and creepy art style, effectively creating an immersive atmosphere that blends elements of metroidvania, puzzle-platformer, and survival horror. Reviewers appreciate the nostalgic visuals that evoke early gaming experiences while delivering a unique cosmic horror aesthetic. Overall, the visuals and sound design contribute significantly to the game's unsettling and engaging environment.
- “The visuals, sound design, and setting are insanely good, doing a great job of making it feel like you are slowly descending into a location beyond human understanding, where people went too far.”
- “The fantastic and creepy art style drew me in, and the challenging gameplay kept me hooked until the end.”
- “The atmosphere of the game is done extremely well, and I adore the aesthetic throughout.”
- “At first, it seems like a horror game, but after a while, it only has the aesthetic of one.”
- “For all that it's worth, and speaking with total nostalgia, the dev absolutely nailed several aspects of those games in visuals, gameplay, progression, and most importantly --- the feeling; like you are playing one of the first attempts at making a metroidvania ever.”
- “Recommending this if you miss some unique and arthouse-esque + cosmic horror aesthetics and stories.”
story
5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
40%
60%
The game's story is described as mysterious and intriguing, with some players appreciating the subtlety of its narrative revealed through environmental storytelling. However, many reviewers criticize the lack of a clear plot and the absence of guidance, leading to frustration with the overall experience. While some elements hint at a deeper lore, the execution feels unfinished and unpolished, leaving players wanting more clarity and engagement.
- “A good game with not so intense but acceptable fights with monsters, cool sound design, and quite a mysterious story.”
- “There's a bizarre storyline told with nothing but what you see in the backgrounds, but as you progress, you will start to see it unfold and begin to understand it, especially when you reach the manor section of the game.”
- “It seems like Fever Dream Gameworks wanted to go the FromSoftware route of backstory and watch from the sidelines as the player base discussed and interpreted the game's lore with each other.”
- “- Unfinished, unpolished game, deadly silent devs, no story at all, bad clunky platforming, no map for crying out loud (in a Metroidvania!!!)”
- “There's a bizarre storyline told with nothing but what you see in the backgrounds, but as you edge on you will start to see it unfold and start to slightly understand it, especially when you hit the manor section of the game.”
stability
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The stability of the game is hindered by buggy coding, particularly affecting the functionality of the magical orb, which fails to operate as intended.
- “You are supposed to use the magical orb to see where it is, but due to buggy coding, this doesn't work as it should.”
optimization
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
300%
The game's optimization has been criticized for several issues, including a problematic right-click feature that unintentionally restarts the game, frequent stuttering during camera panning, and unreliable audio cues for key elements like secret bosses and collectibles.
- “To name but a few, being able to right-click at the edge of the game's screen causes a 'restart game' dropdown box to appear (which unfortunately I can confirm does restart your game). The constant stuttering that occurs when the camera tries to pan, or the audio cues for important secret bosses and collectibles, don't often work correctly.”
- “The optimization issues are frustrating; the game frequently lags during critical moments, making it nearly unplayable.”
- “I encountered numerous bugs that hindered my progress, including frame drops and unresponsive controls that ruin the overall experience.”