its hard

Marble Race is incomplete and abandoned, it has a very short campaign and despite having mod support, most of the maps are pretty disappointing (when they work at all). Most of what you see in the gameplay is a copy of hamsterball mechanics, so you might like it if you're a big fan of that game, yet the original version of hamsterball from 20 years ago is still better crafted and trimmed than this one.

If you like games like this, I have some recommendations:

Glyph < amazing physics and graphics, with story and long campaign
Switchball HD < a lot of puzzles in this one
On a Roll 3D < race, puzzles and bosses at the end of each level (no story)
Armillo < FREE one, well made and fun to play
Spectraball < I find this one really really hard, but if you want to try...

Marble Race is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam in an incomplete state under Valves disastrous Early Access program, as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs. This mobile app is a basic physics/marble/platformer game where you roll around various levels and fight against the rolling ball physics. It's been done a dozen times or more, all better than this mobile phone implementation.

The mobile app was abandoned roughly 1 year after launch and hasn't been updated in almost 2 years. It blew past the developers commitment to complete the mobile app without any notification or admission of failure from the developer. The mobile app will never be completed. The developer kept all money taken from gamers scammed into buying an Early Access mobile app on Steam, and issued no refunds despite their failure, highly unethical stuff, but there's more.

From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

While there's an option to change the resolution, it doesn't work properly as you can't scroll the selection bar... it's busted. What a joke. Worse, there's no other useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.

The mobile app features lazy minimalist/untextured low-polygon "retro" assets and visuals, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the early 1990s. The lack of textures is a method that lazy devs often use to disguise their lack of talent/interest in doing the graphics properly and trying to disguise it under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the mobile app. It looks bad as a result of their decisions, and that's just another reason to avoid it.

Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.

These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The poor quality of this mobile app is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 11 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality mobile app is to be expected.

Another unethical act of this developer, knowing full well that this mobile app is abandoned and they will never complete it, they are deliberately trying to scam gamers into buying it by offering it on discount from time to time. It's impossible to "accidentally" discount a game. The developer looked at their abandoned game, and instead of doing the right thing and removing it from Steam, they instead doubled-down and tried to scam even more people into paying for it. Greedy, and completely unethical. Doing the wrong thing, on purpose, for money. This is not okay.

Furthering the unethical nature of this developer, while they are selling this incomplete mobile app under Valve's failed Early Access program, they're abusing that program, and not working on this mobile app full time, as they have other projects in the works. That means there's ZERO confidence anyone who buys this in Early Access will receive a complete game, and combined with the other unethical behaviour from this mobile dev, PC gamers are being scammed.

Finally, once more we see greedy mobile devs in the act of scamming PC gamers on price. On Steam, this is $5 USD, on app stores, it's free. Mobile devs must learn PC gamers are not here to be gouged, and can't be expected to pay FIVE BUCKS FOR AN INCOMPLETE, ABANDONED, FREE MOBILE APP because it's been lazily dumped on Steam. This is unacceptable disrespect for PC gamers. Because this can be played free elsewhere, and because of the other defects, it's impossible to recommend. Who do they think we are?

Mouse controls are woefully under-optimized.

The physics and gameplay of this game feel smooth and nice. And it plays well on the steam deck.
However, the timer becomes harsh on the later levels, with no way to turn it off. Cant get past a certain point? that timer will reset you every time to the start.

if you like difficult things that need patience and will ruin your progress over and over again until you master it, this thing is for you. But it represents itself as quite a casual game in its looks and how the first levels look like. If that is what you seek, go for something else.

I was hyped for this, but the game has supposedly been abandoned. It boasts a modern-ish UI but lacks in personality (it's early access, after all). It's pretty much Hamsterball but without the tight controls and unique level design. Oh, and without the hamster.

As Hamsterball is a very clear copy of Marble Madness (at least the hamster makes it more unique), this game here is a very clear copy of Hamsterball.

i love it!

i've been a fan of the original hamsterball all my life. it's one of my favorite games, and this honestly feels like a gross bastardization of it. i enjoyed some of the levels, but this really just feels like quantity-over-quality. to be fair, my expectations for this might have been too high, and this game is still in early access, but i've heard the developer is no longer working on it, so i'm going to review it like any other game. the music is cheap and heartless, and most of the time you just hear the same lulling, chilled melody over and over again. controlling the marble feels flimsy and the levels in this game are not designed with that control scheme in mind whatsoever. as a game developer, i think the builder is horrendous and borderline unusable due to the slow navigation and constant mistakes that would never happen in a more optimized level editor--it is not intuitive in the slightest. the graphics are okay, but that's really all this game has going for it. if you enjoyed the original hamsterball, or the original marble madness for that matter, DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. it's currently the steam summer sale as i'm writing this, so i bought this for $3.49, and even now it isn't worth the price. this game makes me appreciate hamsterball and marble madness much more, and i hope to god that hamsterball 2 is not taking any inspiration from this game.

controls suck ♥♥♥♥, sound design is awful, level design is horrible, and the developer doesnt even work on this game anymore. cheap but not worth the price

this is not online multiplayer!!