Macrotis, the emotional puzzle platformer from the Istanbul, Turkey based Proud Dinosaurs, has finally made its way to consoles after originally releasing on PC back in February 2019 thanks to publisher EastAsiaSoft.
A mother bilby needs your help to get back to her children, if you can overcome the environment and solve the puzzles to get back to them.
Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey (PC, PS4 [Reviewed], Xbox One)
Developer: Proud Dinosaurs
Publisher: EastAsiaSoft
Released: February 8, 2019 (PC), October 21, 2020 (Consoles)
ESRB Rating: E – Everyone
MSRP: $11.99
In Macrotis, you play as Mother Bilby, who was swept away from her children from a flood caused by the heavy rain of a devastating hurricane. The flood waters drag you underground to a cavern system, and in order to find your way up to the surface you’re going to need to do go down.
You’ll also stumble across a magical wizard that will give you magical powers and you’ll explore the remains of an ancient civilization.
This is a 2.5D puzzle platformer. It’s not very long, I think it’ll take most people between two to four hours to complete.
While none of the puzzles are super difficult, there are a few that you’re going to spend some time on and will need to either trial and error or scout ahead and try and get a bigger picture. If you mess up, you can always hit up on the D-pad to instantly restart the puzzle.
For the most part, the game runs very well and as it has some platforming it controls well and isn’t floaty. However, there was one section late in the third chapter (there are four chapters) that gave me a ton of problems.
The puzzle itself wasn’t hard, in fact it wasn’t even a puzzle. It was the only time sensitive section, where you need to go up and pull some levers while outrunning rising water. Well the game was more zoomed out than it had been so that you could see both sides of the room.
The performance took a hit in that section where the movement felt more sluggish (not a framerate issue) and the control inputs felt slightly delayed. Jumps that should’ve been easy suddenly weren’t. Levers would reset. It was quite frustrating and made what could’ve been a fun race just be an annoyance.
That was without a day one patch, that came out today, so that issue could have been fixed or could’ve just been me. Whatever it was, it was annoying, but not gamebreaking.
The puzzles are pretty well thought out and chapters build on one another. You’ll learn how to chew and claw through stuff early, then you’ll get the ability to leave your body so there’s an astral version of yourself that you can control that can also pass through walls, and you’ll learn how to build walls too.
As you get these abilities, the puzzles begin to get harder as you’ll need to use all of your tools to solve them. Some are hard or clever, but these never are super difficult to figure out.
Like I said, it’ll probably take most folks between two and four hours. It’s not very long at all, and there’s no real replayabilitiy here because once you’ve done the puzzle and know it the fun of it is gone.
There are some collectibles that will give lore or concept art in the Extras tab. You can also select chapter if you do decided you want to replay some of the puzzles.
If you are a trophy/achievement hunter, then this is about as easy of a platinum as it gets. All you have to do is beat the game and you’ll get the platinum trophy.
I spent about two and a half hours, maybe three, playing the game and had fun almost the entire time. The artstyle is good, as is the level/puzzle design. The limited voice acting (Mother and Wizard) is also pretty good and I genuinely enjoyed the quest to reunite mother with her children.
If you like puzzle games with some platforming, you’ll find some good fun here for at least a couple of hours.
Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey gets a three out of five: GOOD.
* Code provided by the publisher for review.
