My 8 year old daughter and I play this game. She loves it. Great bonding time after homework. Mom yells at us to go to bed. I couldn't imagine playing a game like this with my dad when I was her age. I hope we still play MP when she's older. Great characters to choose from for your play style. Beautiful pixel art (my thing). You can save a puppy (her thing). Single player is fun and a relaxing 30 min after a hard day of work as well. Love this game.

Children of Morta is a Hack and Slash Action Roguelite in which you control one of several available characters, members of the Bergson family, to fight your way through procedurally generated layouts of the various dungeons. Depending on the Bergson you're using, the gameplay is either typical Hack and Slash combat or takes on qualities of a Twin-stick shooter. The pillars of the gameplay are exploration, combat and character upgrades, with the occasional addition of optional mini-games.

• Exploration:
  After choosing which Bergson to control, you get dropped into a dungeon that is randomly generated and has a lot of branching paths, secrets to uncover, temporary upgrades, environmental traps, and challenge rooms. You have a mini-map as well as a full map that gets unveiled as you discover more areas and it's up to you whether or not you want to uncover it all before you move on to the next stage. Since healing is limited and the enemy encounters can be quite tough, exploring a dungeon fully is a bit of a risk/reward system, as you run into more opportunities to be worn down and killed but also increase your chances of finding more upgrades, while gathering more experience and Morv (the currency). Completing the entire map can make a run last up to two hours.
  
  
• Combat:
  Combat in Children of Morta is very diverse as each of the playable Bergsons represents a different RPG-typical class. Where John, the father, represents the classic Warrior archetype, fighting with a sword and a shield, Linda, the second-oldest child, introduces the Twin-stick shooter mechanics as the Archer archetype. The other members of the Bergson household are unlocked one by one as the story progresses and add the Assassin, Brawler, Mage and Berserker classes in that order. Each of them has something unique about their gameplay but the basics are always the same - run, dodge, attack and two unlockable active battle abilities, as well as different gadgets you can acquire within each run.
  
  
• Upgrades:
  As the game belongs to the Roguelite-subgenre, you have several permanent and temporary (per-run) means to upgrade your characters, however in this game a strong focus is put on the family bonds between the Bergsons. As you improve a Bergson's skill tree, you will unlock certain perks that affect the entire family, meaning it is strongly encouraged to train at least some of the characters, if not all to unlock more perks.
  
  
• Mini-games:
  Throughout your exploration of the different dungeons, you may come across the occasional mini-game, presenting an optional risk/reward scenario. These mini-games are basically challenge rooms where you can gain a prize and/or a punishment in the form of a horde of enemies or an instant loss of a portion of your health.
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124979933

Levels in Children of Morta get progressively more difficult and often make leaps between different areas. While the challenge is mostly welcome, you do not improve any Bergson that isn't participating in the missions, meaning that if you used Linda to unlock the next level, nobody else gathered experience for it, making them vastly underpowered for the new missions, resulting in the need to grind, but which also incentivizes using all characters.


The game tells the story of the Bergson family, descendants of a fated family of protectors, who fight back the creeping corruption of their world. It focuses very strongly on the bonds between the family members and their individual strengths and weaknesses and it offers a lot of optional side-content, exploring other stories and expanding the family. The cut-scenes are beautifully animated with those tiny pixelated faces conveying tons of emotions somehow, and while the characters are silent, the narrator and the music evoke a wide range of emotions while telling you everything you need to know.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124978126

Children of Morta offers wonderfully animated pixel-sprites in a world that comes to life with wind effects, falling leaves and many more environmental effects. Even the color palette contributes to the dark atmosphere and it is daunting to see how the hub area transforms over time as corruption takes a hold.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124977273

The soundtrack for this game is instrumental for the most part and manages fairly well to be evocative of a melancholic mood that fits the plot. Based on the situation, the music changes accordingly, with soothing, calm notes playing in the hub area, somewhat more menacing music during the dungeons, a frantic, epic and almost desperate tune for boss encounters and a light-hearted, hopeful guitar-only melody in safe zones within the dungeons.

To the developers:
Release the Soundtrack as low-priced DLC - I'm sure a lot of players, including me, would love to own it.

Fans of Hack and Slash and/or Dungeon Crawler games like Diablo II, Hades or Heroes of Hammerwatch, as well as fans of Pixel Graphics and story-rich games are almost guaranteed to find something to like here, as long as they come prepared to grind.


