Marooners is a collection of multiplayer mini-games with the potential to be a lot of fun. It is available on PC through Steam and cost $15. There is no single player component to this game, so you’ll either need to enlist some friends or hit the online matchmaking to play it. Matches with up to Six players compete to stay alive the longest and collect the most treasure to win a round. Most of the time I was lucky to even get into a two player game. Let’s face it, the game is a new release and has no dedicated player base at the moment, so you will be lucky to get into an online game.
Chaotic but fun
There are Two modes in this game. Party and Arena. In party mode you play a variety of fun mini-games selected from the games small amount of mini-games. Each time you play you will presented with a random selection of stages from that amount. Your objective for each mini-game boils down to the same idea and it’s very simple. You can’t just be the last one alive, you also need to have to most treasure collected to be able to win the game. You can take treasure from the other players by hitting them and on some stages you can hit them off the stage.
Perhaps a round will involve staying in the light to avoid being squashed like a bug or to keep moving to prevent the ground from falling out from under you. Watch out! If you are not careful a block could fall on your head or lava could scorch you if you’re too slow. There is enough variety in the mini-games to keep them fun but a little more would make party mode better. In the Arena, you are in a deathmatch. Your objective is to stay alive while trying to kill everyone else. The longer you stay alive, the higher your score will rise. You also get additional points for killing another player. The one who survives the longest tends to the stage.
Time for a twist
The twist to this game is that you don’t typically get to finish the stage straight away. The game hops from game to game, resuming previously played mini-games exactly where they were before the switch. This can lead to a bit of a fun and chaotic experience as the game might have left off in the middle of a mid jump or as a boulder was about to squash you. This means that you have to quickly scramble once the game resumes to avoid your demise.
The Negatives
The biggest complaint i have with this game is the small amount of mini-games. After playing for two hours, I found myself playing the same mini-games that I already played. The party mode can get very repetitive fairly quickly and with the small player base it can take a while to find other players and the Arena mode is even harder to find a game for.
The game can remind you of Mario party considering they are both party games. The mini-games in Marooners are a lot faster when compared and contains power ups within the mini-games. But it seems more unique since you change stage about every 15 seconds. But overall it is a great game and gets even better if you can get your friends to play it with you. The game could be a lot better but it needs to get more players and mini-games. So let the chaos begin.