Marble Boy 4K (C64)
A downloadable game
Free Download below or Play in Browser
Goal of the Game
You are Marble Boy and you need to collect 45 pennants/banners in a given order and time. Watch out for holes, work on your manoeuvring skills and learn to take shortcuts to save valuable seconds. Are you swift enough to reach the finishing line?
Features
- 4 courses/colour themes: Grand Canyon, Blue Lagoon, Red Velvet and The Moon
- Each course comes with 10 different challenges and each challenge has its own High score table
- Fast paced action and smooth marble movements makes this a dream to play
- High score will be saved (enhanced disk version)
- Choose the marble speed that suits you best (enhanced disk version)
- Easy to learn, hard to master
Tip: General moving also collects points. When competing with your friends then finding the perfect path and flow will make all the difference in the end score.
Trivia: This game is an homage to two of my favourite arcade games: Marble Madness where you control a marble and play on a checkered background and Buggy Boy, where you pick up flags to make points. Hence the name "Marble Boy". Recognition effect is intended but otherwise the game, graphic and sound is all made from scratch and offers its own unique gameplay experience. Have a great marble run!
Control
Joystick in Port 2
Use the Joystick to navigate Marble Boy around the course.
Press the fire button to jump over holes.
In the title screen you can press the following keys on your keyboard:
<F1> Switch to course 1: Grand Canyon
<F3> Switch to course 2: Blue Lagoon
<F5> Switch to course 3: Red Velvet
<F7> Switch to course 4: The Moon
Numbers <0>-<9> offer you alternate challenges with a different sequence of flags. Number <0> relates to the initial seed.
During gameplay press <RUNSTOP> (or ESC in VICE Emulator) when you are unhappy with your current run to abort the game and return to the title screen, so you can quickly start again.
The game starts in Pro mode which means the marble reacts and moves quite fast. The minus key <-> allows you to decrease the marble speed (enhanced disk version). Reducing the speed will show a little bar graph element in the score row. Pressing <+> (plus symbol) will increase the speed again. The bar graph will disappear when you have set the marble back to its original speed.
When the time runs out and you have a high enough score then after pressing the fire button your are asked to enter your name for the high score table. Use the keyboard to write and press <RETURN> to confirm. You can also use <DEL> to correct.
Game Requirements
- C64/C128 (also works on C64 Mini and C64 Maxi)
- 1 Player
- PAL and NTSC compatible
- Also playable on Windows/MacOS/iOS/Android (C64 Emulator required)
This game was made as a contribution to the 2022 Reset64 4KB Craptastic Game Competition:
https://ausretrogamer.com/2022-reset64-4kb-craptastic-game-competition/
Download
Comments
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very nice, kept me everytime play a new round to beat my highscore...make c64-games further on, c64-freak!
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Cooles game ...
Vielen Dank! Super Marble Boy (Marble Boy - the Director's Cut) sollte auch demnächst erscheinen. Hoffentlich. Irgendwann.
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Cool. Ich freue mich. 😎
Very nice skill game that strongly reminds me of the wooden labyrinth games from my childhood. Our German-language review can be found in our recorded livestream starting at 04:01:51. Subscription to our YouTube or Twitch channel is welcome. 🙂
Thank you very much for showing the game in your stream. Note that you can press the fire button to jump over holes so you don't have to roll around them. Saves valuable time.
This is as good (if not better) than a lot of the games they used to sell for the C64, and somehow crammed into 4k! Fun way to kill an afternoon. -Rob from Sprite Castle C64 Podcast.
Thank you Rob for this nice comment. Just checked your YT channel and I like it a lot that you spend an hour or more on a single retro game title or topic. Will definitely put you on my watchlist!
it's better than Spindizzy! :)
Wow! Thanks a lot Hayes for visitting and leaving this very nice comment. Spindizzy is one of my favourite teen memories on the C64 and the isometric presentation blew my mind at he time (to make an isometric game is on my bucket list since then). Very flattered that you compare Marble Boy with that.
Really good one, well done, Roman :). And I am certain that you could do a Basic 10-liner version of this game that would play as smooth as this one.
Thank you. The 10-Liners for sure helped me to deal with the 4K limitation and to know there is always another way to make it work. :)
this game is 'ok'. it's just nothing new. graphics good, controls not so good (on keyboard).
Did you see that in the Disk Version you can adjust (reduce) the speed of Marble Boy by using "-" on the keyboard? That may help to make it feel your taste of control.
nope, didn't see that.
well well well.. it's a straight up 7 now from me. 7/10
This is so slick! You've captured the inertia perfectly and I'm amazed at how much good music is crammed into this game. Well done!
Thank you Ant. So happy that you like it. I could keep the Goattracker player size down by only using two channels and not using any effects. The music used up 970 bytes though.
Magnificent entry. Possibly my favourite. Very polished, playable and nice sound too. Thumbs up.
Wow. Thanks a lot for this nice comment, Roysterini. It was actually good that I finished he game more or less two weeks before the compo's deadline so that I could do more testing and some finetuning and make it feel all round (marble-pun intended ;) ). I think there are again some great games in the competition this year and I feel proud to be part of it.
You SHOULD be proud. Such a corker of an entry.
An 'all round' masterpiece.
The movement of the marble is so smooth. Nice game, thanks!
Nice game!
very good
Thanks a lot for the nice feedback.