It’s easy to fall in love with Morels: The Hunt. If you like nature and photographing wildlife, then this is the closest you’ll get without leaving your house.


👍A very relaxed vibe giving you a feeling of being one with nature
👍 Nice environments and animals look and act realistically
👍Lots of different tunes to listen to as you hunt your mushrooms
👍Meaningful Achievements and item purchases will drive you to continue the game.

👎 Some of the areas are lacking in mushrooms and therefore very difficult to find.
👎The poison Ivy mechanic can be irritating to begin with.
👎Can get disorientated easily. Needs a compass.
👎I am starting to realise that there may be spawning issues with mushrooms you previously marked. Once you leave the area and return, they have disappeared.

Morels: The Hunt is a relaxing walking and photography simulator.

You have six regions to explore each with different terrain and wildlife to photograph. The main aim of the game is to hunt for mushrooms and collect them. Yes, it sounds boring but just because you like collecting mushrooms doesn’t mean you’re not a fungi (fun guy).

Initially, you will have to hunt down those mushrooms on foot but later, when you have accrued enough money, you’ll be able to buy an ATV to burn around on and disturb the peaceful inhabitants. Some of the areas are vast so even though not environmentally sound, it comes in handy later. Unfortunately, the ATV is one of the most expensive bits of kit in the shop at a hefty £5,000 and will probably take you most of the season to purchase along with other more vital equipment. A season will probably take you 15-20 hours to complete. In the meantime, you can buy three different kinds of walking boots ranging in price and speed so that you can run around in the woods.

If you want to find mushrooms, you’ll need to walk at quite a slow pace to notice them. Some areas boast more mushrooms than others. In fact, in one area I could not find any mushrooms at all, even after looking for three days! I had to skip that area altogether. Once you do find a patch you can mark them with a flag. This is very important as those mushrooms will spawn in the same place the next day, so you’ll easily find them again.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1924925304

A season contains 100 days and you can start the day early in the morning or late in the evening. If it gets too late then darkness falls and the only way you will be able to see is if you have purchased the head-lamp in the shop. This gives you a basic circle of light but proves to be difficult when locating mushrooms. It does prolong the day however and means you can stay out all night hunting mushrooms if you so wish. Otherwise you’ll have to return to base and start the next day where you can purchase items in the shop or start hunting. After a certain amount of days new areas unlock which will contain different mushrooms and further wildlife.

You are armed with a camera which can be upgraded in the shop. You’ll be able to zoom in 2x on the basic model or 5x with the upgraded model. The upgraded model also boasts four different modes in night vision, sepia, black and white and normal mode.

The camera was a bit wobbly to use. There is quite a small circle with which you must aim at the animal, and it can sometimes prove to be sensitive, especially if zoomed in. On numerous occasions the animal will scarper as you are trying to fixate the circle on its body.

Taking photos and collecting mushrooms earns you points which you can spend in the shop. Points also unlocks pages of your manual which reveal clues to the location of "special" creatures and golden mushrooms. You’ll also gain achievements for reaching new areas, photographing different animals and satisfying weekly challenges. The achievements are the main driving force behind the game and there are 98 to earn. There are about 45 animals to photograph, each living in different areas of the map, and at least 9 levels of mastery for your mushroom picking and photo taking. There is quite a lot to aim for if you enjoy achievements. A particularly fun achievement is finding one golden mushroom on each level. They are usually very well hidden. I have found three so far.

Otherwise it is just a relaxing game to spend a few hours in. It feels like you are in the wild. The environments are very well drawn and detailed, and the animals are surprisingly realistic. There are a few different tunes you can pick from. I particularly like the mellow tunes rather than the hillbilly guitar tracks. These are an excellent accompaniment to the game.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1924925807

It’s not all skipping through the woods with your basket though. There are a few dangers to be aware of. Ticks can get lodged in your orifices which drain your energy. You can remove these with a tick remover purchased from the shop; Poison Ivy is an annoying threat which leaves you incapacitated unless you have a large first aid kit; Spider webs can drain your energy; poisonous mushrooms can leave you disorientated and drain your strength; and bizarrely enough the rain drains your energy! You must purchase and wear a coat to venture into the rain unharmed. Purchasing water and energy bars can alleviate energy drain. Strangely running around does not use any energy though!

Weather conditions are especially nice with realistic sounding rain and lightening along with impressive lighting conditions and day and night cycles.

If you enjoy walking simulators or nature in general, then you will like this game. The achievements and photography angles add an extra dimension to the walking simulator genre and although there is no story as such it will leave you relaxed and motivated to continue. After each season the mushrooms re-spawn randomly, and you can even play as an animal.

