Playing Macrotis: A Mother's Journey has been an absolutely amazing experience for me. It’s a game that ticks all my boxes and it even exceeded my expectations. To put it in simple words: it’s not extremely difficult, yet it poses a certain degree of challenge; it’s emotional and immersive; it’s puzzly and creative; the art and soundtrack are astonishing; it has collectibles that are moderately easy to spot / reach and a secret alternate ending. All in all, it’s a great game, with a solid gameplay and a touching story and if you’re still in doubt whether to buy it / give it a try, then I warmly recommend you to not hesitate any more; it deserves every cent and every minute of your time.

In terms of gameplay, Macrotis: A Mother's Journey is an emotional 2.5D side scroller puzzle platformer with a touching story centered on a mother rabbit-bandicoot (which is the alternate name for the macrotis / bilbies species) who was separated from her children during a terrible flood. While they were able to grab onto a log and save themselves, the mother was dragged underground by the running waters and is now trying to find a way out of the maze of subterranean caves. In her journey, she is aided by a good wizard who lends her his magical powers so that they can stop the rain together and reunite the bilby family.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1649348079

The magician progressively bestows upon mother bilby new magic abilities, therefore every chapter of the game introduces new puzzle elements and mechanics: in addition to digging, gnawing ropes or pushing / pulling stone cubes, she receives the power to summon her spirit form which has the same abilities as her normal form but in addition to that it can pass through walls, at the expense of decreasing the range of movement; later in the game, mother bilby will be able to build walls that can help her or her spirit form climb further up or block projectiles, with the restriction of having a maximum of three walls active at the same time. The puzzles are well-crafted and their general difficulty isn't very high, but Macrotis can sometimes make you think for a while and try different approaches until you find the right solution.

In regards to the difficulty of the platforming aspect, I would say that Macrotis targets moderately experienced players. In the whole game there are only two long and challenging platforming sequences which require a certain level of precision or timing from the player. You’ll end up trying them several times until you get them right or until your muscle memory is formed, but that’s expected from any good platformer game. To help with that, there is always a checkpoint before a puzzle and occasionally there are additional ones, mid-platforming sequence. This helps retrying / resetting a puzzle very quickly and also prevents the frustration of trying one of the longer sequences over and over again.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1650075684

The peaceful and calming ambiental music matches the gameplay very well. Macrotis: A Mother's Journey isn't overall a fast paced game. Most of the time will be spent in thinking about solving the next puzzle, therefore having a relaxing and non-intrusive soundtrack is very important and the game does an exceptional job with that.

Overall, Macrotis is a love-and-gentless infused puzzle platformer, with an astonishing visual presentation, light paced gameplay and a captivating story.

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Macrotis: A Mother's Journey is a delightful journey of a mother Bilby trying to return to her 3 children after being separated from them during a massive flood. It is a fine first effort by Turkish Developers Proud Dinosaurs and has deservedly won some awards.
The raging waters carried Mrs Bilby deep underground and during her journey she meets a wizard who is willing to help her return home. However, they have to stop the rain first. Through supernatural powers endowed to her, she is able to leave her body and move through walls with her spirit self. It makes for interesting gameplay. She is able to push stones, eat roots, dig through walls and create walls.....aside from being an acrobatic jumper.
Gameplay is fairly simply, but you have to be pretty nimble at times to get through a couple of long obstacle courses pretty fast. I found the first 2 chapters much harder in the platforming area than the latter part of the game. The water course was particularly challenging. The latter part of the game was puzzle heavy where you had to use strategies to go from A to B. My brain really ached at times!
Graphics are bright and beautiful and the music creates a lovely peaceful ambience. Puzzles were very creative and although not overly hard, required some thinking. There was a backstory of an ancient race of little people which was interesting. I never got bored. I personally found the voiceovers quite good, but others didn't like them.
Experienced platformers will sail through this. I got all the achievements, but had to replay some chapters to find two missing ones which I discovered through a guide.
Some players may find this emotional as it highlights the love of a mother for her children and she will move mountains to find them again. Be sure to watch all the credits (which are short) as the story continues afterwards. I had no glitches with this game.
I look forward to another game from this developer. Strongly recommend for people who like non violent games and a heartwarming story. 8.5/10

