MACROTIS: A Mother’s Journey Review for Steam

Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey by Proud Dinosaurs is an emotion-driven platformer about a mother separated from her children. There is a hurricane coming but Mother Bilby and her family can’t leave because of the new baby. The hurricane only gets worse and Mother Bilby is separated from her children due to a horrible flood and now must use her surroundings to get back to them.

            I would like to preface that I am not good at platformers so I am a little biased when it comes to how I feel about the gameplay. The trial and error process of most platformers irritates me beyond belief and I usually rage quit after a couple of tries. I prefer dying a million times due to fighting a tough boss and not because I suck at jumping accurately. I found that Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey was no different. However, I did feel that the controls seemed more inconsistent than most games. When playing the tutorial, I kept dying at a specific jump. I could not figure out how to get all the way across. There were no instructions beyond “jump.” After dying about half a dozen times I switched from my keyboard to a game controller. After dying several more times I finally made it across. I have no idea what I did differently but I was relieved when I finally made it. Usually having a hard time in the tutorial is a bad sign for how the rest of the game is going to pan out for me. As I continued on I found that other controls weren’t very consistent either. While it is quite possible it was player error or something up with the controls on my end, I found it quite frustrating and detrimental to the experience. I found myself getting frustrated way sooner than I normally do with platformers. I had to take several breaks from this game to cool off. This would be fine if that was the developers’ intention but I don’t think it was. This game is supposed to be a little challenging and you aren’t necessarily supposed to get everything on the first go, but I don’t think they expected people to get this frustrated with the gameplay.

I really enjoyed the opening sequence. I liked the narrative about Mother Bilby and the flood. The art style was really cute and the music was really enjoyable. However, I was kind of shocked once the tutorial started. The opening did not prepare me for the style of this game. I will say that the backgrounds are beautiful and vibrant but I really don’t like the graphics for Mother Bilby herself. I felt like the adorable sketches of her, in the beginning, are very different from how she looks during gameplay. I really enjoyed the music in this game, though the voice acting was a little hard to listen to, however, most games like this don’t have voice acting so it was cool that they did.

            I don’t think Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey is the best platformer out there but it wasn’t all bad. The controls can be inconsistent but the music and backgrounds are lovely.

Check Out the Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey Gameplay Trailer:

Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey is available for PC via Steam for $9.99. 

Harleigh McGowan

+ postsBio ⮌

I'm a postgraduate Information and Library Studies student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. I'm originally from Texas and have a BFA in Creative Writing from SFASU. I grew up playing video games and now enjoy watching other people play as well. I love anything with a good story!

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