🕹️
The game involves you walking around the beautiful environments collecting mushrooms and taking photographs of wildlife.

You earn points for each of these activities and as you collect more mushrooms or photograph more unique wildlife your mushroom or photography levels increase. As your levels increase your point totals increase for each new animal or mushroom you collect.

This system rewards progress. At first, you’ll find it difficult to accumulate points and shop items like the tent and ATV will appear impossibly expensive to buy. As you level up however points get much easier to acquire and it isn’t long before items such as these are within your grasp.

The amount of animals is generous and it is fun finding new creatures although the camera can prove frustrating at times. It was a shame there weren't more birds in the trees and observation towers weren't very good for observing.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1924924757

🎵
There is an extensive soundtrack which you can choose songs from to play in your game and the animal noises are realistic. The weather conditions sound great and are very atmospheric.

📺
The environments are reasonably varied but do look quite impressive. The animals move and look realistic and the shadows and lighting conditions look nice.

If you like walking simulators and are not bothered about a story line then this is an excellent example, especially if you enjoy achievement hunting.

Whilst walking along the tracks looking for mushrooms, with the relaxing music playing and the great lighting effects with the ambient nature sounds, I could have forgiven myself for thinking I was actually outdoors.

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I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need a break from all this fighting and magicking and commanding and conquering in video games. Sometimes I just want to take a nice, peaceful walk, and without being hounded by ghosts or demons or the specters of my protagonist’s hidden misdeeds, either. Titles like Morels: The Hunt are rare gems for moments like these, games that emphasize a simple outing entirely devoid of conflict, with some benign, constructive goals to achieve. Obviously this isn’t going to be the kind of thrill that everyone is looking for, but if you like collecting things and nature, it should hold plenty of appeal.

You’re a mushroom hunter! A hunter of morels, to be specific, small white-and-black fungi shaped like gnome caps. You’ve got 100 days to collect as many of the things as you can, all over the continental United States. Starting in the deep south and unlocking more locations to explore as time passes, you’ll spend each day combing the woods, fields, and valleys of rural America in search of delectable fungi. It’s not just morels you’re scrounging for, either. Several other mushroom types will earn your points, along with some amateur nature photography, to purchase new hunting gear and pay your way to the more exotic parts of the country. And if you’re really lucky, you might just make some discoveries that earn you headlines in the paper.

Morels: The Hunt was created by four brothers who’ve harbored an actual passion for morel hunting since childhood. The entire game is designed to capture the placid joys of experiencing nature, and it shows. Each area you’re given to search is a lovingly-rendered slice of the great outdoors, full of towering trees, babbling brooks, and vibrant greenery. In particular the high grasses and overgrowth is incredibly dense, giving the game a sense of actual wilderness that even the most immersive first-person games often lack. Over the course of a day you’ll hunt from sun-up to sundown, and night falls fast to immerse you in the near-total dark of nature, unless you bring along a trusty headlamp to aid your search.

The actual morels themselves are fairly small, inconspicuous things, especially with that dense overgrowth I mentioned. There’s actual challenge here to locating any appreciable number of them on a given day, requiring you to scan the foliage carefully for those tell-tale signs of white and black. Other mushrooms have their own visual cues and traits, like puffballs being ruined if you walk over them, and you’ll need to learn which ones are tasty and which are poisonous for the sake of your health and score. The points you get from collecting are used to buy tools like morel markers (which persist between days to mark likely patches), sprays and first aid kits for dealing with seemingly random afflictions like poison ivy and ticks, and upgrades to help you cope with rain, darkness, or just make you move faster. You have an energy bar to watch but it’s mostly a non-issue, only draining if it’s raining and you don’t have a coat, get a tick, or get attacked by the few hostile forms of wildlife in the game.

There are animals here as well, and in some ways they’re even more of a draw than the morels. Dozens of woodland critters, from squirrels and rabbits to deer and bears, can be found roaming the different maps. You have a classic Polaroid camera to engage in a little nature photography, and the first picture you take of each animal you find awards you points. You’ve got to center each creature to get a good snap, and some of the more skittish ones can be a challenge to line up. At times I’ve found the nature photography to be more engaging than the mushroom hunting (for obvious reasons), and it gives some much-needed variety to the gameplay in allowing you to focus on multiple goals or just chase after something other than fungus.

