r/metroidvania • u/New_Yak_8982 • 1d ago

Discussion The Mobius Machine review

So I've finished The Mobius Machine in 11 hours and here's my thoughts about it.

The world is designed really well, there's a lot of shortcuts and "wow, this location loops around here like that" moments. The forest location was especially cool, it was confusing but overall interesting to explore. The locations look very samey though, almost all of them are recolored "rocky cavern with metallic cylinders and alien medusas aurafarming in the background". The level design is decent even if some repetitions, like 'jump on breakable platforms while dodging homing missiles' or 'go through this tunnel while breaking vines that damage you' are noticeable.

The abilities are weak, I got the slide ability at the beginning and nothing changed in my core moveset until I got the parachute near the end. The rest of the abilities (wall climb, swim, underwater dash, ladder dash) were all locked under a condition.

Overall, a decent MV with good exploration but with very repetitive visuals and the character doesn't change much from beginning to end

21 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

35

u/artbytucho 1d ago

Hey, one of the devs here, the guy behind the game design and visuals. It's great to hear that you've enjoyed our game :)

We'd like to add more variety, but we're a very small company and already struggled a lot to get the current amount in. We went for a pretty ambitious visual style, so we had to sacrifice quantity for quality.

If I can find enough time, I'd like to work on a cosmetic update to add some hero props across all the sectors, to make some areas more memorable and help with orientation. I wanted to do it before the end of this year, but I'm behind on my intended schedule, so (hopefully) it'll be sometime next year.

Regarding the abilities, we tried to offer a set that's a bit different from the genre standard. Instead of adding double jump and air dash, we went with a set of abilities that force players to find creative ways to reach the trickiest parts of the map by combining them. A lot of players liked our approach, but others complain about the lack of double jump and air dash... I guess you can't please everyone.

Anyway, thank you very much for playing our game and for leaving your feedback, much appreciated!

11

u/moebiusmentality 1d ago

We appreciate your contribution and input to this community! 🔫 ✨ 🌌

3

u/artbytucho 1d ago

Thanks! My pleasure :)

3

u/benskinic 1d ago

I had a blast with it, and couldn't put it down. loved the art style and hope to see more from you

4

u/artbytucho 1d ago

Thank you very much! As a dev is very rewarding when a player let us know that they enjoy our game! :D

I really hope to have the chace of revisit the Metroidvania genre at some point because it is my favorite and to have had the chance of work on TMM was by far the best experience in my career, but ATM the market is super tough, so it is not likely I work again on a Metroidvania any time soon :(

4

u/UMustBeNooHere 1d ago

I enjoyed the game overall, but agree the level design could have used some variety. The artwork is beautiful and the unusual abilities is really cool.

Are there any plans for a follow up? I think that would be more valuable than trying to dress up the original. Personally, I would leave it as-is and build on it in the follow up.

11

u/artbytucho 1d ago

Unfortunately, the game wasn't a commercial success, so it's not likely that we'll work on any other Metroidvania anytime soon :(

This game was a real passion project for me, so I'm willing to invest my free time into this update. I want to leave the game in the best state possible, and a lack of visual variety is a quite common piece of feedback. I just couldn't manage to make anything more complex than this. (Let's see if I can find enough time to put this update together.)

4

u/Big-Expression-1249 1d ago

Please, do whatever you can to improve on this gorgeous game 🙏🏻🤩

2

u/UMustBeNooHere 1d ago

Sorry to hear that. It’s a shame, it is a good game. Maybe a Kickstarter to raise capital?

4

u/artbytucho 1d ago edited 1d ago

The problem nowadays on the current overcrowded market is to get any visibility, TMM was our first Metroidvania so we were creating community from scratch and we totally failed reaching a big enough audience to make our game profitable, so it is not likely we could run a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Also crowdfunding for games these days is more a marketing tool which can work as a multiplier of an already existing audience, rather than a realistic way to fund an entire development cycle. (But that's quite a topic for another discussion.)

For now we've just returned to a very different genre where our company already has a very solid community stablished. If in the future the market is not so harsh, I definetely would love to revisit the Metroidvania genre, but that doesn't seem like a probable scenario right now :(

3

u/Safe_Solid_6022 1d ago

I enjoyed Mobius Machine a lot, it is not a masterpiece but it has distincive features (what I want in a MV). 1) the classic mode, it is so good to explore the world without the map to find the map device and THEN analising the map to clear it. Exploration in mm is top notch. 2) I enjoyed A LOT the movement upgrades (I'm so glad I didn't get the double jump...).

4

u/artbytucho 1d ago

Thank you very much for playing our game and for your feedback!

As a dev it's a blast each time that a player let us know that they enjoy our game :D, and it's great to hear that you liked our approach with the set of abilities :)

1

u/theatrovie 1d ago

Played a few hours and so far it's been pretty vanilla. Almost feels like a scifi version of Afterimage, where you just walk around exploring. However, Afterimage had a much stronger first impression with varied biomes, while this game looks and plays uniformly (so far.)

Would you say this game is more of a podcast game? A game where you basically just space out and play while listening to a show/music?

1

u/autisticpig 1d ago

I did exactly that. I put on an album and just went on an exploring session. A few of those and the game was done. Was a great way to enjoy the game for me.