Children of Morta

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Children of Morta

by Aethyna Oct 29, 2019 | 1 Votes | 72 Played | 0 Reviews

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10 rate

Genres:

Action , RPG

Graphics:

2D

Labels:

Fantasy Setting , Roguelike/roguelite , Dungeon Crawler

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11 Bit Studios Children of Morta is a top-down, rogue-lite dungeon crawler that features breathtaking pixel graphics, an immersive storyline, and an intense, skill-based hack-and-slash gameplay that comes with an impressive range of skills, abilities, and characters for you to play around with. Are you ready to help the Bergsons take on the corruption? Play Now Similar Games Played Post a Review

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Community Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Without a doubt, Children of Morta is one of our breakout indie games of the year 2019! It is a top-down, rogue-lite dungeon crawler that features breathtaking pixel graphics, an immersive storyline, and an intense, skill-based hack-and-slash gameplay that comes with an impressive range of skills, abilities, and characters for you to play around with. Dive into the world of Rea now and help the Bergsons take on the corruption that threatens to cast the realm into a never-ending shroud of darkness!

Plotline

The Bergson has always kept the world safe from the corruption in their devoted worship of the goddess and daughter of the land, of the world, Rea, and a being of comfort, Rea-Dana. However, every once in a while, the corruption rears its ugly head and is back hungrier than ever to consume the world with its unending and relentless army of sludge creatures, and to plunge Rea into eternal darkness.

In this game, you’ll play as a member of the heroic Bergson family who is willing to lay down his or her life to ascend Mount Morta, seek out the heart of the corruption, and put a stop to it before it’s too late.

With quality writing, in-depth lore, and superb voice acting to help set the scene and move the plot forward, playing Children of Morta and experiencing the story first-hand feels a lot like my own experience playing the first Diablo game for the very first time, years ago. As you progress, you’ll get to uncover new bits of story and sometimes, along with it, some new features or characters that you can then play as.

Gameplay

To start playing, the game provides you with a simple and very straightforward tutorial where you’re not only introduced to the movement controls (WASD) but also special abilities that you can acquire as you play in addition to your character’s two main basic skills (three if your character has a shield).

Children of Morta is a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler, the combat in this game is rather action-based. You’re expected to avoid dangerous projectiles (or any dangers in general) using well-timed dodges or simply by running and kiting the mobs, and of course, hack at the enemies with your sword or pit them with arrows in order to slay them and get some loot, depending on which character you play as.

The game offers a nice variety of characters which will gradually be unlocked as you develop the story further. However, pretty much right from the get-go, you should already have access to two characters – one ranged and one melee, with a third character being unlocked within the first two to three hours (or so) of your playthrough.

Now, although each character has their respective skill trees with branching skills to unlock as well as uniquely-different play styles, this doesn’t mean that they are “locked” that way. The game comes up with three different special abilities, namely the Divine Grace, Divine Relic, and Charm, that you can randomly acquire every time you head into the caves to try your luck.

Both Divine Relic and Charm are active abilities that you can only have one of each of, while Divine Grace is the passive ability that stacks so basically, as long as you can find/loot them, you can have as many of them as you want. These abilities are a crucial part of the gameplay and without them, you probably won’t be able to go very far in the game.

However, since the drops are random, you wouldn’t know which abilities you’d get, and contrary to what most players believe, what abilities you get in your dungeon run will heavily affect the outcome. It’s not that some abilities are better than others – there’s some of that but it’s not your main concern here; it is the fact that certain abilities work better with your playstyle than others. So, luck plays quite a sizeable role in this game in this respect.

Being a rogue-lite, the dungeon levels in the game is also designed to be “short and sweet”. Most dungeon level takes only around 30 minutes or so to clear, but of course, as the levels get harder, you might find yourself spending increasingly more time to find the entrance to the next part of the cave. As with its gameplay, each level has its own up and down moments (for your adrenaline levels) so you’ll be allowed a breather especially after you’ve cleared a section of the cave but before opening the gate to the next section.

The creatures in the world of Rea are very well-varied too. In addition to spiders that can spawn smaller and much faster spiders, skeletons that can be pretty tanky, and bats that will dive-attack you as they fly past, you’ll even encounter challenging elite creatures – they have a yellowish glow and have a special hard-hitting ability, and bosses that guard the entrance to the next part of the cavern. Fights would still be reasonably difficult even if you know the “patterns” of the boss fight or the ability that the elite mob has.

To keep things fresh and fun, Children of Morta also includes several different types of puzzles and mini-games that you can play to earn your special loot, whether it is a Divine Grace, Divine Relic or a Charm. The game expects you to figure out how to solve the puzzles on your own, with little to no hand-holding, and considering that some puzzles are more punishing than others, you might end up losing a ton of health just by solving one.

Once you’re in, you can’t back out of a puzzle either… unless you die that is, so be sure to keep an eye out for signs in the environment and only enter a puzzle room when you’re truly ready.

Children of Morta is a very well-made game. From my playthrough, I have not encountered a single bug or glitch, and I’m pretty confident that I won’t find any even as I conclude my playthrough. This is a very commendable mainly because there are just way too many games that are rushed out of the gate, just filled with bugs – some even game-breaking ones - that the developers end up not patching up because it’s “too much trouble” to do so.

Community

Children of Morta is designed for local co-op play – this is evident when you’re choosing your character - and naturally, it’d be best if you could grab a friend to join you, but you can still have a whole lot of fun just if you playing the game by yourself. However, I should mention that I wasn’t able to test this co-op feature out and hence, have no idea how well the co-op part of the game works.

Graphics/ Sound

You’ve probably heard of the saying that the art makes or breaks a game… well, in Children of Morta’s case, it definitely “makes” the game because it’s essentially the game’s very essence. Not only is the pixel art refreshingly unique and gorgeous-looking; the animations in this game are very well done too. Children of Morta also contains some quality music and sound, and I’d like to specially commend the developers/publishers for getting a professional voice actor (probably a veteran in the industry) to lay down the foundations of the story in its introduction. I’ve heard enough cringe-worthy voice acting to really appreciate a good voice work when I hear one.

Conclusion

In short, Children of Morta is definitely our pick for one of the best indie games to be released in 2019. The game pays homage to classic dungeon crawlers with its somewhat fast-paced but skill-based hack-and-slash gameplay; an astounding story about the world and the family of people you’ll be playing as; and breathtaking pixel art and sound that help to bring the fictional world and the beings in it into life.

If you’re a fan of story-driven dungeon crawlers with roguelike/rogue-lite aspects, Children of Morta simply has to be on your radar, if it’s not already in your Steam library, all installed and ready for you to play it.