Digging deeper into the game also reveals a number of surprises to uncover. In addition to the many natural creatures of different rarities in each area, there are also secret animals to find. I won’t spoil what they are, but you may notice some distinctly unnatural sounds or tracks in rather out-of-the-way parts of the maps. The maps themselves are anywhere from large to enormous, featuring plenty of side areas like caves and cliffs that take some effort to get to and search. There are also golden morels to find, one hidden in every locale, that I haven’t even worked out the trick to finding. You’ll level up your morel hunting and photography skills as you use them over time, unlocking further hints and options, and there are weekly challenges for each of the in-game weeks to earn you additional points.

It’s a nature-lover’s dream game, honestly, but limited by its indie roots as so many great games are. The environments are a true highlight with how lush and detailed they are, but even on maximum settings the engine suffers from a lot of pop-in on small elements like rocks and shrubbery. I love the animals but don’t expect detailed or even believable behaviors here, as sometimes critters foxes and raccoons will bolt towards you instead of away, or just freeze in place for a bit. Dangerous creatures in particular have no tells or conspicuous behaviors to indicate when they’re fine with you and when they’re about to remove your face. And sometimes the experience gets in the way of itself, like when you finally unlock the ranch in Texas to search after two in-game weeks, only to find having a massive map ten times the size of the previous ones only makes it that much harder to find tiny morels.

Gripes and nitpicks aside, Morels: The Hunt really is an ideal title for anyone wanting a peaceful game about nature. You wouldn’t think a game about hunting mushrooms (the normal kind, not the Mario kind) could be so engrossing, but I’ve spent hours combing the forest floor and chasing around blue jays because it’s just so relaxing and rewarding. The secrets and upgrades are just icing on the cake, because I think I’d be perfectly happy taking nature strolls and picking morels just for the sake of doing it. The world could use more games about relaxing and enjoying the world without conflict, especially now, so make the most of gems like this one.



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OK, I've only logged about 10 in-game days at this point, but it felt like time to get some thoughts down. A lot of my thoughts can be summarized as "generally great with some caveats", but before I get too much into it: yes. This is truly charming game. I enjoy it very much and I'm glad I stumbled on an article about it on twitter the day before it launched.

Playing on max settings, the environments are lush and beautiful, minus the occasional slow LOD transition. The animals look a little clunky, and the UI is a little childlike, but that's OK. Photographing new critters is still a fun challenge even if they aren't sculpted and animated perfectly. The animal sounds make nice cues, and someday I'd like to play this in a room with serious surround sound to see what it's like.

I'm not sure what the point of character selection is when your choices are limited to... a white man and a white woman. It would almost be better to dispense with the selection entirely, but then again, I'm playing in 1st person so I never see my avatar.

The background music is delightful. Genuinely cute and sweet. I just wish the tracks were a little longer, because there is only one track per environment (so far, anyway) and by the 8th day at Cabin in the Woods I was a little tired of the plucky, earnest guitar picking. But only a little! I have a goal to make up simple mushroom-hunting lyrics to each track.

I laughed out loud when I realized what the loading screen was.

Anyway, I'm just having a great time crawling around with my nose in the dirt, listening to bird songs, and stalking the elusive fungi of the world. I hope you do, too.

* * *

Update at ~30 in-game days: OK, the single music track may have been a bug? I'm not sure why it happened, but I have found that if, while hunting, I open the pause menu, open the music options, and click one of the playlists, I get a rotation of about half a dozen tracks. Still wishing they were longer, but I'm jamming to the Acoustic set and every one of them is lovely.

Also, each new region has a different feel and is so lovingly sculpted. My recommendation only grows stronger each time I play.

This game is surprisingly fun, once you get everything set up properly.

UPDATE: The devs have taken feedback to heart and made some changes. I have adjusted my review accordingly.

I Liked:
-A lovely hunting-style nature game that doesn't involve killing helpless animals.
-Strangely satisfying when you find a big patch of mushrooms.
-Fun to "hunt" animals to take photos of them.
-Different weather is rendered really well.
-Just really beautiful.
-Devs are responsive to feedback and updating the game to improve the user experience.

I Didn't Like:
-Motion blur is enabled by default for some reason which makes it impossible to see what you're doing (can be disabled in options).
-Default mouse sensitivity is too high (though the devs have reduced it in response to feedback, and it can be reduced further in options).
-Controls are awkward: Sometimes I find a mushroom I can't pick because it's just slightly under a ledge, you have to look straight down to pick a mushroom, and it can be almost impossible to focus on an animal with the camera.
-Game definitely causes eyestrain. There's probably not much to be done about this - you're trying to find small details the whole time. Best to play in short bursts (I typically only play one game day at a time, then take a break).

For all its problems, I have spent several hours playing and intend to keep going. It's relaxing and fun.

Janky and buggy.