I'm going to start this off by saying that I normally don't play platformer/puzzle games.
That being said, I absolutely loved this game. I've tried other platformers, and none managed to capture my interest like this game did. From the art style, to the games story, to the gameplay itself, I have nothing but love for this game.
It's a somewhat short game. I finished it in roughly 5 hours, but that was more or less going fast and not exploring as much as some would.
I cannot recommend this game enough, though. For $10, this game is an absolute steal.
The game's story can very easily suck you in, as well as possibly make you shed a few tears because of how emotional it is. Definitely give this game a play through, be it with an Xbox controller, or just your keyboard. Both feel wonderful once you learn what does what.

Kuddos Proud Dinosaurs, on creating what is now one of my favourite games!

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(n) macrotis A genus of bandicoots of the family Peramelidæ, having long pointed ears like those of a rabbit, proportionally longer hind limbs than the typical bandicoots, the hallux wanting, the tail long and hairy, and the pouch opening forward. M. lagotis is called the native rabbit in Australia, from its size and general appearance.
~from http://www.finedictionary.com/Macrotis.html

Macrotis: A Mother's Journey is a series of 2D platforming puzzles strung together with some really fantastic artwork and textures and a reasonably put-together story. It is not too long overall, as I completed the whole game in just under 6 hours with almost all of the achievements. But the nature of the puzzles are designed well and the gradual integration of more complexity with progression makes the player feel never too overwhelmed.

I consider myself okay at solving puzzles and using my brain, and there were some puzzles that gave me a good deal of difficulty. I played this game on and off over the course of several days, in sporadic sittings. I would get stuck on a puzzle and then quit after a couple of botched attempts, go do something, and still be thinking about the puzzle, come up with a different approach, then relaunch the game and try again.

The puzzles do not get progressively harder. There are 4 chapters total, each with some easy and some more difficult puzzles. Especially after a new mechanic is introduced, you get a series of rather simple puzzles involving the new mechanic to get you used to it, before things become more complex. This kind of gentle hand-holding is often appreciated. Even though you have to complete the puzzles in sequence and you can get stuck. As long as you are not in a hurry and must finish the game right away, you can always think about the puzzles while you are not playing, like what happened with me. Though for me, I couldn't help myself, my brain would just automatically wander back to the puzzles even if I had been doing something else.

The game automatically saves after each puzzle completion, so you never have to worry bout progress. My biggest issue with the save system is that there is only one save slot. And when you go to relaunch the game, the default cursor is on "New Game" instead of "Continue." This really should get changed because if you accidentally start a new game, your old save gets erased. Of course I clicked this a bunch of times in my impatience to restart the game from time to time. Fortunately the game gave me a warning every time I did, and thus tragedy struck not upon my save file while I progressed in this intermittent nature.

There are 27 achievements total, and 18 of them are progression based. As long as you finish the game once, you will get those, and likely some of the others. I only played through once, and I was careful to gather all of the collectible (books) in the game, I ended up with 24/27 in one go. The biggest downfall for most platforming puzzles is the lack of replay value. Once you figure out a puzzle, it's not at all challenging to go through it a second time. So even though I know I should be able to go back and gather the last 3 achievements, I am not sure if I really want to do it, but focus my time and efforts elsewhere instead.

Here's my first attempt at this game. It was after a long work day and my brain was probably functioning at 20% and snoozing when I tried to record:
https://youtu.be/SNnq_r_OvnE

I played with a controller, and it worked perfectly

2D puzzles set in with 3D textures, the attention to detail was amazing in this game.

The music is all right, nothing fancy, but nice and soothing in the background. The English voice-acting is decent.

Definitely worthwhile for people who like puzzle platformers to check out the game. There are some timed-elements in there that are not too difficult. But I also know some people who play puzzle games don't like to do anything against a timer. So if that sounds like you, stay away.

Base price of $9.99 USD is a reasonable price for a game that clearly took a lot of time, dedication in order to put together. The price you pay is not for the length of the game, or the number of puzzles, but for the overall experience, and it's worth it.

