In Moroi, your nameless character starts in a prison cell with no memories of where he is or what happened. You make a few steps, and you find a giant talking machine called Royal Meat Grinder. It wants to have a taste of you, so you kindly enter its mouth. After a few seconds, it is on fire, with blood coming out of its mouth, talking in ones and zeroes, and it gives you an item.
In another cell, a prisoner is eating one of their arms. You have a quick chat with them before a lightning bolt strikes and kills them in the act. You speak with another prisoner who looks like a pig, and its mysterious speech ends when its head explodes, showing a scroll hidden inside the remains of its neck. You use this scroll in another room to summon your first weapon, a sword.
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These are the first minutes of Moroi, the indie game developed by studio Violet Saint and Romanian director Alexandru Stănescu. It took me by surprise with its obscure characters, strange but intuitive puzzles, and an art style inspired by Machinarium but with a medieval twist and Lynchian scenarios.
According to Stănescu, Moroi is a Romanian word that can refer to different creatures from the country’s folklore, but it’s most usually associated with a powerful creature that wasn’t properly buried.
Once you get your first weapon and are ready to escape the prison, you have a first taste of combat. It’s nothing too exciting: Moroi plays like a regular ARPG, using a melee weapon with the left click and a gun with the right click in an isometric view.
The first waves of enemies you’ll face are regular soldiers, with a bigger one with more health and an AoE appearing from time to time, but not much else. Combat works fine, and your attacks feel precise and weighty. Plus, you can roll to dodge your enemies and fill a bar to perform executions that grant you healing orbs, adding a bit of variation to the mix.
What most impressed me was everything surrounding the battles. At one point, you enter a kitchen, and one of its rooms has a talking duck. For some reason, the duck gives you all of its teeth as a reward, and you add them to your sword to create a deadlier version of it. The sympathetic duck keeps talking to you, and you see the blood coming out of its mouth in the dialogue box.
Yet perhaps my biggest gripe with Moroi’s demo was this part of its presentation. The menus don’t look particularly good, with a font that doesn’t suit the game’s style too well. Its mesmerizing writing, inspired by authors like Franz Kafka, Douglas Adams, and Alan Moore, reads a bit plain in those dialogue boxes, missing some of its impact.
Fortunately, the art style in the scenarios and character designs compensate for these issues. One mysterious NPC will trap you in a room that looks inspired by the late David Lynch, with red curtains on the walls and a floor with perfectly symmetrical patterns. You face the longest waves of enemies here, with a TV screen in the middle showing a lovely ‘DIE’ message, and small colorful papers coming out of nowhere when you complete the section.
The last part of the 30-minute demo sealed the deal for me. I don’t want to spoil it too much, but you are transported to a completely different open area that looks like it was from a completely different game. You can walk through a beautiful garden with different flowers, controlling something that looks like a soft plushy. Of course, it doesn’t take long to see this section take a dark turn of events, and you can get a bit disturbed before getting back to our initial character.
Moroi is coming out on Steam on April 30. I can’t wait to see what other nightmarish scenarios Violet Saints has up its sleeves.
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