The first thing that came in my mind after running Marble Legends was Zuma Deluxe, and I still remember, more than ten years back, when Zuma Deluxe was released I wasn’t much fan of it, actually I didn’t liked it at all. It was more of a girlish game for me. I always insisted my friends to play multiplayer FPS games like Call of Duty and Counter Strike but their eyes were always glued to the screen, popping those bubbles trying proceed into next level and see who reaches there first.
The game felt illogical, no purpose, no action but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t try it. I played it for few days, tried to like it, I can even recall complete gameplay but it was too dry for the taste of a FPS lover but again it doesn’t mean that Zuma Deluxe isn’t a good game.
Developer of Marble Legend, EasyGame7, has clearly mentioned in the description, although I read it later, that “Marble Legend is a brand new and amazing Zuma-style game”. By having a look on pictures of this game on Google Play Store one can straight away tell that it isn’t Zuma-styled, it looks like rebranded Zuma itself. So let’s take a deep look inside Marble Legend and see if it’s only the style they have copied or its complete game. Get it on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store now.
The first weak section of this game is the background story. All we know is that you have to survive this game to find the legendary treasure. From where this treasure came? Why even are we finding it? How we got control of that shooting cannon? That isn’t just all, the impression further went down when I came to know that there isn’t any animated intro or even any kind of intro!!! After turning up this game, you’ll straight away face the main menu.
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Marble Legend features two modes, adventure and challenge. Adventure mode follows the original ‘invisible’ story of this game. To reach the final treasure you’ll have to go through six different regions, with each region having different number of levels, making a total of one hundred twenty levels which includes some bonus levels too. On the other hand challenge mode contains twelve pages and on each page you’ll find twelve challenges, making a total of one hundred forty-four challenges.
The two modes aren’t much different from each other. In adventure mode, your sole purpose is to shoot off all the balls before they reach inside the head of that vicious looking skeleton. The length of rolling balls is finite in adventure mode, there aren’t any time restrictions nor any minimum score requirements. In challenges, the length of rolling balls is infinite but on the other hand there is time, which you have to survive for, and score requirements which you have to meet to clear a challenge.
The game mechanics are totally simple and almost one to one ratio clone of Zuma but let’s forget this cloning thing for a while. The objective of this game is to eliminate all rolling balls that are visible on the screen, by shooting another ball from an ancient cannon. As this game is a match-three puzzler, balls are destroyed only if the ball being shot results in a color match of three or more balls. These balls moves through a specified path, which is completely visible in initial stages but path starts to go through underground tunnels or even gets hidden by overlapping as the difficulty increases.
The cannon carries two balls at a time. The about-to-be shot ball will be visible on the front edge of cannon and you can check the color of the upcoming or second ball from a small hole on the middle of the cannon. You can switch between these two balls anytime by pressing that small hole. Balls will roll continuously on the path and you’ll have to destroy all of them before they reach that head. To shoot a ball just simply touch the target area or you can even drag you finger across the screen to change direction and releasing your finger will results in a cannon fire. There is a bar on the middle-top of the screen and once it is filled, new balls will stop appearing at the end of the chain, so, from the bar, you can have an idea of how much balls are left.
If, after shooting a ball, matching blast doesn’t occur then the chain is pushed forward, which can present difficulty when balls already are close to head. What I really like about the game mechanics is the combo system and the magnetic type effect, for example, suppose that the balls on both sides of a blasted balls are of same color then the balls towards the front end of the chain are attracted towards the generative end and the inertia of attracted balls pushes the chain further back, giving users more time to survive, and if the attracted balls results in a further matching blast then it is counted as a combo and so-on. There can be multiple moving chains and more than one possible positions for cannon on a single level. The cannon will randomly settle in any of the possible positions.
During gameplay, few balls will change their state and turn into special shiny balls or we can say powerups. Yet I’ve noticed nine powerups in this game. A backward ball with few arrows on it will push all chains backwards for a short time. An upgraded ball with a symbol of minus will pause automated forward movement of chains but magnetic and inertial effects are still valid. Ball with lightning symbol will give you a graphically attractive lightning ball in your cannon, and this one destroys all balls of same color but from a single chain only. The explosion ball has a symbol of bomb, and when matched it explodes all of the balls within a small radius.
The Slow-down ball has a symbol of snail and it slows down the movement of chains for a short length of time. Next one is accuracy ball, its gives a pointing arrow for better accuracy but it isn’t much useful in touch screens. Third last powerup is called Rainbow ball and it can be used to match two different colors. The second last powerup, fire arrow, gives six flaming arrows that can destroy any six balls from the chain, and I’ll name the last powerup as mega-blast, this blast can remove all balls that comes in front on it.
Let’s compare Marble Legend with Zuma Deluxe. There are few things about Marble Legend which I haven’t mentioned above because I thought it would be better if compared directly with its mentor. First of all of the gameplay, which i’ve explained previously, matches about eight-five percent with Zuma deluxe. The first difference that I noticed was number of powerups, Zuma contained only four of them while this one contains nine, so this plus point keeps Marble Legend slightly ahead. The next visible difference and sometimes been a source of real pain is that there is no carrier in Marble Legend!! It might even be a coding bug.
Let me explain ‘carrier’. In Zuma Deluxe if you blast out the tail of chain then a small sparking light would move forward from the position of old tail to the new tail of chain then the chain will move forward but in Marble Legend the chain doesn’t stop when the tail is blasted. Another mentionable difference, which again isn’t in the favor of Marble Legend and again can be a coding bug, is that in Zuma Deluxe if the source of the balls is in the middle of the screen or the chain passes through a tunnel, these underground tunnels and sources are limpid to shots which means that shot balls can pass over them but in Marble Legend Shot balls are sucked in the chain which isn’t even visible to the user.
