Children of Morta

Children of Morta is a game where story and gameplay have both seen great care during development. Playing as one (or two; the game features local co-op) of the Bergson family is a treat for shorter or longer sessions. Each has their own unique skill set and each has their own unique personality - complementing each other. The game manages to balance story and gameplay nicely, giving you those focused, temp-filled gameplay moments, while also supplying both shorter and some more moderate length story elements. It always feels like there's something new around the corner, and going back to visit an old zone, playing as another family member, can be quite the treat every once in a while. That said, the game is not flawless, you might like a Bergsons' personality but not their skill set, and there's not any drastic customization available for how each character plays.If you are loathe to backtrack, something the game expects you to do every once in a while, or if you dislike having to play different classes/characters, then know those are a part of gameplay. Luckily, the GoG return policy lets you figure that out if these things will prevent you from enjoying the game. The issues (the few there are) make themselves known early on. For my part, I find that coming home from work, and playing a quick backtrack to warm up, and a then going for some story progression with my favourite character, is the perfect break after a stressful day. My 3 good & 3 bad: Great art! Well paced and engaging story. Solid gameplay that expands over time - "easy to play but hard to master". Gameplay can be a little repetitive. Sometimes story cutscenes don't work quite as they should (patch incoming?). Skilltrees are interesting, but don't allow you to drastically change how a character plays. I recommend this game to pretty much everyone who enjoys relatively fast paced action gaming and/or storydriven games. See you at the top, hero!

I got this game for free when I bought another because of a promotion. I looked at the screenshots on the store page and they didn't appeal to me (I'm not a big fan of Pixelart). I glanced over the reviews there and they convinced me to at least give it a try. 30 minutes later I was hooked and I regret not having tried it sooner. This game quickly made it to my top 3 of 2020. The story and lore are great (the narration especially is top notch), many different characters that play very differently and you get rewarded to play them all with "Family buffs". There's a ton of different relic/items/runes to find to make each run unique and interesting. The upgrade system is for all characters and has a meaningful impact with each point you buy, making grinding that much more worth it. I could go on, but the best way to understand the true value of this game is for you to try it yourself. There's way more to it than screenshots can demonstrate ;)

It plays like one part of the devs wanted to tell a story, and the others wanted to make an action game. The result is a roguelite where your flow gets interrupted every few minutes by cutscenes(not all of them are skippable). And that is the game's biggest problem: Unlike Bastion, storytelling and actually playing the game are handled as two separate things alltogether. When the narrator starts talking, you stop walking. This could be overlooked if the combat was awsome, but that experience depends mostly on your chosen character. It's great that all of the chars play differently, and that is on of the games strengths, but that also means that some are objectively better than others, with some pretty much useless in hard/NG+. In a game where you get swarmed by enemies or offscreened by archers, standing still is an especially bad idea when you have low attack range and relay on many fast hits. Recommended when you are in for the story and presentation, but there are a lot of better roguelites out there. P.S.: That screeching sound of the corrupted enemies gets grating really really fast.

Rougelike ARPG with good core game mechanics. It presents a nice story about a family, told by a commentator. The pixel art style ranges from good to fantastic. In every story driven part the designers really put in a lot of effort and it looks georgeous. The music fits well and the sound overall is good too. For some reason the purple demons death sound always just comes from the left but thats the only bug I found. :D It took me 17 hours to finish the story. Seemingly can keep playing the previous dungeons and level all your chracters.

I have a love/hate relationship with rouglike games, i loved enter the gungeon but have not liked almost any other game in this category. However this game is amazing, the gameplay is ok, it's not quite as good as Diablo 2 when it comes to the dungeon crawling but the story is engaging and will probaby keep me playing untill i have finished this game.