Quasimorphosis: Exordium is a free roguelike that was released on Steam for a few weeks ago. I have invested a few hours into it, and I thought I would give my impressions. I’m not a rougelike expert in any way, it’s not a genre that I have my eyes on. The only experience I have from the genre is playing Dwarf Fortress in adventure mode. And while I think it’s similar, it’s probably not really the same. So, going by roguelike standards, I do not know how well this game performs, unfortunately. The visual style it’s a mix between X-com, and Doom, all in pixel glory. Some clear inspirations to the story, and setting must be Event Horizon, and the Alien movies considering the theme. So far, so good, I would say.
In the future, instead of governments ruling over us corporations have taken over that role. Thanks to its infinite greed, we have come in contact with demonic forces near Saturn. You play as a random PMC (several actually) with the mission of figuring out what went wrong with the space station orbiting Saturn, and of course exterminate all threats.
The game is turn-based, with systems of fairly realistic line of sight, damage and health management which makes for a really tense experience. Wounds will hurt, both for you, and your enemies. One of the cool aspects of the game is that when you get wounded, you must treat the wound with medical equipment of different quality – some treatments work better than others for certain wounds. It’s extremely tense, especially when you get hurt in combat and are about to bleed out, but still have demons coming after you. Your character starts with random equipment, and it’s all up to you to scavenge for better stuff in the sense of weapons, armor, and equipment. There is of course an RNG factor to all this, but in my hours playing it, it hasn’t frustrated me. Some times you get lucky, and some times you only have a baton when facing down xenomorphs. Just be prepared to die A LOT!
There are also some story nuggets to unlock here, but the focus seems to be on the awesome combat. You can find different terminals around the space station that have small collections of information. It works, even if not so deep maybe, yet it adds to the immersion.
All in all, my impressions are good, and I’m having fun. It’s very fast-paced for being turn-based, but I got to admit it gets a bit repetitive, especially when you keep dying, forcing you to restart constantly. I can see myself playing it in small sessions though, an hour here, and an hour there. I do think some form of coop could have been fun, but I’m not sure how common that is to the roguelike genre. Furthermore, I, of course, will be recommending Quasimorphosis: Exordium and since it’s free you can’t really go wrong. What I have read, and don’t quote me on this, is that apparently this is some kind of prologue for a bigger release coming in the future. I guess we will all have to wait and see!
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Blog 