Marvin Marvel's Marvelous Marble Machine is a clever game of marble machinery and movement by Greg Lam.
Players: 2-6
Playing Time: 20-40 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
The Components
Marble Machine comes with a small set of components in a plastic clamshell:
- 1 board
- 25 marble tiles
- 35 machine tiles
- 1 bag
- 1 die
- 1 rulebook
Board: A cloth board, with white printing on a dark blue handkerchief. The center of the board shows the marble machine. It's a large hexagon made up of smaller hexes, six to a side. Surrounding the machine are six goals, one per edge.
The board is simple, and the printing is clean and clear. It has to be folded up when you put the game away, which unfortunately results in folds which can slightly disrupt play.
Tiles: The tiles are all circular wooden discs, each with a sticker affixed to them The 25 marble tiles each show a blue marble with a direction area and a value from 1 to 4. The machine parts show simple icons for different types of machinery and are generally easy to figure out.
Bag: A cloth bag is used to draw the machine tiles during play.
Die: A plastic white die, with black ink showing the numerals from "1" to "6".
Rulebook: A simple four-page rulebook printed black and white and stapled together. I found some of the ordering of the rules slightly awkward, but the reference of machine parts on page 3 is great for use in-game.
Box: As noted, Marble Machine comes in a plastic clamshell. It's small and compact and an easy way to keep the game together, but it's also a slightly awkward size for placement on your shelf.
Overall the quality of the components in Marble Machine is pretty good, but it is a homebrew production. Nonetheless, I like the way the tiles look, and everything works well. I've given it a "3" out of "5" for Style: average, especially considering the indie status of this product.
The Gameplay
The object of Marvin Marvel's Marvelous Marble Machine is to collect marbles by directing them toward your goal.
Setup: The board is laid out in the middle of the table. Each player is assigned one or more of the goals, depending on how many players there are, and whether teams are being used. (I suggest teams if you have 4 or 6 players, as noted in my comments on the game design.) Alternating shapes and shades make it easy to remember which goals are yours, whether you have one, two, or three.
Each player draws two machine tiles from the bag.
The marble tiles meanwhile are shuffled and placed face-down on the board.
The Goals. Each goal covers one edge of the hexagonal machine. The corners, arranged between each pair of edges, are randomizers. They could send a marble to the goal on either side.
Order of Play: On a turn a player may either place a marble tile or place a machine tile. If he places a marble tile, he then gets a second placement, which again may be marble or machine.
Afteward, if he used at least one machine tile, he replaces it.
Placing Marbles: A marble is drawn from the bag. Before it is placed, all marbles already on the board are moved (more on that momentarily). Then the new marble is placed in the middle of the board, facing in a direction of the players choice (toward one of the corners of the board).
Placing a Machine Tile: Machine tiles come in two types: parts and modifiers.
Machine parts are placed on open spaces on the machine. They have different affects on marbles that enter their space. They can turn marbles left, right, or reverse them. They can redirect marbles in a specific direction. They can jump marbles over the next space, or push a marble into a space without changing its orientation. There are also a number of random machine parts which move a marble in different directions based on a die roll.
Besides open spaces, machine parts can also be placed under marbles, causing them to have an immediate effect. However they can't be placed in spaces which already have machine parts.
Machine modifiers change the parts already on the board. These include "erase parts", "move parts", and "swap parts".
Moving the Marbles: Whenever a new marble is placed on the board, all the old marbles are moved. Each marbles moves 1-4 spaces, depending on its speed. Every time a marble moves onto a machine part, that part has some effect, which might change the direction of the marble, move it, or even stop it.
When a marble goes off the edge of the board, it goes to whichever player owned the goal.
Ending the Game: The game ends when a palyer has collected 3-7 marbles (depending on the number of players), or else when all the tiles have been used.
In either case, all the remaining marbles move off the board. The player with the most marbles at the end wins the game, with ties being resolved by total speed rating of marbles.
Team Play: With four or six players, you can play on teams of team. I suggest it.
Relationships to Other Games
One part of Marble Machine is a non-edge-matching tile-laying game. You get to select from a small hand of tiles and by placing a tile you change the layout of the board. It's different than most tile-laying games because tiles modify the basic board landscape rather than creating it.
The other part of Marble Machine is a movement game where tokens are moving across the landscape created by the tiles.
Together, these elements create a pretty original gameplay system without many similarities to other games. The closest are probably programmed movement games like RoboRally or Dragon Delta.
The Game Design
The core gameplay of Marvel Marvin's Marvelous Marble Machine centers around the control of spatial geometry. It can be pretty tough (depending on how much trouble you have figuring out things like "right" or "left"), and it can be a lot of fun. The idea of marbles spinning through the wacky machine that you're creating is a lot of fun and really appeals to me. I think it works well in the game too.
The gameplay is very "take that", and you can get somewhat frustrated with your opponent(s) messing up your beautiful plans, but that makes it all the more enjoyable when you stage a great come back.
Because the board is so dynamic, the gameplay can be constantly dynamic and original as well.
The strategy is pretty light, but it's there. There is a fair amount of randomness, based on which tiles you draw, but as with many tile-laying games, much of the strategy of Marble Machine comes through making the best use of the resources you're given.
The game says it plays with 2-6. However, it can get very chaotic, and also start to drag in the endgame, with more players. I suggest not playing with more than 3 players unless you have teams, but if you have teams then 4 or 6 is fine. The 5-player game I played was enjoyable, but it was an even better game when I played with 4 players, as two teams of 2.
On the whole Marble Machine is original, evocative, and a bunch of fun. I've let it eke in a "5" out of "5" rating for Substance. It's marvelous.
Conclusion
Marvin Marvel's Marvellous Marble Machine is an entirely original game where you place tiles to create a marble machine, while simultaneously directing marbles through those machine parts, trying to get them to your goal. Gameplay is light, but allows for strategy. There's a fair amount of take-that gameplay, as you try and mess up your opponents' marble routes, and thus I'd generally classify this as an American game. However, it's one of the best American style games that I've played, and I think this light abstract will also appeal to a much broader audience of casual gamers and Eurogamers alike.
Review Summary