Going deeper...
Marrow is a Horror Metroidvania game developed by Fever Dream Gameworks studio in 2016, and the first game in the unnamed trilogy set in the same universe.
The game's set during the Dark Ages. A group of orphans, that left their village for unknown reasons, heed in some abandoned house in the mountains during the thunderstorm. One of them, a boy named Daniel, wakes up at night and sees that all the other children have disappeared. He investigates the house and finds a huge hole in the floor that leads down below the mountain. Daniel is going down, trying to find and bring his friends back, but he doesn't even know what exactly awaits him in the bowels of the deep mountain...
The release trailer can be found here
, and the game can be purchased from itch.io or Steam.
Marrow contains such tropes as:
- Abandoned Area: The game's setting is long forgotten, but not quite abandoned dungeons and catacombs.
- Ability Required to Proceed: Not only offensive abilities will be required to get into every nook and cranny of the mountain's underworld, but also the Fissures, through which Daniel's able to mutate into a warped version of himself: too weak to fight, but small enough to squeeze through tight spots.
- And I Must Scream: Baptized are the victims of marrow experimenting, injected with the substance and turned by it into unkillable, immortal blobs. They inhabit the pools of drying marrow on the lower layers of the Necropolis: unable to escape or die, and doomed to live in darkness.
- The Artifact: Luminous Orb and Tendril.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Grit Regain spell allows Daniel to regenerate his health for the cost of mana, making his voyage a bit more safer.
- Warp Rite allows Daniel to warp back to the last checkpoint without resetting the enemies. However, doing this after the mysterious bell rings kills the protagonist on spot instead.
- While the standard melee attack immobilizes Daniel for a moment and makes him an easy target for the foes, attacking while jumping doesn't limit his agility at all, and is much more comfortable to use.
- Finding new Grit and Clarity upgrades fully replenish Dan's health and mana, respectively.
- Background Boss: Most of the game's bosses can be damaged only by hitting them in a certain spot.
- Bittersweet Ending: In the true ending, Daniel manages to defeat the Familiar and send all of his friends back to surface. However, right afterwards intense flow of marrow begins flooding the dungeons. Trying to escape, Daniel almost makes it but get caught by the overwhelming flow, and the only thing left of him is his medallion that pops up to the surface. Whether he's died or not, still remains unknown.
- Blackout Basement: The whole game is a big one. More than that, some monsters and traps can extinguish your light source that can't be replenished unless a checkpoint is found (good luck with that).
- Body Horror: every single being in the game besides the protagonist and the orphans is either a mutated human, an alien, a ghost, or an Eldritch Abomination.
- Breakable Weapons: Once found, the Rusted Sword can deal only a certain amount of strikes and then, if not restored, crumbles to dust.
- Cave Behind the Falls: Upon entering the Necropolis, it's possible to get straight into the upper levels of the area by dashing through the first marrowfall.
- Checkpoint Starvation: Hey, but at least every boss has one nearby!
- Collision Damage: Almost every being in the game is quite painful for Daniel to touch.
- The Corruption: Marrow substance, that distorts not only physical, but also spiritual lifeforms.
- Deadly Gas: The Growths release a poisonous cloud upon exploding. This won't happen if they're killed by the Fire Blast.
- Eldritch Abomination: The world of Marrow is filled with them.
- Wretched Stulands and, especially, Stuland Patriarch, enormous half-ghostly creatures, affected by marrow. Formerly humans, whose experiments with the otherworldly substance went too far, they're neither dead, not alive now, aimlessly wandering the halls of the Manor, buried and forgotten deep underground.
- Unseen, a sentinel of the Manor's entrance. While being completely invisible for Daniel's human eyes, it's true form is being shown in Echo Realm, having giant insect-like claws and a big red eye. In addition, there's a lot of eyeballs floating around it, though it's unknown if they have any connection to the Unseen.
- Dying Successes, stationary tree-like creatures that continuously produces marrow. They have humanoid faces, resembling human ones.
- The Familiar, a powerful godlike being that was born from the experiments of crossbreeding between the marrow affected humanoid and a lumen fly. It has an appearance of underdeveloped and mutated humanoid embryo growing from the big main body, having both insect and human traits, as well as the pair of alienish eyes. It's unknown if the Familiar's mind is actually well-developed, or it's still on level of a newborn child, but considering it staying sealed in the Red Tower for centuries despite all of it's enormous might, we can assume the latter.
- The Glooms, invulnerable and dangerous inhabitants of the Malignance, serving as a kind of "immune system" of the location. Usually sleeping, they're being awakened when Daniel's getting in contact with their Dreams, that makes them relentlessly pursuing him.
- Final Boss, New Dimension: The otherworldly cosmic landscape area before the battle with the Olnok's Eyes and the Familiar, that is located on bottom of the Red Tower.
- Foreshadowing: Through the game Daniel occasionally sees a clothed skeleton figure appears before him for a moment. As it turns out, Daniel sees himself dead, although it's unknown if he actually died in the end or not.
- Jump Scare: The game barely uses them, but there're several nonetheless:
- First encounter with the Familiar and the Haunters of the Broken Spheres at the obelisk in Windheim.
- The Familiar's scream at the passage between the Reservoir and the Necropolis.
- Not really a jumpscare: in the Red Tower, there's a huge empty room with the dead bodies of unknown creatures lying on them. If you get past them until the end of the room, and then go back, you'll see one of the bodies in sitting pose. If you reenter the room after that, the body will be gone.
- Multiple Endings: More gameover than an actual ending, Bad End is obtained if Daniel's defeated the Familiar without saving all of the orphans. The protagonist just dies right afterwards, though it doesn't seem like the true ending brings any more happy conclusion for him.
- Multi-Stage Battle: Upon depleting half of it's health, Stuland Patriarch's semi-human appearance becomes utterly distorted, and he starts attacking more furiously. In addition, Olnok's Eyes begin using their lightning strikes more often after destroying their eyes.
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Nintendo Hard: As a product of love to NES and SNES era, the game is absolutely merciless in terms of difficulty, especially in comparison with many other metroidvania titles: there's no map option, no health bar, the player is consistently surrounded by darkness and its deadly inhabitants. Besides, the game uses Checkpoint system, and upon dying or saving at one of them most of the previously killed enemies will be revived. - Respawning Enemies: Stillborns, Takens, Vicars, Key Masters, Baptized, and Usurpers.
- Sound of No Damage: Lumen Caster has an impenetrable shield on it, that has to be turned off as it blocks any damage dealt to the boss; Imprisoned Seer can't be damaged by melee weapons at all, and the only way to kill it is by reflecting its magical blasts; the orb of the final Olnok's Eyes form is only taking damage when glowing blue.
- Stationary Boss: Stuland Patriarch, Imprisoned Seer, Lumen Caster, and Olnok's Eyes.
- Story Breadcrumbs: The game contains zero dialogue, the only text in it are the weapons/items descriptions, and the locations names. The only backstory can be found on the game's fandom page, or in the developer's notes.
- Teleport Spam: Lurkers are constantly teleporting to player while being barely visible and invulnerable, as if their high damage wasn't painful enough to deal with. Same goes for the Familiar, in addition to its other nasty tricks.
- Tennis Boss: Imprisoned Seer and Cloven.
