The Family Business.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about the pixelated aesthetic of a good indie game. The ways the colorful sprites evoke emotion or how fluid the animations are can often make or break your experience with them. Dead Cells, which was released on consoles last year, was the shining example of the time on how to not just nail the pixelated indie game look, but also with how fast and fluid its combat was. Children of Morta, developed by Dead Mage, is another proud example of this, offering a well-told story, exciting combat, and an engaging cast of characters all dressed up in a colorful and intense pixelated adventure.
Children of Morta is a title I’ve been excited for ever since it was shown off at the Microsoft 2018 E3 press conference through the ID@Xbox platform. Those few seconds of gameplay had me hooked and when I was given the chance to review it, I dropped what I was doing and installed the game immediately. While I wasn’t initially expecting a rogue-like adventure that had me swapping to members of an adventuring family, it’s those very things that give the game its own unique charm. While not every run is fruitful, or successful, the consistent story moments that came my way, made every death purposeful and worthwhile.
As various members of the Bergson family, you’ll embark on an adventure to get to the bottom of the cause for the spread of corruption that has plagued Mount Morta. As guardians of the land, they will come together as a family and look to cleanse the land of this sickness. You’ll first start out as John, the father of the group. His sword will cut down those who stand in his way, and his shield will block the advances of evil. Linda, John and Mary’s firstborn, will join soon after, putting her skills as an archer to the test. Lucy, and Kevin, both young and inexperienced, will follow, casting fire spells and twirling daggers respectively. Mark, their eldest son, will return home from his own personal adventure to aid in the family struggle, as will newcomer Joey, who’s powerful strikes with his hammer will make him the powerhouse of the team and a viable ally of cleansing the corruption.
Each time you return home, whether it’s through death or success, you’ll be treated to more family moments such as John’s brother Ben trying to reach out to his old love, Mary and John sharing a dance, or the children playing with a stray wolf cub they’ve only just rescued. It’s these moments that give the game its heart, and many of these moments can be missed should you simply burn through the adventure. This is even more apparent during the final encounter. Each time I died during the final battle, I would return home and each member of the family would display terrible nightmares. Had I defeated the final boss without dying, I would have missed these entirely. Children of Morta does a great job at offering up more story, you just need to return home as often as you can to take much of it in.
The core narrative to Children of Morta is through the family exploring and understanding the corruption that has taken over their land. During this venture, they’ll discover the long lost truth of what the corruption is, and the origins of where it came from. There is a very emotional and heartfelt story here, but I did feel that the ending had one aspect that didn’t feel right, and felt forced in how it related to one of its characters. Obviously this is a massive spoiler, so I can’t go into detail about it, but it is something that did feel unjustified and lacking.
As its story is built around the themes of family, so is its progression system as well. While each member of the family will have their own skills to reflect their weapon choices and abilities, leveling these up will also unlock passive bonuses that affect the entire family. These bonuses consist of having other family members show up for a brief moment of assistance, or lending their abilities should you perform a certain combat task. As each character gains levels and contributes gold to upgrading the stats buffs back at home, these upgrades affect the entire family and make them a much stronger force to be reckoned with. These range from boosting your damage, increasing your armor, or just earning more experience throughout your journey. While it would be something else entirely to just use a single character during much of the adventure, Dead Mage has put a system in place that weakens an overused character by reducing their max health, making it clear that you should take on another character in the meanwhile and let the other one rest for a while. This allows you to not just get familiar with another member of the family, but to level them up to unlock more and more shared perks.
As I’ve mentioned, you’ll start with John, the father of the Bergson clan. His skills are based around his sword and shield, and as you level him up, he’ll boost the overall HP of his family, to the point where you can eventually unlock constant health regeneration for any character as well. Linda uses her bow to cast down arrows at groups of enemies, and you can share some of her abilities to other family members as you level her up. Mark, the martial artist, is a fast-paced attacker with an almost homing attack series of punches. He is built mainly around evasion, and like his fellow family members, he has the ability to join them in battle for a quick attack should you hit a high enough kill streak. Kevin, who I would say is the least impressive of the bunch, attacks with close range daggers and a swirling blade attack. He also has the ability to become invisible, with various upgrades to grant his emergence from the shadows with a pretty powerful attack. Lucy, the youngest daughter, is one of my favorites due to her ability to produce a decoy, letting her freely attack nearby threats with fire that are currently occupied with her clone. By leveling her up, you can have other family members produce her decoy in battle if they perform a perfect evade. Lastly, is Joey, the hammer swinging powerhouse who can clear adds like no other. While he can be fairly slow, his reach and spread of his swings are impactful and has a dodge that harms enemies as you dash through them. And, as I’ve mentioned before, as you level up each family member, you’ll unlock numerous perks that aid and assist the entire lot.
Each character plays in very different ways due to not just their weapons and abilities, but in their movements as well. Linda and Lucy are both ranged attackers, but only Linda can move while attacking. Lucy, with her fire-wielding powers, has to remain still as she flings her firey projectiles. While this normally would be an issue as you are surrounded by numerous enemies consistently, her ability to create a decoy allows for her motionless combat to shine. As I’ve mentioned, Linda can move around as she fires off arrow after arrow, but her stamina will drain as she moves. Mark, with his martial arts, is very agile and drastically quick, making him able to fire off a series of rapid punches and can also fling himself around the environment at breakneck speeds. His attacks are mostly homing, so it’s easy enough to bridge the gap between you and your foe. John, Kevin, and Joey are your close-range fighters, each with their own series of dashes to avoid danger, with Joey having the ability for his to damage foes in his path. Each character’s attacks and movement styles will also dictate who is preferred for certain boss encounters, as my attempt at completing the first area’s end boss, a large hulking stone golem, went horribly wrong as John. As Linda, my range attacks proved fruitful and I easily cleared that challenge with just a few scratches. This swapping to family members more suited to the challenge was the key to defeating every boss that came my way.
