Welcome to Morbid: The Seven Acolytes, an indie game developed by the Finnish studio Still Running, the studio managed to carry out an excellent adventure of exploration and demanding combat, gameplay inspired by the Souls series and dresses its appearance with an aesthetic of the most Lovecraftian. With a top view and pixel art design, this Action RPG title contains a great story that we must unravel through a hostile world. The adventure will take us to Mornia, a land full of the most grotesque horrors plagued by the evil presence of the Gahar. These evil deities have possessed seven acolytes of Mornia and wreaked chaos and destruction through promises of power. Our mission as members of the Order of Dibrom will be to deprive these demonic creatures of their hosts’ flesh and restore peace to Mornia.
Our adventure will begin in a world full of dangers that will try to end our existence. In it, we will find a great variety of enemies and bosses that will put our skills to the test. Not without first making us travel a vast world full of hidden corners and labyrinths that will provide us with equal risks and rewards. During our journey in Morbid: The Seven Acolytes will begin with our fighter regaining consciousness on the shores of Solya after a shipwreck. In this area full of treasures and enemies, we will begin to familiarize ourselves with its basic combat and inventory management mechanics. In it, we will find a sword to equip our protagonist and an assortment of objects that will help us face our first adversaries. Through some books scattered around the area, we will know the basic controls as a tutorial.
Our character has a life bar and an energy bar that will be consumed as we make attacks or dodge our enemies. A system is almost identical to the one popularized by the Souls saga in the last decade. We will also have a sanity meter reduced when we are injured or use certain objects on ourselves. When our sanity wanes, the game will become more difficult by resurrecting fallen enemies in the form of a wraith, so we must pay attention to our sanity. Unlike the Souls series, we will not lose experience or items when we die. We will return to the last altar, where we have rested. These altars serve as a control point, and we can also level up in them. But Morbid: The Seven Acolytes doesn’t have a stat-based tier system. Through the different blessings that we find on the map, we can increase different aspects of our protagonist: increase the life or energy bar, get more experience or increase the damage of our ranged weapons, among many others. Undoubtedly the part that I liked the most and in which Morbid: The Seven Acolytes shines the most is its exploration. In a totally interconnected world, we will have to explore large labyrinthine areas full of mysteries. We will have to backtrack on more than one occasion through secondary missions and thus receive juicy rewards. The game lacks any type of map, and on more than one occasion, we will have to mentally reconstruct the path taken so as not to get lost in almost all its areas.
Although the world of Mornia is full of dangers, we will also find great rewards for exploring all its paths. The game has a wide variety of unique weapons to improve with gems scattered around chests and corpses. From the beginning of our adventure, we will have an inventory that we must manage always to be equipped with the best objects that we find. On many occasions, we will have to divest ourselves of many of the weapons we carry due to the many treasures that the Morbid: The Seven Acolytes map houses. On more than one occasion, we will have to thoroughly explore certain areas to find certain bosses and sub-bosses since it is not their intention to take us by the hand. It is possibly the hardest side of the game. Thanks to the objects and enemies that we discover, we will learn more details about the world of Mornia from the Morbid Corral, a section that we will find in the altars that delves into the lore of this world. Exploring always pays off.
If you are lovers of the Lovecraft universe or David Cronenberg’s cinema, you will surely fall in love with its aesthetics. Both the enemy and boss designs are a mixture of grotesque creatures and guts that will bathe the stage in blood. With a pixel art design from an overhead view, it has animations and environmental sounds that will make our stomach turn over more than once. On the sound side, Morbid: The Seven Acolytes has an orchestral soundtrack loaded with organ sounds that will make us shudder on more than one occasion. It has great themes for your boss battles that add extra tension making your encounters memorable.
Final Thoughts
In short, if you are a fan of the Soulslike genre and you like the Lovecraft universe, I can only recommend playing Morbid: The Seven Acolytes. It is a demanding adventure based on combat and exploration where you can face all its challenges in different ways thanks to its varied system of weapons and improvements. With a duration that can take between 10 and 15 hours depending on your level at the controls and desire to explore its convoluted world. A design and music that will make you dive into the adventure and a fascinating story.
We prepared this review with a digital review copy for the PS4 version of the title provided by Evolve PR
