Fleshy, floaty, fabulous. That’s Morsels in a nutshell. A top-down action roguelike in which you collect creatures and swap between their unique powers, it shares familiar DNA with games like The Binding of Isaac and Nuclear Throne, but with a Pokémon-style twist that has you collecting little creatures and harnessing their powers to overcome an on-screen frenzy of gnarly hazards. I love it.
It looks great. It sounds great. I’m having a great time with Morsels, even if most of the game still feels like a hard-to-intuit fever dream right now. You technically play as a mouse who is gifted these shape-shifting abilities to take on the appearance and upgrades of various titular morsels as you climb the levels of a colorful sewer to thwart the domination of the cats above. Some shoot lasers. Some fart gas. Others augment your dash. Each comes with its own bubblegum-wrapper flavor text.
I’ve only played three hours of Morsels so far. That is not nearly enough to work my brain around all of its unusual logic and hidden secrets, which like any great roguelike are embedded within the monotonous but rewarding fabric of trial and error. But it is enough to know that Morsels is not just a fun gimmick wrapped up in a slick aesthetic. I can’t definitively say it has the roguelike juice just yet. However, it is already one of the most intriguing games I’ve played this year.
Furcula / Annapurna Interactive
Made by Furcula and published by Annapurna Interactive, Morsels counts among its development team programmer Iggy Zuk (Bad Ice Cream), artist Toby Dixon (Atomicrops), and composer Sam Webster (Grindstone). The world looks like it was made out of the intestines of cows who grazed on confetti and sounds like lo-fi acid jazz beats to fester to. With a bubbly bullet-hell action loop pulsing at its core, the overall effect produced is that of a trippy tea party hosted inside a garden full of composting garbage. I mean that in the most delightful way possible.
The other thing to know about Morsels is just how much it revels in visual chaos. It’s not as simple as kill/avoid everything else that moves. In fact, playthroughs across meandering levels that often loop back around on themselves are full of strange creatures, neutral NPCs, and side objectives which don’t immediately explain themselves. On paper, Morsels sounds like pretty familiar genre fare, but the actual experience of playing it had me constantly asking “what the hell is going on?” while looking at my screen.
That frenetic sense of uncertainty and mystery, along with the beautiful art and an incredible soundtrack (maybe my favorite of the year) is making Morsels feel like a nice jolt of anxious energy after dozens of hours pulling slot machine levers in RNG-heavy roguelikes that reward you for playing them with making you play them less. Will it have the long-term depth of a Spelunky? We’ll see. For now, it has my attention.
