By: Omar (@siegarettes)

• Morphopolis
• Developer - Micro Macro Games, Dan Walters, Ceri Williams 
• Publisher - Kumotion
• PC via Steam (Reviewed), iOS, Android, Windows Phone
• Rating - N/A

Morphopolis is beautiful. That’s the first thing you’ll notice. Each screen is a lush, detailed, and bizarre snippet of world that calls back to movements like psychedelic art and the work of French comic artist Moebius. There’s a sense of world that is both alien and familiar, gorgeous, yet grotesque. All set to an atmospheric soundtrack that sets a meditative tone. It’s also a port of a point and click/hidden object hybrid for mobile devices. Which probably made a few people immediately dismiss it.

Let’s get this out of the way. There’s a stigma to the very mention of the hidden object genre that carries across a sense of only being for “casuals”. Those are the kind of game that’s played only by people like that middle-aged Polish lady who told me how much she loved Big Fish Games. They are tedious games with little to no substance made to capitalize quickly on the casual market. Morphopolis is not that. It does however, demand patience from you. The game is a slow burn that by its nature obscures some of the details that are required to progress. There are multiple areas, with each one of them representing a certain progression in environmental scale from the previous. Areas are made of a couple screens you’ll guide an insect-like creature across. From there you’ll find various plant and insect parts that work in tandem with some incomplete organism in the environmental to uncover the next step toward progress.

Morphopolis deserves credit here for not making these hidden object sections purposefully obtuse. Often they’ll be plainly visible, simple obscured by the density of the visuals. There were a few points where objects were annoyingly difficult to pick out, but generally the time limited hint system will sort those out for you. It is easy to lose yourself in a hazy state of non-progress at times, but this is generally followed by a lucid epiphany that sees you discovering something you overlooked. While it is satisfying to stick it out and find the solutions yourself, some tweaks to the interface would probably facilitate an easier time doing so. I found that I was unaware of what I could do in a few situations due to the lack of feedback on the part of the user interface. For example, I was halfway through the game before I realize that double-clicking on the insect would reveal the available paths. Simply changing the color of the displayed trail, a green that is understandably easily lost in the background, would make it immediately more visible.

This hands off, wordless approach also proved difficult during one of the puzzles. Like Machinarium, Morphopolis uses variations of various traditional puzzles to “gate” your progress at points. One frustrating Chinese Checkers style puzzle took me much longer than necessary to figure out due to a lack of feedback when engaging with the “pieces”. You have to drag them from one space to another, but can only do so if you jump over another piece to eliminate it. It’s not immediately intuitive, and the game doesn’t react unless you perform this correctly. Being able to “pick up” the pieces, or a little more in terms of direction would have helped.

These seem like petty complaints, but in a game like Morphopolis built around absorbing you into a space, these become intrusive roadblocks. Aside from a few other technical bothers (there’s a strange command line like window that runs underneath, and you can’t go fullscreen as of writing) these are the kind of flaws that hold Morphopolis back. These are problems that seem indicative of a lack of experience porting to the PC, and add to the sense that the game wasn’t adapted properly. I had a go with the iPad version, and I can defintely tell you it feels much more at home on a touch device. Still, these are annoyances rather than major flaws, and the artwork translates well to a larger screen (as well as making it a bit easier to pick out objects).

Morphopolis works to the strengths of the genre for the most part, and presents a pleasant, laid back experience. It’s an enjoyable space to explore, something to come down from the saturation of furious adrenaline of other games with. In some ways it reminds me of flipping through an issue of Highlights Magazine as a child, getting lost in the details of the microcosms presented while solving the brainteasers on the side.

When it all clicks, the visuals and sound create a surreal and beautiful landscape that draws you into a meditative trance. You gain an appreciation of the rituals of putting together the skeletons of ever larger creatures, each act building to a larger scale. Morphopolis is beautiful, but I’d be lying if I said it always felt that way.