Taken for a Quickie | Marooners

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Join us for another quickie, as we take a look at Marooners on Xbox One.

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​by Liam
​Andrews

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​@liam_andrews5

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​Developer: ​M2H
​Publisher: M2H
Platforms: ​Xbox One, PS4, Steam
Players: ​1 - 6

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What’s Marooners?

A party game from the makers of Verdun and Tannenberg, where up to six players compete to collect the most treasure in a series of mini-games.

How does it play?

Matches rarely last more than a few minutes, but the game’s unique Chaos mode keeps players on their toes throughout, randomly switching in and out of different mini-games at any given moment. Trying to remember the objective, or if you’re even alive, as play jumps back and forth leads to memorable moments as players meet their untimely ends amidst the confusion.

If the uncertainty of Chaos doesn’t sound like your thing, it’s possible to enjoy matches linearly in both the Arena and Party game modes.

What’s the difference between Arena and Party, then?

Party mode’s mini-games gives you some semblance of an objective – dig to the bottom first, stay alive the longest, avoid the falling boulders, etc. – whereas Arena is a deathmatch mode in which players make use of weapons and power-ups (present to a lesser extent in Party mode) across a range of maps to be the last one left standing

Trying to remember the objective, or if you’re even alive, as play jumps back and forth leads to memorable moments as players meet their untimely ends amidst the confusion.

Does it support couch co-op?

​In theory, Marooners lets you blend both local and online multiplayer, but the fiddly nature of setting up the former combined with the small player base of the latter means your only real option for a decent match is finding several other friends who own the game and organising some online mayhem.

For an idea of the type of fun to be had with that setup, check out our let’s play and see how we handled Marooners’ madness.

Failing that, there are bots to help make up numbers, but they negate both the challenge and humorous moments human opposition offer.

Would you recommend it?

Given the game’s only $9.99/€9.99/£7.99, yes, we would (with a caveat). There’s a good time to be had in Marooners, provided you can scrape together a few online friends to squeeze it out.