Martin Magni’s “Mekorama” looks good but lacks depth – Review

A while ago, I saw screenshots of an awesome-looking game on Twitter. I asked around a bit and was told that this was Fancade, a mobile game that not only lets users create their own games but also includes plenty of minigames included.

So why am I talking about Fancade in my review of Mekorama?

Mekorama is another game from Fancade‘s creator Martin Magni and looks and plays an awful lot like one of mingames in it so when I saw that I could get a copy of it for my Switch as part of #IndieSelect, I jumped at the chance.

So how does this robot-based puzzler fare?

In Mekorama, you have to guide a small robot through maze-like levels in which the solutions are found by rotating the levels and clicking to tell the robot where to go. If there’s a route it can follow, it’ll go there. If not, you’ll need to push and pull objects in the level to create a path.

Let’s start with the positives. For one, Mekorama looks great. I always loved the cutesy graphics from Fancade and while Mekorama doesn’t use voxels like its counterpart in Fancade does, it’s a nice game to look at.

It’s also really easy to understand and you don’t have to have played games your whole life to get it.

However, this is where the problems of Mekorama begin to show. While it is simple, there’s not much more to it than that. Levels start to feel similar to one another and while new obstacles and mechanics are introduced, you’re rarely doing more than just telling the robot where to go and seeing if it works.

I played Mekorama on the Switch and have to say that when using the Joy Cons, it’s not very fun to control. This game was designed for mobile and touchscreens and we all know that controlling a cursor with analogue sticks is rarely very enjoyable. It feels much better when you remove the Joy Cons and just play it on the Switch as if it were a tablet but for platforms without a touchscreen, I think you’d find the same problems.

The Verdict

It’s very clear that Martin Magni is a talented developer so I’ll still be keeping an eye out for other projects from him. As for Mekorama, it’s clear that this is a mobile game that’s been ported to consoles and it just doesn’t feel like it’s settling in very well in its new home.

However, at the time of writing, Mekorama available free on Android and iOS and I reckon it’d be for more enjoyable on these platforms. Check it out there if you can before trying a console copy as I think you’ll have a better experience..

Mekorama was developed by Martin Magni and Ratalaika Games and is available on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Android, Xbox One, iOS, Nintendo 3DS, and PlayStation Vita.