The fun of Marble Cooking lies in the very novel gameplay. Your character appears in a grid similar to a chessboard, and you can only move vertically or horizontally on the floor tiles. The enemies float around the board, each following a fixed patrol route that you have to discern. If you run into one of these baddies, you die. To destroy them, you must first press ‘z’ to put a pentagram on the tile you’re standing on. You can then move away from the pentagram, laying down carrots (this is done automatically) on every tile you step on. Press ‘z’ again to close the trail. Then, pressing ‘z’ once again calls forth your sidekick, a magical rabbit, from the pentagram. The rabbit will follow the trail of carrots, killing any enemy he runs into along the way. The trick, then, is to place the carrots and time it so that your rabbit will kill all the enemies in one go. This is much harder than it sounds, especially since the rabbit will disappear (along with the carrots) once he runs to the end of the carrot trail. Fortunately, the game is quite forgiving, as there is no time limit, you can make the trail as long as you like, and the enemies never diverge from their patterns.

In higher stages, the game becomes much more challenging, since the enemies’ patterns are much harder to figure out and memorize, and there are many more of them. The combination of skill and reflexes in Marble Cooking is very well thought out, and the anime graphics are sharp and smooth. Unfortunately, there are the quite disgusting hentai cutscenes, so anyone who is offended should turn Story Mode off. Other than this minor nuisance that is entirely unnecessary (the game is great anyway without the hentai trimmings), Marble Cooking is a wonderful and unique puzzle game that is highly recommended. Thumbs up!