The game isn't very demanding by nature of the 2D graphics and the top-down perspective and I have experienced no frame-drops, stuttering or other performance issues, whatsoever.

Tested with the following setup:

🔀 Supports [Alt]+[Tab]: Excellently

Classic / Add-ons only:
Buy the game, play the game.
No paid DLCs, items, loot boxes so far.
One paid Story expansion planned.

If you are into story-rich games and don't mind the Roguelite model, you owe it to yourself to play this game. With its wonderful visual style, beautifully told story about family bonds and defying a dark fate, pleasant narration, amazing soundtrack and responsive and challenging gameplay, Children of Morta has all the ingredients to keep you glued to the screen for hours upon hours, while the different perks give you an incentive to play with all of the characters at least a little. Add in local and remote co-op play and you have yourself some GOTY-material.

The Bergsons well knew that even in the darkest of hours the Devils in the Detail would always shine a light with reviews that were free from the corruption.

for the random dude that likes to buy random games on a impulse. this is a decent pick up.

Children of Morta is the definition of a good small indie game. This relatively story-heavy rogue-like is modest in scope (three worlds, each with 2-3 levels/bosses), but makes up for it with clear focus.

The core idea is that you play as a family of heroes, each with their own abilities. As heroes level up, they unlock abilities buffing the whole family, thus creating very steady progress. As befits a rogue-like, you will often die, yet rare runs feel like complete failures.

Additionaly, you find secrets, items, and small stories in levels, and the main story, a charming tale of familial love, progresses after every boss beaten. Combined together, these create a fluid and natural flow. The fights themselves are engaging too: while enemy and hazard variety is limited, each hero plays sufficiently differently, so the game doesn't become stale. After finishing the main storyline and beating the final boss, I kept replaying levels just for fun and achievments, which is more than I can say for most games.

One thing that perhaps was less than ideal was the difficulty curve. I would normally die a lot in the first level of each world, failing to reach the boss repeatedly; then, after killing them, would steamroll the rest of the world. Seems like the difficulty spike is a bit too steep between worlds and a bit too flat within one. The game would also benefit from some sort of an endless mode.

The visuals and sound are also the definition of a good indie: limited in scope, yet incredibly beautiful and good at what they so. The narration reminds one of Bastion and adds a nice book-like quality to the game.

All in all, this is a very good title for lovers of rogue-likes who are not annoyed by stories, and not too hard if you're a beginner, too.

RELEASE EDIT: Now that I've had a chance to sink my teeth into the game and unlock and play all the characters, as well as beat the entirety of Caeldippo Caves (the first section of areas) - it holds up extremely well. The pre-alpha/Kickstarter promise has been delivered on.

Gameplay:
Each character not only plays differently, but *feels* different to play. On paper Kevin and Mark are similar at first glance; both are fast melee attackers with great mobility. In practice? Kevin switches between a frenzied flurry of daggers to silent and stealthy takedowns, where as Mark controls the enemies around and flips and dives around the battlefield.

Each area has felt distinct in their own manners so far, and while it doesn't seem like there's a ton of items to find in runs at first, once you unlock Runes for your skills, between Relics, Graces, Runes and Charms each run, even with the same character in the same area can play out very differently. Example: I played a fair bit of Kevin during the Caves while I tried to get his assassin style abilities unlocked. I found a charm that removed my ability to evade, but granted me greatly increased dodge chance and movement speed. Combine that with extra attack speed, damage scaling on attack speed, chance to heal on hit and several other items, I was able to take what was previously a challenging boss to the area and utterly shred it to bits.

There are incentives to play each family member, as you are able to unlock family-wide passives for each character, as well as picking and choosing how you want to build your character via a unique skill tree for each character. Combine that with between run customization in the form of family-wide stat buffs and similar upgrades you can unlock and even the worst runs will still provide some sort of progress.

Visuals, Sound, Story:
Beautifully crafted pixel art, smooth animations and a wonderfully detailed world. This is a prime example of pixel art done right, and it really lends to the narrative, which is provided in vignettes between runs. Speaking of the narrative, there's not only an overarching narrative, but a great deal of smaller stories and details interspersed throughout the game, which really helps to bring it all to life. The attention to detail of the family's life, as well as a very fitting narrator and excellent sound design really brings it all together and pulls you into the world.

Recommended? Absolutely yes. Pick up this gem and enjoy.

EDIT: Finally have my hands on the full game, I'll update the review after some playtime!

