When your hips are so thick it's a ball.
From WayForward Technologies, the same team that brought you the Shantae series, Marble Knights
is a quirky little mobile fantasy RPG for the Apple Arcade set in the Kingdom of Roundingham, a peaceful land that's protected by the Knights of the Round, powerful soldiers that use the skills of magic marbles to enhance their attacks. Thanks to their efforts, Roundingham was safe from dangerous creatures and threats from the outside world. Until one day, when Lord Terroball decided to invade the kingdom with his own group of minions in an attempt to conquer them once and for all. Players will start out as Orbin, his foster older sister Marabelle, or eight other characters (some of whom are recruited along the way), as they attempt to face off against Lord Terroball's armies and defeat the threat to their people.
Unfortunately, the game is no longer available to download or play after being delisted from the Apple Arcade on August 2023.
This game contains the following examples of:
- Animesque: The characters present in this game look like anime characters and the style of the game looks like something out of a Japanese anime series. Interestingly, Studio Trigger, the very same anime studio that is responsible for the creation of Kill la Kill and Little Witch Academia, also created the opening animation for this game.
- The Baby of the Bunch: Crystal is one of the youngest, if not the youngest, of the Knights Of The Round thanks to her cute and childlike appearance and voice and for lacking the Buxom Beauty Standard that Marabelle, Whiffle, & Ellipse have thanks to her flat chest and for being shorter than them to some extent, which arguably makes her a young Child Mage at most.
- Badass Adorable: While much of the playable characters are cute and badass in their own ways, Crystal is especially so thanks to her adorable appearance and personality traits and for being as brave and powerful as her fellow allies despite being an apprentice mage who isn't typical knight material.
- Be the Ball: An unusual variant: the characters' lower halves are spheres that roll while their upper halves balance above.
- Bespectacled Cutie: Crystal is a really adorable and innocent girl, with an upbeat and good-natured personality and the voice of Mako from Kill la Kill to match, who wears big and round glasses that compliment her childlike innocence and cuteness.
- Big Bad: Lord Terroball, being the main bad guy and all who is trying to take over Roundingham.
- Bizarre Alien Locomotion: None of the humanoid characters in Roundingham have any legs. Instead, their lower bodies are round, rolling marble-like orbs that don't seem to be connected to their bodies as different characters can swap their orbs.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Marabelle◊, Whiffle◊, & Ellipse◊, as cute or sexy young women, sport these and are really competent and badass as female heroes who protect Roundingham from evil. Crystal averts this since she lacks these due to her flat chest stemming from her slightly shorter body size and younger age, but she more than makes up for it by being a Badass Adorable Child Mage instead, for she can keep up with the other female heroes in saving the day all the same.
- Child Mage: Crystal is a really sweet and lovable Innocent Prodigy who has magic as her speciality and is arguably a late preteen or early teen thanks to her youthful appearance and voice.
- Chest Monster: Some dog-like ones appear in the game, with a bark attack that can knock you off your orb.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Ellipse, in spite of her dark and macabre appearance and personality traits that are benefiting of a succubus, is one of the heroines who selflessly fights against the tyranny of Lord Terroball.
- Elemental Powers: Characters and switch between elemental orbs, such as:
- Fire orbs that create bolts of fire
- Wind orbs that create tornadoes.
- Ice orbs that create bolts of ice.
- Metal orbs that unleash a ball on a chain.
- Eye Scream: One of the bosses is a Cyclops whose eye you have to knock out of his head, ride on top of all the way to a cannon, and then blast the eye back into his face.
- Fertile Feet: Or Fertile Orb, rather, one orb allows you to leave a trail of flowers and grass as you roll.
- Graceful in Their Element: Mounted on an orb, the characters are able to roll at high speeds: however, some enemies can knock them off their orb, leaving them only able to hop around on their "waists".
- Hurricane of Puns: Plenty of them, all involving circles, spheres or orbs.
- Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: One complication the Marble Knights' unique anatomy has over other similar games' mechanics is that having no legs they cannot jump, and thus rely on special spring mechanisms to get over even small ledges.
- Lovable Rogue: Gutter. Even though he had been pestering the heroes throughout the journey, he joins up with them in the end to help them stop Terroball and save Roundingham.
- Meaningful Name: Many of the character names, such as Orbin, Marabelle, King Rolland, Lord Terroball, Oblate, Q'ball, Whiffle and Gutter, are puns on round objects.
- Names To Run Away From Very Fast: The main antagonist, Lord Terroball.
- Nice Girl: Crystal is definitely so thanks to her warmhearted personality and for being a staunch defender of justice with a will of steel◊.
- Palette Swap: In multiplayer mode when there are multiples of the same character.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Of the 4 initially available characters that are playable upon first starting up a new save file, aside from their male partners Orbin & R.E-Bound, Marabelle is the cute Plucky Girl Tomboy thanks to her skills as a swordswoman who can keep up with her partner Orbin in putting evil in its place whereas Crystal is the lovable Badass Adorable Girly Girl who is the skilled and heroic apprentice of Qball and is more than willing to help her friends in saving the day and is incredibly adorable while doing so.
