Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey

Genre: Puzzle-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey is a family-friendly Puzzle-Platformer released on PC in 2019, ported to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2020, and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021. This game has players taking the role of a rodent-like creature separated from her children during a great flood, and who must try to find her way back home.

The game’s story and presentation feel like they’re evocative of the NIMH franchise, and I can’t help but feel like this game very much wanted to be a knockoff story of sorts. Unfortunately, the delivery here feels overly-saccharine in a way that just doesn’t work, and a large part of this is due to your character’s constant self-narration, which gets annoying very quickly. At the very least, the soundtrack here is decently fitting for a somewhat fairytale-themed game, although it’s subdued in a way that makes it more atmospheric than memorable.

As for the visual side of things, they’re mostly good, although not without issues. The environments generally look good, making use of decently-detailed 3D, although this detail clashes with the often purely-functional level design of the Puzzle-Platformer elements, with boxes and platforms laid out in a way that is clearly contrived for the purposes of a puzzle, and not in any way realistic as the visuals would try to have you think. What’s more, these visuals often make it difficult to distinguish what is a wall or platform, and what is just a part of the background. Overall, things still generally look good, but the artistic design here clashes with the game’s function in enough ways that it seems ill-considered.

As for the gameplay, this is a mostly solid Puzzle-Platformer, and while it has a few interesting things it does with the genre, introducing magical abilities that become a part of the puzzles… at the same time the experience is highly-compromised by some absolutely atrocious input lag that makes all of the Platforming in the game a chore. On more than one occasion, I completely botched a puzzle due to this game’s terrible input lag not registering a jump for what seemed to be an entire second, causing me to have to redo an entire section.

In the end, while Macrotic: A Mother’s Journey has some potential, that potential is ruined by botched execution in multiple areas. The terrible input lag, visuals that conflict with the gameplay, and an annoyingly overly-cutesy central character all combine to bring down what would otherwise be an above-average, but not great, Puzzle-Platformer. The result is something fans of the genre may still enjoy, but it’s a lesser experience than it should’ve been.

tl;dr – Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey is a family-friendly Puzzle-Platformer that has players taking the role of a Nimh-esque rodent trying to find her way home to her children after a terrible flood separates them. While this game does have a few good qualities that might’ve made it an above-average entry in the genre, it’s brought back down again by overly-saccharine voice acting, graphics that occasionally don’t work well with the gameplay, and some absolutely atrocious input lag. If you’re a fan of Puzzle-Platformers you may still enjoy this, but most are better off avoiding it.

Grade: C

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