So far, only Kickstarter backers of a certain tier and above are able to play the pre-alpha build, and for a pre-alpha build this is already quite good. I've run into maybe one bug and some minor nitpicks, but for the most part the game plays buttery smooth, each of the three currently available characters plays quite differently, and despite nominally completing the current content (there's more than just going through the caves and beating the boss, there's at least one quest that persists over multiple runs), I still haven't found everything there is to be found, and some of the things I've run into I haven't figured out. Game is fun and I look forward to more!

Unfortunately the co-op leaves a lot to be desired, I assume the couch co-op was ported rather lazily which resulted in an incredibly half baked online co-op experience.
Player A and Player B do not share progress online, you aren't able to upgrade as the second player and any upgrades Player A purchases are not given to Player B.

So far I like the game. However, from what I can see, the game does not specify that it is only 2-player co-op, so when one of my friends decided to get the game and join me and my girlfriend, he had to refund due to us not being able to add him. I still like the game, but just use this as a fair warning to people wanting to play with more than 2 people. I guess that it is slightly implied, but I feel as though they should make it obvious.

This is a really beautiful and wholesome game. I don't particularly love rogue-like games, so this liter version was much more to my liking. As you still keep the exp and money even if your character dies, the game keeps a feeling of constant progression and never feels frustrating.

Gameplay itself is fun and each Bergsons has distinct abilities and skills, so I was never bored, despite facing the same enemies multiple times (there are 3 main areas, each with 2-3 dungeons).
The game kinda punishes you for selecting the same character over and over, so you'll have to level several (if not all) family members along the way.

I loved the narrator's voice and the little story bits each time you returned to the house. I was also really impressed by the art style, great job there!

All in all this is very good game and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a more relaxed rogue-like game with a nice story.

I’ve actually tried out a lot of Action Roguelites in local coop with my wife in the last months, and judging from that experience I just have to say, Children of Morta is definitely one of the (if not THE) best representative of this genre I played. Everything is fair, progression feels fluid, the family characters with their various abilities are extremely different and fun to play. And best of all, the game even encourages you to actually play every one of them by giving you perk rewards for the other characters if you develop them, so no run feels in vain. Add to that loads of items to discover with widely different behavior and game-changing potential, all the while combat feels very responsive and even allows for strategic fights (e.g. you can withdraw to safer positions).

But what really makes the game extraordinary in my opinion is the special blend of procedural level design mixed with certain (randomized) scripted events in those levels. Each run something new happens, a little story on the side here, an item or souvenir to find there, characters to unlock, merchants to be freed (who again grant their own benefits in future runs), the list goes on and on. And to top it off, after a run or after restarting the game there are always some scripted little narrated scenes to bring the story and the family in their house (the hub) truly to life in a really awesome pixel style. That said, I admit that most of the lore elements sometimes can be a little weird and hard to follow, but to be honest, it doesn’t matter. It’s kind of a legend, alright, so just accept it as it is. Anyway, through all those little details and things happening there’s never a feeling of repetitiveness or grinding that’s sometimes typical for the genre. I mean, just look at my playtime, we actually spent nearly 50 hours in this game (Main Story mode) until we 100%ed it, and really loved every minute. I’m actually sad that it’s over, that’s how good it was.

Which reminds me, I definitely would encourage you to buy the Paws and Claws DLC as well, as it adds some nice side stories to the levels as well as playful animals and an animal shelter to the house (which again gives perks and bonuses).

Pros:

+ Outstanding rogue-lite gameplay
+ Every single family member has their own unique class so the player can always choose the right one for their needs and desired playstyle
+ Satisfying variety of items and upgrades in every run for every single member of the family
+ A captivating story that is extremely interesting to follow
+ Beautiful visual art
+ Top-notch voice acting

Cons:

- A few characters feel a bit overpowered compared to the others
- A constant need in grinding in order to progress with the story

The review is still WIP and a subject to change.

One of the best feelings in gaming is when you wait for the game and never expect too much from it but then it releases and blows your mind. This is exactly what happened to me with Children of Morta, a new ARPG with rogue-lite elements, developed by Dead Mage and published by 11bit Studios.

What’s really beautiful about Children of Morta is that it masterfully combines neverending action with dungeon explorations, rogue-lite elements, and extremely captivating rich story. In my memory, this is the first game of this genre where the story is THAT important and being told in such a way.

I've only spent about six hours in Children of Morta by the moment of writing this review and I am still on my way of finishing the story but I can already say that this game is a true masterpiece that has a chance to get an “Indie of the year” award.