1. That starting menu needs to have the cursor default to "Continue" instead of "New Game."
2. The Extras section seems to be missing some artwork
3. The wall jumping mechanic/animation takes a bit to much time, in my opinion, and could be improved upon to allow the player not to have to wait after jump and grabbing onto a wall. The smoother transition between jumps would be appreciated. Of course this is not game breaking in any way, it just gave to a slightly slowed down pace while engaging in the platforming parts of the game.

Macrotis: A Mother's Journey is a puzzle-platformer that is well-designed and fun to play. Despite its short nature and lack of replay value, I would still highly recommend this game.

I received the product for free. I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.

A stunning beautiful debut from Proud Dinosaurs. A 2.5D platformer that will appeal to all ages and fans of the genre (Trine, Oni ATBF etc). Family friendly storyline and gameplay make this a must own. Great puzzles, some lateral thinking and some speed runs make this game fun from the outset. A heartwarming tale, fantastic charcters and voice overs throughout will have you desperate to save the day.

9\10

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/29446660-Priority-One-Gaming/

In looking up the word Macrotis, turns out it's a bandicoot (or bilby if you will). "Lesser" Bilbies became extinct in the 50's while "greater" Bilbies are an endangered species. If I'm not mistaken, this is the second IP in video game history to feature a bandicoot. However, this game takes on a far more serious if still whimsical tone. So, what is Macrotis: A Mother's Journey anyway?


Macrotis: A Mother's Journey is the story of what might be the very last Macrotis in the world (a mother and her three children). They are caught in a flash flood, and in the process of saving her children, the mother is swept underground. The rest of the story revolves around her journey to get back to the surface and find her children. Along the way, she meets the spirit of a wizard who knows how to stop what it turns out are potentially world ending floods. Together they endeavor to save the world and the macrotis children as well.

There is definitely an underlying message regarding abusing the environment and the various ways it has an impact on everything around us.


The gameplay overall is standard platformer and puzzle solving fare. However, the game does add some gameplay wrinkles into the mix. Initially, as a lost bandicoot, you can run, creep, and jump to your heart's content. I will say the controls were not as tight as I would have liked, and this will definitely lead to some unnecessary jumping and timing deaths. However, they are decent enough to prevent this from becoming an exercise in futility, and you should be able to get past each section with only minor complications in this regard.

As you progress, you will meet the spirit of a wizard, who fuses his spirit to yours in order to give you abilities you will need to accomplish your goals. Initially, you gain the ability to temporarily detach your spirits, creating two avatars. The spirit can travel through doors and thin walls, which will factor heavily into the game from that point on. At some point, you will gain the ability to summon stone walls, which again will become an integral part of solving puzzles and progressing through the game. Combined with your ability to move certain objects and jump around willy nilly, you are now equipped to take on the apocalypse and find your children!

Puzzles are mostly of the pressure plate variety, although there are some water, climbing, and elevator puzzles as well. Most required the use of all the abilities you have to that point.

Overall, despite the controls not being as tight as I would have liked, I found no real issues with this game from a technical standpoint. It handled fine, and I really experienced no clipping, crashes or other such anomalies. In fact, the only other thing I can think of that happened from a negative perspective is one of the walls you need to wall jump on wouldn't allow you to stick the landing, so to speak. However, since the game conveniently allows you to construct walls, I was able to circumvent this.


Full disclosure: the voice acting for the protagonist was annoyingly high pitched. I get that they were going for what they imagine a bandicoot would sound like if it was speaking actual words, but I found it annoying in that not quite Jar Jar Binks kind of way. However, by the halfway point, I had already learned to tune that out. On the other hand, the narration, done by the wizard, was excellent. The music had an orchestrated and often quite whimsical feel (when it wasn't more somber anyway). Not quite Fantasia, but similar in its approach I'd say. Definitely enhanced the overall gaming experience.


The graphics were top notch. This is a colorful and sensitive world, with many different and unique environments, excellent sprite work, and a particularly noteworthy attention to even the most minute details. This game is a stunner, no doubt about it. You will definitely find yourself taking time to take it all in and appreciate all the work that went into this.