Doesn't look anywhere near as good as the screenshots, which have clearly Had Some Work Done after the fact. The music is fine, apart from the fact that there is exactly one 30-second loop that repeats endlessly. The UI is ugly and lazy, the controls are counter-intuitive and unresponsive. Annoyances like poison ivy (only curable by using a first aid kit that's prohibitively expensive when you're first starting out) are constant (nevermind that your character is wearing boots and long pants in the first place). The sun is fully extinguished from the sky promptly at 7PM every day, plunging the game into absolute pitch-blackness - the tutorial informs you to get a headlamp to get around this. OK, cool - too bad a headlamp costs $5000, and while you're busy spending what little points you earn in the early game on bug spray, poison ivy lotion, bottled water, and traveling to locations to forage, good luck saving up that much money.

For a game called "Morels the Hunt," hunting morels is far form the most lucrative way to earn currency and advance - the vast majority of points you earn come from taking photos of animals with braindead AI that bolt in random direction constantly whenever you are nearby. If you want to earn any sort of money early on, you have to take a photo of every animal you see, every day, and the quality of the photo (or if the animal is even in frame, so long as you're close enough) don't matter, as you'll get full point no matter what - and you'll get more points for photographing a squirrel than finding a morel.

There are also no rewards for photographing mushrooms, and you get no points for picking non-edible mushrooms - which, if you're a mushroom enthusiast, you understand that finding any mushroom, even a poisonous one, is a cool thing worth celebrating. and it's kind of bonkers that this game purports to be an immersive mushroom hunting sim while thumbing it's nose at that concept.

The environments are large, but very rough-hewn and low fidelity with a mountain of post-processing effects crammed in to smear some makeup on this pig. If you value keeping whatever you last ate in your body, do yourself a favor and turn motion blur (which is, bafflingly, defaulted to maximum) OFF at your earliest opportunity.

The most effective way to find morels in real life is to look for particular trees and types of terrain where they like to grow; in this game, they seem to spawn at random - near trees, far from trees, in the middle of streams, in gravel patches. Maybe an effort was made to make morels spawn near the correct types of trees - but that's impossible to really say because the trees are all so low-detail and muddy that it's next to impossible to tell what they are in the first place, if you can even make them out through the storm of motion blur, bad HDR, bloom, and lens flare.

Even a rudimentary approach at some kind of field guide would have helped the experience of this game a lot - look for X mushroom in this territory, at this time of day, in this weather, near these features, etc. That would have given you a way to actually intelligently hunt some mushrooms - rather than walking back and forth in a boring, exhausting grid pattern and smashing the F key to pick up a chanterelle hiding in dense underbrush you can barely see through in order to get one point.

I've wanted a game like this for so long! Arguably it's about hunting mushrooms, but honestly for me it's just an excuse to explore some beautiful scenery, and do some (virtual) nature photography... Very laid-back, no violence (except the wild animals attacking one another occasionally), almost no threats to the player (and even those are just temporary setbacks -- you just go home for the day). I got really into hunting the cryptids -- the randomness of it can be a little frustrating, but it made it SO exciting when I finally found one (and besides, like everything else, even the days without finding anything are still a fun excuse to go wandering in the woods!) The game is a little buggy from time to time, but mostly nothing major. If you're looking for something with the aesthetic pleasure of a 'walking simulator', but with enough structure added in to give you a reason to keep coming back long term, you might have just found something that you'll enjoy as much as I have.

Unfortunately this game made me motion sick very quickly so I was unable to spend any time in it. I felt like I was a camera flying through the air at head height rather than a person walking. I didn't feel connected to the footstep sounds at all. And for some reason the character jumps in slow motion as if in low gravity? It felt very weird sorry.

I love this game so far. Still in Season 1. Found many creatures. Beautiful landscape.
(Slightly revised 14 June 2022)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2820005697

You can take a picture of anything, though you only get points for certain things. A few of your fave pics taken with the camera can be displayed at the Exhibition. There is a chance you'll experience a crash, and some bugs. You start off walking so slow you think you'll never make it. I'm on shoes level 2 and it's still not fast enough for me lol

From what I understand it's from a team of brothers who grew up hunting morels and enjoying nature. I love how it's a camera instead of a gun, though a startling sound would be helpful with some of the creatures since they can attack you.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2820379892

I've enjoyed this game for 11 hours so far. I spend a lot of time looking for things to take pictures of, and marking mushroom locations. I'm really enjoying this game and have a few screenshots I can share of my experience. Please read other people's reviews also to see if this is a good fit of a game for you.

