Detail Title Morphite Format PS4, XBO, Switch, PC, iOS Launch October 2017 Developer We're Five Games Publisher Crescent Moon Games
Cover artwork
(The game is currently a download only release)
Background
Morphite is an atmospheric exploration sci-fi shooter with platforming elements.
Your goal is to explore the galaxy, research plants and animals, battle hostile entities, and unravel a mystery surrounding a rare material called Morphite. Morphite is set to be a deep and enriching single player experience with both a story-driven plot as well as open-ended, player-driven exploration and discovery.
The story of Morphite takes place in a far off future when humanity has long since populated the distant reaches of space. The player takes on the role of Myrah Kale, a young woman residing on a space station and workshop under the care of her surrogate father, Mr. Mason. What starts as a simple exploratory mission to gather supplies to support their shop rapidly turns into a journey revealing Myrah’s unknown past and her relationship to a rare, coveted, and nearly extinct material called Morphite.
In order to unlock and understand the mysteries of her past, Myrah must travel to undiscovered planets, roam uncharted sectors of space, and confront exotic creatures and locales in search of this Morphite.
Aside from the main storyline, the worlds of Morphite are randomly generated. Encounter various creature types, landscapes, caves, rivers, and more to explore. Explore space stations, abandoned or infested with alien life.
I've only just started this game; I've put in around thirty minutes so far. I decided to download it because I was intrigued by the gameplay thoughts shared by our own OrangeRakoon.
At this early stage, I'm pretty impressed. It seems to fuse elements of No Man's Sky alongside some simple FPS action. It has obviously been built to a budget; the graphics are basic and presentation is bare but, in my view, it's attractive and effective. I think that there are planets that have been designed by the developer to enable the core storyline, but there are plenty of randomly-created planets to visit, too.
I'm playing it on Switch and I'm finding the performance to be fine. I'm glad that I took a leap into this adventure (thanks, OR!) and I plan to get into it more over the weekend.
So... OR is playing it and I'm starting out... is any other GRcadian thinking about giving it a go?
I played a little more this afternoon - about an hour - and I’m really getting into it. The soundtrack is excellent; simple but so effective in creating a sense of mystery. The movement of creatures and people can sometimes go wrong (they end up stuck in corners or move haphazardly) but I guess that’s down to a combination of low budget and the emergent nature of the game.
There are some oddities in the game and it’s not always clear on what you’re meant to do but, for me, the feel and charm of the game allows me to over-look those aspects. It’s great fun and I plan on playing more later tonight.
I've already posted some impressions in the NMS thread, but I'll follow up a little here. I'm still playing the game and I'm really enjoying it
still wrote:Website wrote:-
"It is lovingly inspired by classics – Metroid Prime, Ratchet and Clank, and Turok."
Sounds interesting.
I've only really played much of Prime 3, but there are similarities. From the superficial - you are playing as a woman in an upgradeable suit who travels between oft-deserted planets - to a few more specific comparisons. The game has metroidvania aspects, with certain suit upgrades (like heat and cold resistance, or toxin resistance) required to explore certain planets, and areas of other planets being accessible only with certain weapons - for example (and most commonly) using grenades which you get early on to blast through cracked walls. I have yet to get the item required, but there are also walls/doors that look suspiciously like morph-ball entrances - we'll see what they eventually end up being. Perhaps where the game is most reminiscent of Metroid however (and this shows my Prime 3 bias) is when flying in to a new planet. A camera shot shows your solitary ship flying in towards the sphere of the planet as the name appears and the minimal music plays out in the background, and you get a sense of that lonely space-level exploration.
The Ratchet and Clank influence is most obvious in the side quests, where the game is at its most wacky and you often come across alien folk in humorous situations that would feel at home in the Ratchet universe. There are superficial similarities akin to the Metroid ones too - your home is an engineering workshop, and your sidekick is a small intelligent robot that makes wisecracks. Throughout the story missions you get quite a bit of back-and-forth between him and the main character, and it's definitely reminiscent of Ratchet and Clank.
As for turok - it's a first person shooter where you are often shooting dinsoaurs. What more needs to be said?
OrangeRakoon wrote:Love my feature in the OP, great stuff Jawa
I've already posted some impressions in the NMS thread, but I'll follow up a little here. I'm still playing the game and I'm really enjoying it
still wrote:Website wrote:-
"It is lovingly inspired by classics – Metroid Prime, Ratchet and Clank, and Turok."
Sounds interesting.
I've only really played much of Prime 3, but there are similarities. From the superficial - you are playing as a woman in an upgradeable suit who travels between oft-deserted planets - to a few more specific comparisons. The game has metroidvania aspects, with certain suit upgrades (like heat and cold resistance, or toxin resistance) required to explore certain planets, and areas of other planets being accessible only with certain weapons - for example (and most commonly) using grenades which you get early on to blast through cracked walls. I have yet to get the item required, but there are also walls/doors that look suspiciously like morph-ball entrances - we'll see what they eventually end up being. Perhaps where the game is most reminiscent of Metroid however (and this shows my Prime 3 bias) is when flying in to a new planet. A camera shot shows your solitary ship flying in towards the sphere of the planet as the name appears and the minimal music plays out in the background, and you get a sense of that lonely space-level exploration.
