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Spotlight on Greenlight: Lost Marbles

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Welcome once again to PCGamesN’s Spotlight on Greenlight, our regular Saturday feature where we look at the best and the most interesting Greenlight games that are hoping to make their way onto Steam. We’ve already looked at dozens of other titles in weeks past, so do take a look at our back catalogue.

My brain’s beaten, my nerves frazzled, and if I were the hair-tearing type my desk would be fluffier than a barber’s floor. It’s not some horror game that’s done this. Nor a wall-of-bullets shooter. No, it’s a game about marbles.

Under a veil of colour lies a devilish game. Lost Marbles will destroy you as it has me.

How hard can a game about marbles be? I made the same mistake with Winnie the Pooh’s Home Run Derby. It’s extremely hard.

Your job is to guide three marbles through mazes of thin planks, firepits, and saw blades. Marbles have no business running these gauntlets but you must do everything in your power to get them safely home.

Each of the three marbles have special qualities. The rubber ball can bounce, letting you jump over obstacles and float in water. Paper can scrunch itself up to squeeze into small gaps. Metal is invulnerable to damage and can boost to get up steep hills.

The qualities of their material are frequently used to create traps in the environment. Magnets threaten to immobile the metal marble, fans will fling paper off the level, and spikes threaten rubber at every turn.

It’s part platformer, part puzzler, and all evil.

You can switch between your marbles at the press of a button so if the way ahead of paper is blocked by fans threatening to blow it off the platform then metal needs to go ahead and roll onto a switch that turns them off. In theory it’s all very simple. In practice it’s more like this:

Like I said, evil.

Lost Marbles is hideously difficult. The slightest of mis rolls sends you tumbling off the level and the puzzles, even when you know what to do, will take a lot of trial to complete. You can love the challenge. Lost Marbles is a gem of a challenge game. Every map ends with a global leaderboard for speedruns. My best times were always at least double the person in first place. If you’re into cutting and trimming your game times Lost marbles could wrap you up for weeks.

The game is complete and available to buy from Binary Takeover’s website but you should also give the game a push on Greenlight. There’s even a demo for you to dip your toe into evil for yourself.