The Mobius Machine Review
An Indie Metroidvania you want to see!
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Platform: PS5 PC Xbox X|S
Reviewed on: PC
Developer: Madruga Works
Publisher: Madruga Works
Release: March 1, 2024
Time Played: 9 hours
Genre: Platform Indie Shooter
ESRB: E
The Mobius Machine is a classic 2D adventure game with detailed 3D visuals.
Explore an open interconnected world filled with brutal alien lifeforms and malfunctioning machines. Find your way through abandoned facilities and perilous environments, on the surface and in the depths of this world.
Explore Seamlessly
Choose your own path. Explore a complex open world, discovering it in your own way.
Traverse the disctinct areas in a seamless manner, with no loading screens between them.
Fight
Combat an array of deadly adversaries: the local fauna, infected colonists, and abandoned machines that once worked in the facilities.
Shoot Anywhere
Designed for both Gamepad or Mouse and Keyboard controls. Run and jump around while shooting in any direction using a tight control system.
You can have 2 weapons equiped at any time, and use them as you need.
Evolve
Acquire the gear that will make you more mobile and unlock new areas. Climb walls, dash, dive underwater, glide through the air and evolve the way you interact with the world.
Upgrade your arsenal
Collect blueprints and craft new weapons and upgrades in order to fight more effectively.
Review-
Intro:
The Mobius Machine is an indie metroidvania 2d side scroller with some impressive 3d graphics taking you through old facilities on an abandoned planet. This may be an indie game but it has a lot to offer and can take some time to thoroughly explore and enjoy. I had a lot of fun with this game and am ready to let you know what to expect and give this game a rating for the shelves behind.
Where it starts
You play a pilot currently moving some cargo through deep space when a distress call comes in from a nearby “abandoned” planet. You could easily ignore it and move on, but it’s against the law to do that, and your onboard robot will definitely report you. So you head over to investigate but crash your ship in the process. On the planet you will need to find a way to fight off the aggressive inhabitants, figure out who called, and find a way out for yourself.
Can the kids watch
The only problem I could see someone having would be the explosion of enemies as you shoot them down with your gun. The game is fun and almost cute, the enemies aren’t scary and there isn’t any poor language to worry about. I mean, there may be a problem if you run into a frustrating section and get your butt kicked, or start to lose your temper if you get lost. Not that you will start to scream, just that the possibility is there.
Exploring the planet
The playable area of the game was made up of seven sectors all interconnected in some way. Some accesses will be blocked before you unlock a special ability, forcing you to go a specific way before everything starts to open. The entirety of the game is quite large, thankfully there will be a fast travel point in every sector to help you move around, it’s just getting to them that might be a problem. After exploring a sector for a bit you should find a map to help you navigate and the map will retroactively fill out everywhere you have been so far, very handy.
The Locals
You won’t find any friendly inhabitants on the planet; everything will want to eat and/or destroy you. You’ll come across aliens and robots in every sector, a lot of them will look the same but with different abilities, denoted by a minor color change. After playing for a few hours, you should be able to tell who does what by their color, so you’re not surprised. Naturally the farther you get the tougher the enemies will be to take out, really testing your skills. Every enemy taken out will drop some energy you can heal with, and scraps used as currency.
Traversal Gear
The game will keep you out of some areas until you find the right equipment to get there. Most of the gear you find will be used to travel, like climbing walls or sinking to the bottom of a lake, but some will give you an edge in combat. Like thrusters that allow you to move very fast in one direction to avoid incoming attacks and run circles around the baddies, easily taking them out.
The Gun
From the start you will be equipped with a gun that has a rapid fire to take out enemies. As you progress you will find different forms of shooting, like a multi-shot with short range, or a sniper shot that can shoot across the screen with a slower fire rate. You’ll have the option to swap between fire modes on the fly depending on your situation. You could also increase the guns damage by using all the energy you picked up, but it didn’t last long and then you can’t heal anymore, a real catch twenty two.
Upgrading your gear
After finding a blueprint you can use that at a workshop to upgrade the gear the blueprint is for. You can increase damage and fire rate of your gun, or gain more storage for energy and health. All you need to do is save up enough scrap to purchase it and find the accompanied blueprint. Blueprints are rarely found complete though. Hidden behind tough enemies or in hidden nooks and crannies will be blueprint fragments, you’ll need to find three fragments to make one blueprint.
What if you die?
The Mobius Machine starts with two difficulties, the only differences being what happens on death. With the standard difficulty on death, you will leave a few of your scraps behind where you died and spawn back at the last save spot you used, you can then make your way back and retrieve the lost scarps. On retro difficulty you lose all progress made since your last save. I played on standard and the only reason to save was to keep a nearby spot to start from if I did die, on retro I’d imagine you want to save every chance you get.
Outro: (Ask what you thought about game. Bring up genre playlist of current game)
This was a crazy good game and looked very good. It’s hard to belief it’s considered an indie, Madruga Works did a dam fine job here. I love the 2d playstyle mixed in with good looking 3d graphics, the first thing I noticed when playing was the shadow of the main character, I couldn’t get over it.
The story was alright, there weren’t many spots in the game where there was any talking about what was happening, but in the end had a cool conclusion, I liked it. But the story points of the game only make up an hour, maybe, most of the game is jumping around killing aliens and robots while trying not to get lost.
The gameplay turned out to be much more entertaining than I would have thought. I usually avoid metroidvania games, due to the mechanic of having to come back to where you’ve already been after getting a special item or ability that would allow you to pass. But I didn’t really notice the backtracking I had to do. Sure I got lost a couple of times and ended up going in circles because of that, but the game feels like it moves you in a spiral of progression, instead of back and forth and back and forth. While I was playing time just slipped away.
There were a couple of achievements for beating the game within a certain amount of time, I managed to get one on my first playthrough of nine hours, but there’s one for beating it in six, now that I know where everything is, I’m kind of tempted to get in and go for it. If this game ever comes to the switch, I would seriously think about buying it again. Have you had a chance to check the game out yet? Hit me up in the comments below, and subscribe to, for more reviews in the future!
Ok, let’s get these ratings underway.
The visuals were amazing, coming in at a five
The story was ok, I think my favorite part may have been the ending, I’m giving it a three
Gameplay was smooth and well done, I only had a couple issues on keyboard jumping off of walls, I’m feeling a four
Replayability feels about middle of the road, let’s go with a three
I’m not sure how I could have had even more fun with this game, I’m giving it another five.
Giving The Mobius Machine a final score of four out of five. Placing it at the highest spot of the Top Shelf. I was concerned with the price of this game before playing, but it has enough to offer and you can feel all the work that was put into it, very impressive work.