Macrotis: A Mother's Journey was a nice experience. It wasn't too difficult from a puzzle perspective and the platforming was pretty easy overall. This is a linear experience designed to tell a specific story and it was successful in this regard as well. If you are looking for a mildly challenging but mostly casual experience with glorious visuals and nice audio work, I see no reason not to give this game a try.

Welcome to Macrotis: A Mother's Journey. Behold a story about a family of Bilbies that live in the outback. The summer rains have arrived, and the mother bilby has recently given birth to a new daughter. The rains are normal during the summer, but this year is different. The storms have grown more and more violent as the days go by. Many have fled the area to safer ground, but with an infant and more children, the journey would be too dangerous, so they fortify their home to the best of their ability to ride out the storm. Soon a great flood hits the bilbies’ home; everyone is caught in it and being carried away by the current as she frantically tries to reach the children. The children are able to grab ahold of some debris from the fortifications they made, and get to safety. Mother bilby tries and tries to reach them, but she is unable to break free of the current and is washed away underground. Now our adventure begins as we take control of Mother bilby and try to get back to the children; how long they will remain safe is in question. We must hurry!

Released on Feb 08, 2019, by the developer Proud Dinosaurs, and published by Orsam Information Technologies. As their first release on Steam, they are off to a great start with a career as a developer. The title is a 2.5 D, adventure, puzzle, platforming indie game. Immerse yourself in a story with a passionate and touching storyline that will provide many hours of entertainment through 4 chapters. A simply gorgeously-built world and a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack complement the gameplay. There is also partial controller support. I did have some issues moving levers with the controller registering correctly, though I was always able to get it to work with additional attempts to move my character a little. The mechanics of the title are very well-designed; as the game progresses more are added occasionally, which changes up the gameplay and increases the puzzle difficulty as more varied mechanics come into play. It also comes in 10 languages, with more to come.

We begin our adventure deep underground. Our path back to the surface is not able to be climbed, so we must move deeper underground and look for a way out. We need to get back to the children as soon as possible. The first level has a built-in tutorial to introduce you to the beginning mechanics for the title, which to start with is just directional movement (jumping, climbing, sneak walking), and an ability to push and pull some objects. There are hidden collectibles spread across the levels to gather; keep a watchful eye out for them. In Chapter 2 we are introduced to a new character, a wizard who we inadvertently killed trying to escape from the first chapter. His spirit now talks to us and, we enter a pact to allow us to carry his spirit and magic within us. This adds in a whole new batch of mechanics that are utilized in making the puzzles you must get past to progress. Of course, this will increase the difficulty. You'll continue through to the last 2 levels. Occasionally, when needed, you are bestowed with additional powers by the wizard, adding more mechanics to work with. This keeps the game fresh and intriguing. These I will let you discover for yourself.

I have to say, what a fantastic game! I simply loved it, even when some puzzles were frustrating. As you dig further into the game, the puzzles can become quite devious in their design. It will require using your intellect and thinking outside the box a little to get past these exceptionally well-designed puzzles. The gameplay is pretty intuitive, the most challenging of the puzzles will be towards the end of the title and the ends of levels. Always be on the lookout for the books hidden around every level. Their collection is required for 100% on the achievements for the title, which will more than likely require at least 2 playthroughs unless you are a platforming wizard. I found I missed at least a book in some of the chapters. I will have to revisit to 100% the title. The main characters of the game, the bilbies, are based on actual animals that are currently listed as a vulnerable species in Australia. There are many settings you can adjust to customize for the experience, which allows a wide range of hardware to run, along with volume and language settings. My only issues with the release are that the controls are not re-bindable for the keyboard or controller, and turning switches with an Xbox 360 controller were not always responsive. You could reposition and try again to get them to work. The hitbox may need some adjustments for it, as the controller is brand new. Still, it’s such an interesting game all around. Pretty sure it will be one of my top ten indies for the year. For their first title, I am awed with the overall quality and gameplay and applaud the developers. Thank you for the experience!

Macrotis: A Mother's Journey: An Epic Story of Love & Separation, With a touch of Magic!

9/10

Pros
+Beautifully Designed Levels
+Ingenious Mechanics
+Engrossing Story
+Steam Achievements

Cons
-No Steam Trading Cards
-Minor Controller Issues
-Keys Not Rebindable

Key provided by developer/publisher for review purposes. Any opinions expressed are entirely my own!

