Martin and the Magic Staff is a basic platformer with a retro look and feel. The player is tasked with taking a staff to a special location and putting it into a pool. To get there, Martin will have to navigate through a series of levels with the ability to jump and a sort of floating ability that slows falling.
The game has an options menu; however, it isn’t clear why. The language setting is the only option. There is no option to adjust or turn off the music, no graphics options and no way to remap the controls. There is a sort of tutorial via visual images as Martin traverses the first level.
The level designs are simplistic, with the typical spikes to avoid, springs for super jumps, and a simple start and exit point. The graphics are retro pixelated and the music is a sort of a 16-bit era acard-ish sound loop. If Martin dies in the level, he respawns immediately at the start. Some of the levels require some very precise timing of key press combinations so dying is very frequent.
Most of the levels have one or two difficult spots, but trial and error will get Martin past them without too much difficulty. The game isn’t long to play through, about 30 or so levels. The levels look a bit too much like each other, more tile variation a would go a long way. Overall, this is a basic platformer that plays pretty solidly. It could use key remapping capability, but there are only a couple of controls. One minor thing that was funny is that the game currently is in the Steam store as “Martin and the Magic Staff”, but the purchase button says that it is called “Tiny Dude”, and in the game itself the title is “Martin and the Magic Stuff”. Not sure what all the different names are about, but Tiny Dude or Martin and staff or stuff or whatever, it’s recommended as a basic platformer.
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Jacmac is an ancient gamer that loves open world, strategy, FPS, and tactical sims, but will play almost anything.
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