Morsels provides a ton of moments of surprise and delight through its chaotic art style and surprisingly weird mini-games, but an uneven difficulty and overly obtuse items leave a bad aftertaste. While the selection of Morsels you can wield contains some incredibly fun options, there are just as many misses, and far fewer than I initially expected.
Morsels
Developer: Furcula
Price: $15
Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC (reviewed)
The publisher provided a Steam code for review
Morsels is a colorful and chaotic action roguelike, where you have to use the leftover scraps of magic in the world to take down the cats who have hoarded the best magic for themselves. You can hold up to three Morsels, which you can swap between freely. Each Morsel has its own attacks and specials, along with an evolved version you can get by earning enough XP.
The Morsels don’t feel like they range too wildly, but some feel far more cumbersome to use than others. My favorite was the rock Morsel, which could roll at high speeds around the map, dealing damage by steering into someone or dodging into them. The high speed felt right for the winding levels, which feel like Sonic levels that constantly push you forward, but in a more top-down 2D-style. This level design lets you fly through sections, which feels great in the moment, although you end up missing a ton of secrets.
Some Morsels aren’t as useful, though. One wields a Volleyball that deals high damage, but must be retrieved before attacking again. The special attack teleports you to the ball, but when it’s on cooldown, chasing down the ball feels like far too big a trade-off, especially as you are dealing with large groups of enemies barreling in on you. The amount of damage being dealt also feels like it ranges wildly, with a leaf Morsel that shoots a laser beam feeling like it did nothing, while the rock Morsel feels unstoppable. Another level of explosives is behind them constantly, but you can hurt yourself, which happened immediately while trying to dodge the onslaught of projectiles.
The primary levels have painted arrows pointing to the ladder at the end. There are tons of secrets to find, primarily items and special rooms. The special rooms are engaging, with a small challenge that offers a reward at the risk of taking unnecessary damage and losing one of the three hearts each Morsel has.
When it came to items around the map, I quickly found myself avoiding them. The main reason is that Morsels doesn’t provide any information when you pick up an item, regardless of its type. For character boosts and other pick-ups, this isn’t too frustrating, but there are also some items that you have to physically carry around, preventing you from attacking while holding them. As much as I wanted to find out what these items did, carrying around an item that I didn’t know what it was or what it was for made it quite easy to leave behind once I dropped it for combat.
Combat in Morsels can spike wildly in terms of difficulty. Some enemies have slow attacks and take very little damage to defeat, while others can be immediately overwhelmed with attacks. You don’t have much room for error, and it often feels overly punishing. There was an option to lower the difficulty–along with a harder difficulty after beating a run–but that didn’t feel necessary once I made it to a boss fight.
When Morsels Hit — And When They Miss
The boss fights in Morsels are overly easy, and despite there only being four in the game, they feel similar. Each boss fight has a big blob in the middle, spinning some projectiles around it, and rolling around the arena. This wouldn’t be as noticeable if it weren’t so easy to avoid the attacks and deal damage to them. The vast majority of my failed runs came during the in-between levels, not the boss fights, which meant my patience ran out much faster.
In between each level, there is a random event, where you are often presented with a choice of what to do. Sometimes that choice is between an easy fight and a hard fight for better rewards, but plenty of them are simply about whether to do a minigame. The mini-games in Morsels are far more engaging than I expected. Some of the ones I played had similar ideas but played a bit differently. One has you on a six-lane track, avoiding incoming monsters while collecting diamonds, while another has you catching diamonds in a small arena and depositing them in goals. The track mini-game has a minimal 2D style, where a single line drawing enemy will move across the screen, while the other one has an early 3D era feel.
Another random event type punishes you for not obtaining a special currency. The special currency comes primarily from the special rooms, but if you don’t have one handy, you may be punished. The best example is the stork, which will take one of your Morsels if you don’t have any currency on you. Morsels’ look is its best aspect, with a grungy, gross 2D style that feels like a bad trip. It uses light CRT filters and lines to give its modern, Adult Swim-inspired, gross cartoon a real old-school feel.
The Final Word
Morsels has an incredible look and style, but it’s uneven across the board. The difficulty ranges wildly from levels to boss fights, the Morsels themselves range from utterly useless to feeling overpowered, and there aren’t as many as I would want for a game where you have to do multiple runs. Interacting with items in each level is far too tedious to make them worth engaging with, even if the secrets themselves are special if you do actually find them.
MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average
