There's something that lies in the belly Metamorphosis it makes me recoil. The surface level principle is fairly easy to follow. This is 2D pixel art. horror where you play as a “neglected nun” who is “on a long journey to absolution.” The world you find yourself in in the demo version of the game is overbearing and crushing. At first you find yourself in the depths of the church, and it’s even worth asking the question – which church has depths? When you come across a device and what looks like a gothic horror movie on the offset Bloody becomes stunningly technological.
This device is, mechanically speaking, your main menu. When loading this menu, you are greeted by a voice in text form that asks you to talk to it. You type help literally on your real keyboard and it gives you a list of options: Inventory, Journal, Settings, all with associated descriptions, and then OS, the only detail about that option being “self”. What else could an OS be if not an operating system, and if that's true, what kind of world is it?
In the demo, these questions remain unanswered because why would they, but we must continue. And everything would be fine if it weren’t for such a difficult task. Metamorphosis harbors a brutal reality in which you can die quite quickly and easily, its disgustingly abstract enemies are so frightening that they make you panic, and its deliberately dim lighting forces you to guess every shadow and dangerous jump. Dying takes you back to where you last saved, which of course may be sooner than you'd like, and further back – you can only save at certain points unless you have candles to create temporary restore points.
Even though I write for a PC site, I'm not particularly good at gaming with a keyboard and mouse, and while Metamorphosis can be played on a controller, much of the tutorial UI is PC-only, forcing me to use old methods since I wasn't sure which button did what. There are a lot of buttons to be mindful of in this game, which makes it challenging and potentially unfair, although I can forgive that at this point as the atmosphere has won me over.
Metamorphosis doesn't have a release date yet, but you can wishlist it on Steam and maybe watch a demo for yourself, right? Here.
