Marshmallow Duel

When I first saw Marshmallow Duel, I thought someone was making a joke. Two penguins throwing marshmallows at each other and that's the whole game. And that's exactly how you need to approach it — not as an epic achievement, but as a pleasant break between the more serious titles of the nineties.

It's a turn-based artillery game, one-on-one, where two characters duel on a small map and lob confections at each other. The goal is simple: hit your opponent more than he hits you. A penguin or whatever moves around the arena, you gather ammo and try to get the right angle and force. The maps are small and lightly stylized.

The mechanics are light — the computer tries just as hard as you do, so it's more about luck and instinct than precise calculation. You hit when you hit. You miss when you miss. There's no boredom because a single match lasts just a few minutes and your brain easily settles into the rhythm of throw after throw. The physics are reasonable, the maps have varied heights, and the terrain isn't flat.

Back in the nineties, this game was easily available as freeware or shareware in some bundle with a hundred other things — someone would play it during a work break and forget about it the next day. It had no ambition to be groundbreaking or innovative. It simply existed, did what it was supposed to do, and disappeared. Probably because dozens of similar games came out and Marshmallow Duel had nothing special to make it stand out.

Today it's more of a curiosity. When you stumble upon it in old game archives, there's no reason to ignore it — a few minutes of fun with a retro simulator isn't a bad thing. It'll suit you if you want something with minimal mental demands, where the rules are straightforward and there are no complications. It's not a work of art, but that was never the intention.