The Ratchet and Clank influence is most obvious in the side quests, where the game is at its most wacky and you often come across alien folk in humorous situations that would feel at home in the Ratchet universe. There are superficial similarities akin to the Metroid ones too - your home is an engineering workshop, and your sidekick is a small intelligent robot that makes wisecracks. Throughout the story missions you get quite a bit of back-and-forth between him and the main character, and it's definitely reminiscent of Ratchet and Clank.
As for turok - it's a first person shooter where you are often shooting dinsoaurs. What more needs to be said?
On the strength of that Orange, I think I'm going got have to give this a go. Got to 'finish' Stardew first though so could be a good while...
still wrote:On the strength of that Orange, I think I'm going got have to give this a go. Got to 'finish' Stardew first though so could be a good while...
I have liked Orange’s write-ups, too, and they were a big factor in my decision to dive into the game. For an indie game developed on a small budget, it is very nice and, as the game progresses, I’m enjoying the different features and elements that are introduced.
It is basic in many areas; the graphics use very low numbers of polygons (but are still attractive in most scenes) and the slow, exploration-focused style of the game may not suit all tastes. Personally, I love it - all the more so because it turned up as a surprise.
stilll, I look forward to hearing what you think of it - although that could be some time off if you’re going to ‘finish’ your work in the Valley first .
Ad7 wrote:...Is the switch version's frame rate as bad as that video makes it look?
Uhm... I’m not sure, Ad - I haven’t got an eye For frame rates. When playing I haven’t noticed anything intrusive.
During play last evening I spotted some clunky aspects. Save points are odd; it is an automatic process and only done when you reach a certain point in play. I spent a while wandering around an area, doing s few things and then I quit the game. Upon re-starting I had to do a few things again because I hadn't reached a checkpoint to instigate a game save. It wasn’t too much but it made me be careful about when to quit. When a checkpoint is reached, you can quit and then, when re-starting, you are asked if you want to continue from that checkpoint it start the planet afresh.
Scanning can sometimes be awkward. Flora is a piece of cake but fauna is tricky. Creatures move around pretty much constantly and, as there is no lock facility, you can’t scan them. However, I then tried slowly approaching them whilst scanning and that often worked.
Despite these issues, I’d still say that this will be hugely enjoyable for folk looking for a slow-paced, explorative game. I feel that my initial suggestion of “simplified No Man’s Sky” is pretty accurate regarding overall gameplay; the planets (areas) are a lot smaller and the scope is far less ambitious, but the gameplay has similarities. That may well put some folk off but, hopefully, others will appreciate its charms.
So I finished the story last night. I couldn't tell you how many hours, but a good amount - I'll let you know when I've owned the game long enough for my Switch to give me a number.
I really enjoyed the game (and I'm still playing - I have some sidequests left and 5 trinkets left to collect), but probably more helpful is to post my main criticisms.
1) The controls can be fiddly. Aiming at enemies is trivial because of the lock-on, but shooting objects (like chests, mineral deposits or switches) can be fiddly. It suffers from the classic fine adjustment issues of many FPS games, where you end up moving your character in game to aim just as much as the aiming reticule. Switching weapons/equipment also gets worse as the game goes on. Rather than opt for a weapon select wheel, it's just a vertical list that (when full) spans the height of the screen. There are a few shortcuts on the d-pad, pressing down to switch between the most recently used 2 weapons, but it could be a much quicker and smoother experience - especially as you may be wanting to switch between your gun and scanner very frequently.
2) It's very, very easy to accidentally sequence break the story missions. This will probably lead to some brilliant speedrunning opportunities, but multiple times I accidentally skipped sections of levels. You get an eye in for the level design, so as long as you commit to trying to follow the intended path you're mostly okay, but it can be frustrating when the signposting isn't great. This is especially bad if (like me) you get a lot of the upgrades, as these can make sequence breaking even easier - like extending your jump height or being able to grapple from much further than intended. Towards the end of the game you get the ability to create platforms, which can be abused from that point on to literally get anywhere. I just mostly ignored it when working through the rest of the levels so that I didn't miss out on the intended design. Basically, rather than going through the levels thinking "how do I proceed", you end up thinking "well obviously I could just jump up there, but how am I /supposed/ to do it?".
3) It's too easy. Especially if you over-level very early like I did, every enemy encounter and boss fight becomes trivial. The bosses are cool, but I was just killing them in literal seconds, not even worrying about their attack patterns or anything else. I'm very tempted to play through the game again but just doing the story, and I think it will be significantly better balanced (and help with the sequence breaking too). I imagine that's how many people would play the game, so mileage will vary. If you're a dedicated "do everything before moving on" person though, or just like exploring, expect to become fully upgraded long before reaching the story end.
4) It's not bug free. I had a couple of complete crashes (I think about 4 in total), and had to reload one time because I got stuck in a wall. Annoyingly I also died at a critical point in one sidequest that made it uncompletable, and even abandoning it didn't make it reappear. On the plus side, after tweeting the devs they let me know a future update (coming to iOS very soon, I think unfortunately Switch has to wait) will make quests replayable, which will hopefully fix that for me.
tl;dr it comes with all the jankiness you might expect from an indie iOS port
That probably balances out my otherwise gushing praise for the game to give a fairer opinion!
That seems like a pretty fair round-up of the negative aspects, Orange. I'm only about 2.5 hours in (I think) but I'm really enjoying it so far. There seems to be a lot more to it then it seems when you start out. Glad I picked it up on your recommendation .