Brain Marmelade

Brain Marmelade is currently 91% off on Fanatical — down to $0.26 from $2.99.

At 91% off, this is one of the deepest discounts Brain Marmelade reaches on Fanatical — near its typical floor.

That works out to $2.73 off the Fanatical list price of $2.99.

This deal is for the PC version. Click View Deal to open the official Fanatical page — prices and regional availability are confirmed at checkout, not by GamesCreed.

Before you buy, read our buying guide or compare more fanatical deals on GamesCreed.

How it plays

Brain Marmelade puts you in the shoes (or whatever a “Dumped One” wears) of a hand-drawn character crawling through a nightmarish 2D world in search of the titular Brain Marmelade. The moment-to-moment platforming is built around dodging, jumping, and rolling past traps and enemy attacks, so timing and spacing matter more than reflex-mashing. Combat works a little differently than the usual side-scroller hack-and-slash: you get in close, put your cursor on an enemy, and read the combo prompt that pops up over their head to chain your hits. It’s a system that asks you to actually look at what the game is telling you rather than button-mash your way through, which fits the deliberate, slightly unsettling pace the art style sets.

Who it’s for

This is a game for players who like their platformers a bit weird and their art a bit unsettling. If you’re drawn to indie titles with a distinct, hand-drawn look and don’t mind a game that wears its scrappy, one-person-project origins on its sleeve, there’s real charm here. Fans of prompt-based or read-and-react combat systems will also find something to chew on, since the enemy encounters ask for attention rather than reflexes. On the other hand, if you want polished production values, a long campaign, or a combat system with a lot of depth and variety, this probably isn’t going to hold your interest. It’s a personal, small-scale creation, and it plays like one, for better and worse.

Is it worth it?

At full price, Brain Marmelade is a tough sell for anyone outside the niche of players actively looking for offbeat, artist-driven indie platformers. But games like this are exactly what sales are for. It doesn’t need to compete with big-budget adventure titles when it’s priced like the small, personal project it is. If the creepy hand-drawn aesthetic and the look-and-react combat idea sound interesting to you, picking it up when it’s discounted is a low-risk way to spend an afternoon with something genuinely different from the platformer template. Go in expecting a short, idiosyncratic experience rather than a polished epic, and you’ll get your money’s worth.

Quick facts

Genre: Adventure, Indie. Developer: Amaury Hyde and Arnaud Magous. Publisher: Amaury Hyde and Plug In Digital. Platform: PC (Steam). Release date: July 14, 2020.