The last visible difference is that there are few levels in Marble Legend in which, during gameplay, cannon can change its position horizontally as compared to all the time fixed position in Zuma. The change of position completely changes the shooting experience as the cannon, most of the time, will shoot at an angle of ninety degrees.
There are two versions of Marble Legend, this review is based upon the free version and you can get the pro version for $2.99. The only visible difference between the free and paid version is of ads, which can truly be annoying sometimes as you’ll have to bear them during starting, playing, and closing game. There aren’t any currencies is this game it’s totally vanilla. No store, No coins and no purchasable powerups and I feel that it is a nice touch. There is a star rating system in both of the modes. I’ve played over forty levels and I haven’t got any rating below three stars, which is the maximum rating, hence I cannot even tell about the grading system, you’ll either fail at passing the level or get 3/3 stars rating, and once you’ve cleared a level you cannot play it again.
The reviewed version, which is 3.1.061, has couple of bugs, for example, sometimes game would automatically shut down after clearing a challenge, which fortunately doesn’t affect cleared challenge but does waste time, I also faced white screen directly after starting a game; hence developer needs to take a look at these and few previously mentioned issues, as these issues can be a turning down point for many users.
Minimum operating system required is Android 2.3 (gingerbread) for android users. This game is also available for Windows phone but I’m not sure about the required version. As I’ve previously mentioned that this game is totally vanilla, there aren’t any syncing options to could save your game data with Google Play Games or even Facebook, which also means that you cannot compare your score with your friends or check your rank either.
As Marble Legend doesn’t contain any kind of unlockables, there isn’t any need of cheats nor there is any but if you are looking to get rid of annoying ads then you can download the paid version for free. All you have to do is Google pro version of this game and install it into your device but remember using paid version without actually paying for it is illegal.
The only tip i can help you with is that always go for combos, if they aren’t available naturally then try to fabricate them.
Let’s start from the weakest link of the chain, story and music, and I still don’t know why developers never pay any importance to these two. These departments has always been neglected and this game isn’t any exception either. The only soundtrack is weak, lousy and doesn’t match with the tempo of the game. As Marble Legend’s theme is ancient, it requires a soundtrack that is mystical or can add suspense in the game. Other than soundtrack, there isn’t much but whatever there is feels like a copy paste of Zuma Deluxe’s sound files.
The User interface of the game is simple and certainly doesn’t requires a bachelor’s degree to understand it. There isn’t any kind of tutorial but those who have played Zuma should feel like at home, while new bees might take time to understand how the magnetic and combo things works. Controls are simple but sometimes shooting via touch feels inaccurate or it could be just me.
The gameplay isn’t unique but there are few things about this game because of which it was able to get more than forty million hits on Google Play Store, and I think that I know them. First of all there isn’t any kind of stamina system, hence literally there isn’t anything stopping you from playing it. Secondly there isn’t any currency or in app purchases in this game hence one can expect all levels to be clearable with just enough practice, but as nothing can be perfect; so this game too has flaws and all of them are mentioned previously, for example, annoying ads, inability to shoots through tunnels etc. I wish they had copied complete Zuma’s gameplay to counter gameplay issues. I would like to add here that there are several complain about the ending levels that aren’t much different than the ones before it, and tonnes of complains about the bugs.
The last section is artwork, I know you must have got tired of hearing same words again and again but it’s a fact and once again it’s a Zuma rip-off with minor adjustments, for example, slightly different cannon, balls, and skull instead of frog, other than these it totally same but the animations are fluid as they can be.
I know there is a lot to be desired but that desire can easily be neglected especially due to no stamina and currency system; so I’ll recommend it to those who are looking for a touch of Zuma on their handhelds, once again just a touch as Marble Legend is a stripped version of Zuma.
Ratings
Artwork: I’ll give Marble Legend a 7/10 for its artwork. Overall the artwork is decent, the color scheme matches the theme, the animations are smooth and attractive, especially the mega-blast powerup’s. I don’t have hard feelings about the artwork and it’s good for a free game but still it could have been better than this.
Music & SFX: I’ll give this game a 6.5/10 for its music & SFX. The music isn’t much detailed and all of the basic elements of this department is a direct copy of Zuma Deluxe except the background soundtrack that you get during the gameplay, which is poor and doesn’t do justice with rest of the game; so you’ll be better if you leave that soundtrack turned off.
Story & Originality: Marble Legend will get a 4/10 here. This might be the lowest score that I’ve given to any game. There isn’t any kind information about this expedition, all we know is about some XYZ treasure that we are looking for!! The developer boosts “Zuma-style” game and I believe developer should have wrote a “Zuma-clone” as it hardly differs from the Zuma in any sense furthermore it feels like a stripped version rather than a full clone.
General Gameplay: I’ll give Marble Legend an 8/10 for its gameplay. Many would complain that this rating is higher but the developer earn a little credit over here by keeping the users away from the tension of stamina and gold coins, which original Zuma has. If the developer want to improve further in this section than they should consider fixing the two bugs, carrier and shoot through tunnel, and remove ads.
Addictiveness: Marble Legend gets a 7/10 for keeping users busy. The gameplay is fairly addictive during initial levels but starts to feel repetitive towards the ends of the game because game fails to produce noticeable difference between the ending levels.
Overall I’ll give Marble Legend a 7/10.