Story

Children of Morta tells the story of an extraordinary family, that fights the Corruption since forever, living on the magic distant land. The game focuses a lot on the idea of the most valuable things regarding the family and shows us a strong and friendly family where everyone follows the rule “one for all”.

Gameplay

The game starts quite cheerfully with a friendly tutorial, showing us fast pacing combat and how the game works in general. We start the game by playing as the head of a family John Bergson and his eldest daughter Linda. John is a typical sword and shield warrior, pretty common class that can be tanky and deal a lot of damage in the close range at the same time while his daughter Linda prefers to play it safe, dealing damage on the distance using her bow.

It’s important to state that John also has two younger kids named Kevin and Lucy, who want to help their family and fight against Corruption as well, and they do their best to train as much as possible to join their family. They eventually join the fight while the player progresses with the story. Kevin is a typical assassin who uses daggers to quickly strike from the shadow and move as fast as possible confusing enemies all the time. Lucy was trained as a dangerous fire mage by her grandmother and her abilities are probably the most fun among all the classes in the game. There is also a Mark, martial art specialist and Joey - extremely brutal brawler who uses a hammer to stomp his enemies.

Every family member has their own skill tree with dozens of active and passive abilities to level up. Some of the members feel pretty weak and useless until you level up them a bit while others are pretty strong from the beginning and getting even more powerful after leveling them up.
It’s interesting how every single member has special family passive skills that work when a few people from the family are together during some missions so they can be useful buffing them and helping during the intense battles. And these passive skills open up every few levels and that makes the player to play every single character for a bit just to unlock these useful family-based abilities.

In general, the whole idea of the game is in clearing a set of different dungeons from Corruption and every single dungeon is divided into two-four locations. If the player dies they have to begin the dungeon all over again. There is always a dangerous boss at the end of each dungeon and I really loved the variety and creativity of them.

During these dungeon runs, characters can pick up different power-ups and runes to make them more powerful and make their life easier. The player can find them randomly and they can be a crucial tool in finishing certain dungeons. Divine Relics are probably the most notable and useful powerups in the game as they give the player an extra ability that is active for the current run only. There are also Divine Graces that give you passive effects with some great improvements and also negative effects at the same time. And the Charms are temporary buffs that give you some kind of passive effect until the end of the run as well and it usually should be triggered by a button, so the player has to save it until the most needed moment. Also, the player can find runes that greatly improves the character’s abilities and Obelisks that provide the player with temporary buffs.

It’s absolutely amazing how all these powerups work combined all together with different characters making them extremely powerful and all these combinations make every single run unique and not like the previous one. However, despite the fact that these powerups really help the players during their adventure, it was a moment when I really felt extremely weak and that I had to come back to the previously completed dungeons to grind a little bit to level up characters and buy special upgrades.

Speaking of upgrades, there is a special hub where the player spends time in between dungeon runs and intense fights. Here the player can upgrade all the characters with better armor, greate attack power, critical chance and ability to dodge, etc. There are also upgrades that affect player’s luck and the duration of blessings, they are all very crucial for the game progress, but to level them all up you will need plenty of money.

One of my favorite parts in this game is the way the story unfolds and how the developers show us all these small, touching and even heartbreaking cutscenes in between dungeon runs. Keeping in mind that Children of Morta has a pixel art graphics, these cutscenes are absolutely genius and the story is extremely interesting to follow.

Graphics

Children of Morta has a gorgeous pixel art graphics and the way it’s implemented in the game, the way they created plenty of different various colorful locations is outstanding. The game has been delayed a few times and now I can see that it was a good idea to polish everything up before the initial release, it was definitely worth it.

Sound

The music is absolutely delightful and charming in this game, it never bothers the player and changes respectively according to the situation: during the stay in the hub it’s calm and sweet music that soothes your heart and it dramatically changes once you step into the dangerous dungeons. A separate item is worth noting is the narrator’s voice who accompanies the player during the whole adventure, his voice really reminded me of those classic Documentary movies about nature and animals with a narrator’s golden voices that really hit it.

Conclusion

Children of Morta is probably one of the best indie games I have played in 2019 and it’s a breathtaking and unforgettable experience for every ARPG lover, who wants to try something new with a fresh take on mixing this genre with rogue-lite mechanics. I highly recommend this product if you are looking for a good looking quality indie ARPG with a rich story and charming atmosphere.

Enjoy!

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