A slice of Indie: Morphblade

I really liked Gunpoint. My understanding, from reading the news around Gunpoint, was the next game by its developer was Heat Signature, which is this amazing sounding game about ... Actually go google it, but basically it's about being a little tiny space pod that slowly captures larger and larger ships, then battles with those ships, can lose those ships and so forth. I haven't read too much about it since it's like reading about Axiom Verge 2 or Double Dragon Neon 2: They will probably happen, but it is very far away from now in time and I don't want to think about being in my forties.

Regardless, apparently the developer of Gunpoint put out another game, on the third. I learned this when I was browsing through news of the Humble Bundle Monthly, which means not only did the game come out without me knowing but also entered a position of me owning it without knowing I was owning it beforehand. Which is pretty nice.



Morphblade is a turn-based puzzle game centered on your ability to morph, depending on which tile you are on, and the blade is one of the options. There are six icons to morph into, and all of them can be additionally upgraded. You fight bugs. You have a pretty limited health pool of two hits, three sometimes, and the bugs are generally limited to one hit themselves. There's a decent pool of enemies, though I don't think I've gotten all that far through the game. Maybe half? As bugs die, they upgrade the point you strike from, and also the point they perished on assuming its a non-attack type. The types are hammer, blade, acid, teleport, arrow and heal. They all behave pretty differently, so it can be a bit of a jumble.

The game is interesting in that you select which pieces are added to the board. You start with two, and it expands rapidly at first, though it slows over time. Because of the way the upgrade system works, certain combos are important to have, and shaping the board takes a bit of forethought. It is random, to a point, but there are "blank" tiles you can outright select and generally enough choices to put together the board most of the way you'd like.

Visually the game is exceedingly simple, as the screenshots attest. One thing I really like? When you fire up the game, there's no menu, you just start the game. Obviously this wouldn't work in every game forever, but seeing a developer just strip away all the BS menus and clicking at the start makes me love them so very much. Yes, it's a few extra clicks, but if I wanted to click more buttons I'd be browsing facebook not trying to game.

The game is complicated, though, and I often forget what individual tile combinations do. You can mouse over enemies to see what they do, but it's a bit annoying how visually indistinct they are from each other. Sometimes I forget the one is a shover when it's actually a laser, and so on.

My only real problem with the game is perhaps a silly one, but it has that roguelike quality of the beginning being boring set up that you can't shortcut because...? I don't know why. Yes, starting a new game is quick and easy and it takes a few minutes, but I sort of wish you could just save at 10 or 20 or whatever else instead of repeating the first 15 waves of decisions. Past that it isn't necessary, since the game gets pretty intense pretty quickly.

The other thing is that ultimately the game gets pretty samey after two hours. There's some neat decisions to be made, and realizing there are some very powerful combos made the third or so hour switch up a bit, but after a couple further "Good" runs I just got frustrated. At times you die without realizing precisely why, or frustrated with how you needed to roll a teleporter on the farside or losing tiles to exploding enemies. The latter is a design choice and one I have mixed feeling about. You can 'lose' an entire tile and all its upgrades, which can be a huge blow you might as well give up at. It's usually a mistake, on your part, but it is easy to get boxed in and not be certain what the right move is. A game having a regressive spiral is a bit of a bummer.

The game doesn't quite live up to Gunpoint, and I've read it carries DNA from other puzzle games, but I quite liked it. It's nothing groundbreaking or mind-blowing, but as unexpected surprise out of a bundle I wasn't thinking would have much after offering Total War: Warhammer. So I'd recommend it, though maybe on sale a little if you're uncertain.