I did mention crashing. If this happens to you, it should stop. I had 3 crashes so far. I disabled the table tennis (just in case it affected performance) It comes enabled, I believe. You can also try to verify integrity in your Library (right click on your game, properties, local files). Right now it shows there that I have a bit over 11 GB in data for this game.

Note: Since I wrote this section on crashing, it has crashed several times and, it's usually during launch. By trying three times usually fixes it, meaning I'll see 2 errors before success. It seems the 3rd time is the charm. I just found an option to change your Main Menu at the bottom right side of the screen on the load screen. Maybe that'll help with some crashes? I just turned "New Main Menu" to Off. Apparently by default it is on?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2820379139

(Screeenshots may show as links. You can open this review individually by clicking above on "Recommended" in baby blue, if I'm not mistaken, and see them as images instead of links)

You can rebind the keys (You can move some keys to a key you are more comfortable with. For example you can move crouch to C and Camera to Right Mouse button) I recommend rebinding keys early on because you may get used to having it a certain way. ^.^

If you have any issues with a cursor getting stuck on your screen while on the horse, open your map and close it. If your screen gets fuzzy, open camera and close it. I had another crash but I have 29 hours in the game and some great screenshots! I just kept trying. :D I do get little bugs. If you do, try opening camera, opening map, get on or off horse. I had a bug with the 4 wheeler after getting off of it my camera wouldn't work. I forget how I fixed it. I saved and restarted? (Must've restarted the game bc when I didn't, the 4 wheeler rolled into the lake upon loading my next region to hunt in. lol Bad bug! IDK why it rolled but there was a lake in front of it. OOPS! I'll stick with riding the horse.

Some animals don't look great but some.. WOW!! The ground texture and water is nice, too!

Other:
I bought a raincoat then night light. I buy a lot of markers at 25 points each. Horse is about 3000 points. Well worth it. Fast travel will not fast travel your horse, too.

Hunting mushrooms instead of animals...a delightful concept! In this game you play as a mushroomer/nature photographer, as you explore various parts of the USA. While it is slow paced, this game is progressive, as you gradually acquire more equipment, and unlock more regions to explore.

For the most part, Morels: The Hunt is quite a pleasant experience, though there are a few things to mention: There is a slight blur effect to show movement as you move and look around, which some players may find annoying. Tasks, such as collecting mushrooms, can feel repetitive after a while. Also, occasionally one may encounter a minor glitch that hasn't yet bean fixed, but I didn't notice anything too serious in that regard.
For those who want to play as a female character, this game allows this as well, as you choose whether you play as a man or a woman before you start the game.

Not what I'd consider a violent game, though I have to mention that just like in real life, some wildlife will attack if you get too close (such as bears and alligators), while others will flee from you as you approach. There are other dangers as well that one might expect, but instead of dying from falling off a cliff or drowning or a snake bite, an ambulance saves the day each time. Generally, the player cannot harm the animals at all, however when riding an ATV/quad bike, it is possible to run over animals and inadvertently kill them, which again is true to real life.


***

~ House Blythe, curator for Non-violent Entertainment: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35899705/

Casual-ish walking sim, where you pick mushrooms, look for collectibles, take photos of animals, birds and fish, and look for secret "mystery" animals that may not be animals (1 is a human ghost, so...).
The graphics are nice, but not well optimized. I play at 1440p, with V-Sync set to 144 fps. On all Epic settings, I get 70 fps, 100 fps if I drop them down to High and lower a few settings even more.
This is on an i9 11900K/ 3080 RTX Ti/ 32 GB DDR4 @ 3200 MHz/ Windows 10 64 bit fully updated, all drivers fully updated.
I get a lot of pop-in- trees, rock formations, buildings, plants, mushrooms- pop-in everywhere, which can make getting some photos tough, and can make finding the mushroom your green crosshairs are saying should be there, but it isn't visible until you walk away and come back (watching it pop in as you back away). And not all photographable items and animals will outline in green like they should, but they'll still count, which is odd.

The game has some issues. But it's still enjoyable if you like to wander aimlessly looking for mushrooms and new animals to photograph. The points economy is not the greatest. Getting enough points to buy items that boost health or energy , plus better shoes and a raincoat and a head lamp requires a ton of grinding.

Okay if you get it at a deep discount, but I would not pay full price- the grinding means you'll get a lot of hours without a great deal of content to enjoy. People who enjoy walking sims and exploring every inch of a map may enjoy it more than achievement hunters will. For 75% off, like it was when I got it, I can't complain. It's enjoyable enough, though I wish there was more to it, and fewer invisible walls and fences you can't cross to explore what you can clearly see on the other side.