I like Mortal Shell a lot, it is a game with many interesting ideas, some of which work better than others.

When I first tried the game, I had a lot of trouble with the parry timing, especially the windup animation. After a couple of hours with it, everything clicked, and I was laying waste to entire camps of swamp dweller, stealing their booze, trampling their lutes, and instructing the bosses in the ancient ways of roolz of naytcha. What are you doing in my swamp?! Get out of here, all of you!

While this is not a particularly difficult game, the start can be rough. I found the starting shell to be a bit middling, even after unlocking a lot of the abilities. Solomon the Scholar was the first character I fully leveled, and I figure many people will also enjoy Eredrim the Venerable. Fortunately the tutorial sword is a very versatile weapon, and I played the entire game with it.

The animation department of Mortal Shell did excellent work. Whether it's the longsword heavy finisher, the ballista reloading animation, or the Mists enemies trying to pounce you and bouncing off your stone form, it's obvious a lot of effort went into this. Also I feel important to mention that the cat-petting animation is very good.

The art direction is another highlight; at times, it reminds me of Zeno Clash, but with an edgy Black Metal aesthetic. Your base form, as well as the playable shells look distinctive and cool, and some of the weirder NPCs are quite memorable. While you can't unlock alternative armours, you can get cool skins for your shells, such as the TRVE KVLT corpsepaint for Solomon.

At the end of the day, this is an indie soulslike from a very small team. It is not very long, and the enemy variety is somewhat limited. The environments are fairly standard dark fantasy stuff, and the main hub is a damp and murky swamp. The voice acting is surprisingly great, and helps to situate you in this sick sad world.

The developers did their best to inject some novel mechanics into the traditional soulslike formula. I am not sold on the lack of reliable healing, requiring players to scrounge for mushrooms and eat literal garbage: when you first start out, it's a major issue, but later in the game, you're a walking dry goods store. The harden mechanic however is fantastic! It has tons of utility: you can play very aggressively, even if your parry timing sucks. Later in the game, you can unlock the ground pound ability, allowing you to negate fall damage. Harden also makes corpse runs a breeze! Also, when you dodge, you see your character turn to stone for a moment, which is a great iframes visual cue.

As a first game from a new, remote work company, Moral Shell is a lot better than I expected. There are countless indie soulslikes on the market, some better than others. I believe this is one of the good ones; if you can get through the initial rough learning curve, I think you will enjoy it as much as I did. Think of it as playing Demons Souls for the very first time, before anyone knew what to make of this game. Approach it with an open mind, try to learn the mechanics, and you'll have a great 12-15 hours, sending curse knights into bottomless wells with a judicious application of the Dark Messiah kick. Alternatively, if that fails, just give up, join the bandits, and get drunk on second-rate moonshine while strumming your lute, as the world turns to ♥♥♥♥.

Oh and if you play the game, make sure to enable to alternative boss music, from the OG Greek metallers Rotting Christ, in sound options.