Being a rogue-like title, you’ll lose progress in that dungeon upon death, but keep the experience and gold you’ve collected along the way. Each location is procedurally generated with a few constant rooms that’ll appear each run. There will also be side quest areas like turning on a series of pumps, or a heartbreaking one involving collecting a power core that was absolutely tragic in its completion. The combat areas themselves are random, with many a dead-end or series of puzzle rooms that have you play a game of pong or memory. Each level itself is themed around desert towns, ancient ruins, lush forest areas, or tunnels deep underground. Each location ends in a boss encounter that is based around certain gameplay elements present in those levels, whether it’s how certain enemies attack, or through tricking targeting sensors to fire missiles at enemies instead of you. The bosses themselves are cleverly designed, and the first one, a giant spider, makes it very clear you’ll need to level up your characters if you’re going to make it out alive. Another key to victory is through the disposable items you’ll equip during each run.
As you explore each dungeon, you’ll unlock gemstones that act as a currency to unlock special chests or through a merchant you’ll rescue in your travels. These special chests may just contain gold, but also like the enemies you’ll defeat, they have a chance to drop a series of special items. First, are Divine Graces, these are passive abilities such as boosting your movement speed, a chance to throw an axe while attacking, or simply just giving you more health. There is a wide range of them that truly help you in combat, especially those that grant you a companion to assist in your exploration. Divine Relics are manual abilities such as throwing down a combat totem, equipping a bubble shield, or becoming invisible for a quick sneak attack. Charms are single-use items that grant brief invincibility, granting health regeneration at the cost of less health gained through potions, or just dropping a gemstone when you truly need it. Obelisks are frequent in each dungeon and these can grant bonus exp or gold earned during a short window of time. Finally, are runes, which boost effects on your weapons and abilities such as giving your arrows poison damage, or having Joey’s hammer strike summon Lucy’s tornado’s. There is a wide range of these items and since they are random each run, this is frankly the only aspect of the game that can feel flawed in some way.
Being a procedurally generated game with random rolls on which items are going to be present or available, it’s possible to have certain runs just not offer up anything sufficient to your survival. During the final encounter, I went almost 8 runs before I was gifted anything that felt like it gave me a chance. This is generally the problem when it comes to these types of games heavily leaning on RNG, but given that some characters really look to rely on healing capabilities, it can be frustrating killing dozens of mobs around a boss and not having them drop a single health vial for your efforts. This isn’t a massive knock against the game given you can just reload that location again, but it can make some runs feel worthless apart from the gold and experience earned.
Children of Morta currently allows for 2 player local co-op, sharing the same screen with your fellow Bergson. Co-op does increase the difficulty a bit more providing additional health to bosses in particular, and sharing the same screen can make for some intense encounters when you’re both fighting on different ends of the screen. Since reward rooms only offer up a single item, you’ll need to choose who gets what upgrade and when. Co-op is certainly a fun time here but can make the game even more chaotic in sharing the same screen. 11-bit Studios, the game’s publisher, has mentioned that online co-op is eventually going to be included in a future update, but no date was given at the time.
Children of Morta is visually a fantastic experience due to its finely detailed environments and its bright and fluid character animations. Each family member is colorful and stands apart from the environment to prevent them from getting lost in the chaos. I’m not a fan of the flashy level up sequence as it can cover the entire screen, aiding in enemies getting in a few cheap hits while it’s up, but overall, the visual language of the game is right on the money and makes for a very satisfying experience. I love a lot of the small subtle animations like seeing the sand being pushed around in the wind, or the trails of dust when an old and ancient door springs to life. There is a true care and attention to detail here that shouldn’t go unnoticed.
Now, during my days leading up to the release, I’ve only had two issues regarding performance that are very minor in how they’ve affected my 20+ hours here. The main hub world that encompasses your house and all its rooms, as well as certain environments, tend to have a few horizontal white lines flickering here and there, with the odd vertical ones showing up as well. I’ve tested this on two separate TV’s and via an Xbox One X and a launch Xbox One, both having the same result. My guess is this is where certain visuals are stitched together and the white lines, which look like pixelated rain, are effectively visual glitches. Also, and this is something I’m not seeing during any PC gameplay is that upon dying, your results screen currently has a 4-5 second period of time where it just locks the game up and tabulates your rewards. Again, these issues are minor and I’m sure will be patched or addressed in the future.
Children of Morta can be very challenging given your approach to combat and who you pick for the job at hand. I’ve steamrolled over some bosses, such as one where you need to damage his missile launchers to exposed him behind a protective shield, to dying several times to one until I found the right tools for the job. The progression system, the combat, and the sense of style this game exudes is tremendous and stands out as a truly engaging experience and one of the best games I’ve played this year. Children of Morta is a sure contender for my top ten of 2019 and is a title you really need to take in.
A review code of Children of Morta was provided for the purpose of this review and played on an Xbox One X.
All screenshots were taken on an Xbox One X.