Fire away through Marfusha’s shooting gallery and stop the robots from taking over.
In an oversaturated market of small indie games such as the Nintendo eShop, shovelware games with dubious quality are published every day. Marfusha, developed by a single developer known as hinyari9, does not fall exactly into this category but it certainly could be confused as one of them.
First released on PC via Steam in 2021, Marfusha recently came out on major consoles on April 6 with the help of publisher Playism. Japanese developer hinyari9 has over the years shared his concept art and vision on his Tumblr and it is commendable to see such a sprawling main idea take shape in what Marfusha ultimately became.
Before Marfusha even starts, you are greeted with a warning mentioning the game “Contains violent and extreme events.” and while it is worded in such a serious way, there was no content to be found that could be described in that way. Seems like the developer wanted to get ahead of the curve and warn players before any sort of controversy could come out, but it does feel unwarranted.
The initial cutscene as you boot up Marfusha shows a realized, post-industrialist world with an oppressive atmosphere that is easy to appreciate. You are presented with four game options in the Main Menu which are: Main Mode, Challenge Mode, Collections and Settings. As expected, the Main Mode is what introduces you to the light narrative and gameplay tutorial.
The story kicks off with a group of military men handing a letter to Marfusha in her apartment in a Visual novel style with static images and the game’s particular anime pixel art style. The general gist of the story is rather simplistic to focus on the main aspect of the game and that is the gameplay. The goal is to defend your city against your neighboring countries, though it is never specified who they are.
As the player’s titular character, Marfusha is actually a bakery clerk tasked with defending her city from mechanized invaders. Classified as a “Class 5th class Citizen”, Marfusha became a soldier thanks to an emergency draft due to a shortage of soldiers from an ongoing war with seemingly never-ending invaders. Marfusha also has a younger stepsister called Snezhinka, who is in middle school and awaits her return so they can start their own bakery shop and live a happy life.
The game always begins with Day One and from that point onwards, you are tasked with progressively tougher enemy types. All combat interactions begin with Marfusha outside of her city’s gates, defending her city from the presumably escaped enemies from the frontline. As it is a rather compact experience with a pickup and play focus in mind, the main idea behind Marfusha is to progress quickly and to always have different outcomes on each turn. You move your character with a left stick and aim with the right, shoot with ZR and that’s pretty much it.
After each encounter when defeating all mechanized enemies, you are given a salary in which you are able to buy stronger and heavier weapons, and raise your stats like attack or defense. These are presented as cards, You can buy either one of the three options chosen for you, redraw the cards or choose not to buy anything to save your hard-earned cash and live to spend it another day. As you move forward with each day, a new tax is introduced, such as the consumption tax, resident tax or “long-term care insurance premiums”. The government clearly has high tax policies in place that make this world feel unacceptable, abusive and dystopian.
It should be noted that these robot enemies do not attack you and go directly into the city gates, trying to tear down their defenses and infiltrate the city. For what could be considered somewhat dull and repetitive, it should be noted that this was the work of one developer, so if the player already goes with the idea of a compact & short shooter, a good bit of enjoyment could be derived from it.
Marfusha is remarkably lenient in a way that if you lose and the enemies destroy the city’s gates you are given the option to retry that same level or quit. Eventually, you are promoted from outside of the city gates to the inner gates, and the game gets consequently harder. In the short campaign, there is an inflection point in which the robots actually start aiming at the titular character Marfusha instead of at the city gates.
What nudges the player to do one more run is the prospect of literally being dealt a different hand to your run when each day ends. To see the tougher enemies and boss fights warrant a playthrough. Some riskier cards, such as the “Money Grubber” gives you 15 gold coins but reduces your attack rate by one or “tradeoff” which raises attack by two levels but reduces weapon durability by 3. All of the variants should be taken into account to get each time a bit further.
As you progress Marfusha gives you the option to hire another soldier to give you double the firepower. As you recruit an ally, you can continue to raise her level and make her more useful in battle. All your potential allies have a different and original personality, and after a certain number of days fighting together you unlock some cute and funny cutscenes in which the characters have small interactions.
While Marfusha might not have much in the way of a story, these events certainly add to the narrative and replayability to see all the ways the title character can interact with her fellow comrades. Depending on whom you have by your side, there are multiple endings to entice more playthroughs.
After a certain point of days fighting, you are able to go back to your apartment and do one of three things which are using the automat, fridge or shower and raise different stats to help you in the fight against enemies such as shot accuracy, reloading speed or a random point altogether.
Weapon durability is another aspect that you should keep an eye out, because if your weapon becomes useless and breaks you go back to your not as effective handgun and the game constantly reminds you to strive to get better weapons. Each time you fight, your weapon loses durability. Weapon varieties such as a shotgun, light machine gun or machine gun all become available after a certain number of days pass by.
There are other items that can aid you in battles such as the anti-ground turret, barricades and a gun that repair the wall that you are so fiercely trying to defend. Finally, there are chance cards that give you new, one time only perks like super rapid fire which can be very helpful in the long run when you are dealing with many enemies at once.
There is not much in the way of enemy or level variety, ranging from a classic robot foot soldier to drone-like flying UAVs all trying to destroy your city’s gates. Kamikaze enemies make you attack quicker and think faster. There are, all in all, three simple environments, that considering the price point and the game being a one-man job are justifiable.
As mentioned, an area called Collections which opens up the lore of the world of Kazormia with weapons, characters, Challenge mode Cards and Memories. Weapons and characters modes reward you with a detailed description of each weapon and character as implied. At last, there’s not much in the way of accessibility or difficulty settings, but it could be benefitted from an aim assist or different modes for all kinds of players.
Considering the background of Marfusha, such as the one developer porting this PC game to several different consoles and its length and price, it is easy to give it a pass for what it’s going for. With a decidedly pick-up and play design behind it, Marfusha is a great choice for gamers who just want to kill time and enjoy a simple shooter.