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This game looks like someone watched The Secret of N.I.M.H. high on acid and said "Yooo what if... "

This is what I pictured in my mind when I read the tale of desperaux.

It feels like a little mix of Oddworld and Secret of Nimh. It’s basically a poor man's Trine.

I'm so proud there's a game with such an important endangered animal as the main character! Macrotis starts with a terrible, torrential downpour that ends up flooding the home of an adorable bilby family. Poor Mother Bilby is helpless to save her children as she’s swept away by the raging waters. After washing up somewhere underground, all she knows is that she has to head upwards to find her children and reunite her family.

It is a little sad. But it's also a sweet and beautiful game too. The game’s story may be simple, but it’s surprisingly sweet and moving. Told through in-game dialogue and narrated stills, you really start to feel for Mother Bilby. It’s a pleasant surprise, as most platformers don’t end up giving you all the feels. As a father myself the premise really hit hard.

it has a bit of an old-ish school feel to the mechanics and controls. The game starts off pretty simple , you can move left and right, push certain objects, bite through ropes, jump, catch onto ledges to pull yourself to new platforms, and even do a fun wall jump. The first couple of puzzles are fairly simple, mostly involving pushing small logs or stones to reach ledges that are just out of reach. The puzzles quickly grow much more complex and challenging from there on. You’ll need to push blocks into small bodies of water to adjust the water levels so that logs float higher, allowing you to move objects across them. Sometimes you’ll have to keep moving through what feels like a small obstacle course to keep up with a turtle, which helps you navigate across water, since Momma Bilby can’t swim.

The art style of Macrotis is wonderfully charming. The surface of the water is just amazing. My eyes could’ve stared at it for a loooong time. A lot of the details were so great. The stills are done in sepia, and do a great job of adding more depth to the narrative. Momma Bilby herself is absolutely adorable, and her voice-acting is just spot-on. The color palette of the different levels is absolutely gorgeous. It’s not often that you see a game with such bold and intense color choices pull it off so well.

Although a bit short, it’s not often that you find a platformer with a lot of heart. The wonderful artwork, challenging and unique puzzles, and surprisingly moving story will keep you hooked on playing. If you need something short and sweet, give Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey a try.

8/10

TLDR; Overall a good puzzle platformer with decent story, good graphics and audio which has 5-6 hours of gameplay but some caveats here and there. If I have to rate it, a solid 8 out of 10 will be adequate.

In more detail, graphics, gameplay, audio, music and story are all good but don't expect something too fancy there. I believe the level and puzzle design is where the game shines. Throughout the chapters of the game every chapter is substantially better than the previous one. Especially last two chapters I couldn't let myself out of the game. Puzzle difficulty varies up and down between chapters, first couple of puzzles at the beginning of each chapter feels easier throughout but we can’t speak of a difficulty ramp up and tbh the most difficult puzzle I encountered took me about 15 minutes to solve.

A fair warning though the first chapter of the game seems to be designed as a tutorial level, and can get a little bit stale at times but at least it only takes about an hour. As you progress to second chapter, turn of events take a different path and the story gets immensely interesting just like that. After the first chapter additional tutorial is just spread subtly in gameplay and cover all the basics (controls, mechanics and abilities) you will need throughout the game. I especially liked some of the voice overs but be warned the main characters voice feels somewhat mediocre sometimes.

I have encountered a few minor bugs here and there nothing game breaking or annoying, just a few glitches tbh. Controls felt a little bit clunky at first but you get used to in about an hour tops, I especially felt a few milliseconds latency while jumping but have to check it with others first, the culprit may be my peripherals too. The game runs smooth on even a semi decent PC with onboard graphics in 720p and also 1080p but in 4K resolution with all the settings maxed out even my RX 580 Nitro+ 8GB graphics card struggled a little bit.

Overall I found the gaming experience to be fairly enjoyable and fun. I highly recommend this game to puzzle platformer lovers out there, especially if you have a free long night or a weekend to sit through it in one go.

Nice story, fun puzzles and great graphics combined with good music. This game has more than enough to provide a pleasant experience. 10/10