Morkredd (2020)

Morkredd is a cooperative puzzle game that is not too time consuming. You will be surprised by the mysteriousness of the environment, highlighted by nice graphics and atmospheric music. The story, controls, and price fall quite significantly short here, but the biggest misstep is the unpolished singleplayer.

Morkredd's main mechanic succinctly reflects my own thoughts on it altogether. The glowing orb represents life: punctuating atmosphere, inspired visual design, and a motivating gimmick. But when you begin to step away, as you wander outside its glow, you encounter death: day-one DLC, technical problems, an atrocious finale, and more. These severe disparities, bright day and atramentous night, imply even genre fans will be ambivalent towards it.

Not the first game to focus so literally on the contrast between light and dark, Morkredd isn't brimming with aesthetic originality, but its puzzles make up for in plentiful amount.

In conclusion, the game started strongly and is just the type of puzzle game that I really enjoy, the lack of story or purpose did let it down, but I could let that go as it was fun to play up until it hit horror mode and the final level ruined it for me. It really felt like two different games had been welded together at the last moment and totally spoilt my enjoyment of what had gone before. The game had a lot of promise at the start. Hopefully the next release from the developers will stick to the good ideas on display and lose the bad as they clearly have a lot of potential.

Morkredd is an interesting experiment in the use of light and dark to solve puzzles. However, the constraints of all the shadowy deaths and the occasionally frustrating movement of the ball stops Morkredd from being a better game. Through the great artwork there are hints this could have been something more.