[SGF hands-on] Morsels is a gross roguelite that we want to get dirty with

A mouse, a gun and some gross little creatures come together in Morsels

Morsels, from developer FURCULA and publisher Annapurna, is one of the more interesting roguelites that I’ve played in recent years. The game mixes creature collecting, stunning pixel art, and some gross visual queues to pull together an experience that’s a lot deeper than the sewers and underground caves it takes place in.

In the game we control a mouse tasked with finding out why things have gone astray in the underworld. Our cute little green mouse (we even have a button just to get it to squeak!) must collect morsels, strange little creatures that grant unique powers and abilities, in order to overcome the many obstacles and enemies in its way. We can hold up to three morsels at a time, allowing us to switch to whatever one we think is better for the situation.

I played the Summer Game Fest demo on easy, not because I didn’t want a challenge but because the developer (I was joined by Toby Dixon) suggest that perhaps it’s better to start off learning the basics of the game before diving into its complexities. And he was right! First an foremost was understanding how to attack. The face buttons control shots in specific directions. So, it’s not like we’re aiming with a stick, rather we’re pointing our weapon in one of the directions. There are also a lot of hazards, like lasers, pop-up spikes, dropping blocks, fire and more, so when we become surrounded by enemies we need to be able to fire in the correct direction while also moving in another or doing something else.

I’m a sucker for exploration and screen clearing, so I would stop and attack every enemy, shoot at all the walls for secrets, grab every item. We can always just make a run to the end of the level, but it’s not necessarily in my blood to leave a stone unturned. The levels are pretty expansive, too. Thankfully there are arrows on the ground guide us. We can also discover secret rooms where we can pick up quests foir more loot. In one quest we need to carry a pizza slice across a level. I was doing great, but when I set it down for too long to fight a mid-boss enemy the pizza essentially spoiled, causing me to lose the quest. There are mini games in some of the secret tunnels, too; in one we’re required to play a sort of retro side scrolling shmup and reach a certain high score (which I did).

The game’s hub area holds our collections, our tools, and our difficulty scaling. The area was fairly lite on content, but I’m going to assume that as we discover more of the game then it’ll get populated quickly. That extra stuff could be goobers and poop, for all I know, because Morsels is designed to have a bit of grossness in it. The game has a lot of farting, spoiling food, and stuff that we’d prefer stay in the sewers.

I can see Morsels having a lot of depth, and a ton of replayability. At more than one point during my session Dixon commented on how he hadn’t really seen someone take my approach to an area or a battle or a quest.

Morsels is set to arrive later this year for PC, Switch, PS5 and Xbox.