Crawl in to the dungeons with the family Bergsons, the protectors of Mt. Morta. Children of Morta is another pixel art style rogue like, but will it’s unique story and RPG mechanics get it’s hooks into our newest reviewer Mark? Find out in his Children of Morta Switch Review.

To note, a review code was supplied via Terminals.io.

A New-Fangled Roguelike.

Children Of Morta is one of those new-fangled roguelikes. You could be forgiven for crushing a grape in the palm of your hand on hearing that; isn’t every indie a roguelike in these dark times? But if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to reflect on just how much of a weird thing they are. One element in particular breaks me a little bit every time: the necessity of death. And Children Of Morta is no different.

Without lots of deaths you really won’t get very far. As a gamer in my thirties, I’ve grown up with games that were possible to complete without dying. Not that it happened very often, but it at least was possible. Imagine trying to get Mario all the way to Bowser knowing that you’d inevitably die and start back at level one, only being able to progress by sending the fella on new runs, collecting permanent power-ups for the next run, so that eventually he’d be powerful enough to beat the big ugly lizard! It’s crazy, but it’ll probably happen one day. And here I’ll be, shouting at clouds.

Children Of Morta, however, is really very good at being a roguelike. To start with, it looks beautiful. It’s another stunning pixel-art game in the vein of Hyper Light Drifter,with, it must be said, a similar palette. The game opens onto the beautiful village that acts as the hub, where you can select a dungeon, upgrade your characters, read up in the library; you know, all the usuals. But Children Of Morta has an ace up its sleeve. Let me explain.

If a Rogue-Like and RPG had a Baby.

Possibly uniquely – I’ve not encountered it before – Children Of Morta entertains and informs with little cut scenes of dialogue in-between runs. NPCs and playable characters might have new things to say, side-quests to mention, quest items to activate etc. The sense of a living, breathing environment, giving your dungeon crawls purpose, definitely helps to encourage that all-important motivation; okay just one more run. It’s as if a rogue-like and an RPG had a baby…

Even more importantly, the runs have to be entertaining in themselves. And yes, for the most part, they very much are. The gameplay is your classic top-down dungeon crawler, think Diablo. And just like that behemoth of a franchise, here you have a variety of combat builds to choose from, in the form of different members of the family – there’s classic sword and shield, there’s twin-stick style ranged combat, there’s fast twin daggers stuff, and you unlock more family members as you progress. Each character has their own specific skill-tree, but where Children Of Morta is different is that the characters gets fatigued if your keep using them, meaning that you are required to learn and appreciate different combat skills. Initially I found this annoying – who doesn’t want to keep using their fave – until I realised how clever it is. How many games do we play and never experience the other characters or builds available? Neatly too, a lot of the level up options will up-skill the other family members, so it doesn’t ever feel like a waste of time learning the others.

As you crawl your way through the dungeons, you’ll find various side-quests, quest items, and other temporary or permanent upgrades. These are randomly generated for each run, which adds spice and interest. Particularly surprising was the Pong style mini-game. All the side tasks will provide benefits to you, which is handy because Children Of Morta is very difficult.

The Rogue-Like Debate…

I can safely say that Children Of Mortais one of the hardest games I’ve played in a while. If, like me, you have trouble with twin-stick shooter games, you may want to pause before picking this up. All I can say is: thank Cthulhu for the permanent upgrades because there’s no way I would’ve made it anywhere without them.

Which brings me back to the roguelike debate. I’ve been mulling it over. Do I want to be doing run after run, slowly getting better? Why do I find it different from being underpowered at the beginning of any game? If I could add roguelike elements to near-impossible classics like Ghouls And Ghosts would I want that? You’re going to have to leave me to this argument with myself. However you feel though, I feel safe declaring Children Of Mortais a fabulous addition to the dungeon crawling genre, and another feather in the cap for roguelikes and indie games in general.

Summary

Overall, I’ve enjoyed my time with the game and enjoy writing this Children of Morta Switch review. It adds some excellent quality of life elements to both roguelikes and dungeon crawlers to make them more palatable. It looks and sounds awesome. There’s a lot of dungeons and content to get through. It makes you care about the world and the characters. I’ve given it 8, but it could easily be 9 or 10 if you have more patience with roguelikes. Go on, add it to the backlog.

Therefore, I give Children of Morta by Dead Mage and 11 Bit Studios my rating of

What did you think of Mark’s Children of Morta Switch Review? Are you a rogue-like fan, will you be picking the game up? If so will it be digital or physical? Let us know over on Twitter or come and join the SIF Discord server!

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