Moroi Preview
Indie game development is immensely challenging. That’s obvious from the countless titles that have failed to come to fruition or disappeared into the ether after launch. On the other hand, there are obvious rewards. Chief among these must be the ability to follow a very specific vision. You have a cool idea and the next thing you know, it’s in the game. No corporate approval or focus testing is required. That giddy sense of freedom came through when developer Violet Saint’s Alex Stanescu described their upcoming game Moroi. More than once, Stanescu said, “I put it in the game because I like it.” I may be paraphrasing, but you get the idea.
Grim and Dark
In a recent hands-off presentation, the developer said that Moroi was inspired by Romanian folklore, heavy metal, and the brilliant works of David Lynch. If I were playing a game of spot-the-influences, I’d have to tag filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, too. Not to mention the painter Hieronymus Bosch and a catalog of games. In other words, Moroi is an eclectic collection of weirdness, dark fantasy, absurdist humor, and surrealism. After the developer event, I was excited to get my hands on the demo.
That’s all well and good, you’re thinking, but what kind of game is it? Great question. Moroi is an isometric action game that takes place in the Cosmic Engine, a labyrinthine tower filled with puzzles and monsters. You play as an unnamed prisoner with no memory of why he is there, trying to escape or at least understand his fate or his crimes.
Moroi’s gameplay consists of exploration, environmental puzzle-solving, and combat. Along the way, the player encounters a large cast of odd, slightly disturbing, and often grotesque NPCs. Most of them have a fetch quest-type task, essentially multi-part puzzles like ‘kill this enemy to get a thing which unlocks another thing.’ At least in the demo, it was often unclear what a specific action did. This resulted in simply hitting the action prompt every time it came up. Eventually, a puzzle piece would drop into place, but it didn’t always logically follow from the situation.
Fight the Camera
Moroi is played from an essentially top-down perspective, with the camera parallel to vertical walls and doors. The camera can’t be rotated or zoomed, so it’s very easy and a bit frustrating to negotiate the towers halls and rooms. You can’t tell, for example, if you’re encountering a locked door or a wooden, breakable one because the camera obscures it.
Moroi’s action combat mostly consists of fighting small groups of enemies in tight spaces, either with melee or ranged weapons. You have a light and heavy attack and a dodge roll. Killing enemies helps replenish your health bar. While combat could be satisfying and brutal, the camera once again tended to get in the way. It’s also hard to control the direction the character is facing. This is especially challenging in some of the game’s bullet hell-type fights. Close-quarter combat and bullet hell strafing isn’t a perfect combination.
Really Surreal-ly
There are a lot of grimdark and surreal visual elements in Moroi, like talking pig men, biomechanical furnaces, and witches stirring bubbling cauldrons. Overall the atmosphere is creepy. The “anything goes” design philosophy extends into the game’s unvoiced dialogue, which contains a lot of humor that doesn’t really land. On a more positive note, the game’s visuals and weather effects can look sharp and there is a wide range of options for dialing in graphics performance.
There are plenty of grimdark fantasy games in the world, but relatively few with Moroi’s surreal approach to characters and environments. As an indie game from a small developer, Moroi can capitalize on the creator’s unique vision without the kind of artistic interference that might water it down. After playing the demo, I’m curious to see where Moroi is headed.
Thank you for keeping it locked on COGconnected.
