The premise of Marble Bay encompasses the user eliminating various marbles by sliding them into each other. Once the marbles are formed into a pattern, they create higher energy marbles which later explodes. The game resembles the classical games of Bubble Blaster and Bejeweled that has been extremely popular in the past. Ultimately, the goal is to clear up the board in order to get a high score while constrained by several rules. For instance, once marble slide into another marble it gets number two on it. Furthermore, players must try to slide marbles together in order to increase this number before an explosion occurs which eliminates the number streak.
Although the goal of the app is simple to understand, the rules may be difficult to grasp for those who are new to the game. For example, any marble with number 5 on it explodes immediately. When the marbles all become the number 6, they will explode the surrounding 8 marbles. When the marbles become number 7, the entire row explodes while the number 8 eliminates the entire column. Evidently seen, the combinations and rules of the game are not as intuitive as competing games that do not have as many components to understand. Although this aspect of the game can be intimidating for potential players, other aspects of the game are extremely easy to understand. For example, the fact that the marbles must be the same color with the option of swapping out marbles having dissimilar colors balances out the complexities of the Marble Bay. Additionally, the game starts off extremely easy in order to ease the player into the various concepts as to not overload them with too many restrictions at once.
With over 100 beautifully designed levels, the amount of time that a player can spend in Marble Bay can be endless with levels constantly being added and updated to the app. However, as there are so many levels, the app is very heavy in memory being 114MB in size which is substantial, especially for such a simple game. This means that potential downloaders must consider if Marble Bay offers enough entertainment for its size. Appropriate for all ages, the game also makes the confusing concepts of the explosions simpler to understand by providing a comprehensive tutorial as a means to on-board the user to start playing as soon as possible.
