Morphopolis Review

Inspired by games like Machinarium, The Tiny Bang Story, and Year Walk, Morphopolis is a visually artistic masterpiece. Players take the role of an aphid grub embarking on a parasitic crusade through a glorious and fanciful insect world to rescue it’s companion. The rich, saturated hand-painted artwork manages to deliver a striking and lifelike take on a world from the perspective of an insect.

A bug-based puzzler, players interact with the architecturally intricate scenery and tap around to discover hidden objects, puzzles, and numerous interactions in each and every scene. The user interface relies on the player’s intuition to work through the game of their own accord rather than being presented with clear-cut hints or solutions. In that sense, the mini hidden puzzles rely on using logic and visual understanding to solve them in order to progress through the game.

Morphopolis is divided into five stages, with each chapter portraying the metamorphosis and development of the grub as it grows and evolves. As the bug starts to parasitically inhabit larger insects, the way it interacts with the world changes, as does the body that it occupies. The game is designed so that players can enjoy the experience at their own pace, and as a result playing through numerous times can result in a divergent process by taking an alternate path in the actions taken.

For those of us who rely on some sort of implication as to what to do or where to go, the puzzles in Morphopolis may come across as quite challenging and overwhelming at times. Each are designed in such a manner that players must use their own sense of exploration in order to work through each solution. What is easily likeable about the puzzles is that all of them are original, innovative, stylish, and distinctive in nature. The game uses a combination of both logical and visual style puzzles to challenge the mind in numerous ways, and they all use the environment in a variety of manners.

Without a doubt, Morphopolis will appeal to the most inquisitive, those who want to relive the experience of being a toddler looking closely into the grass and acknowledging a world of tiny insects and plants. It manages to capture a certain sense of fascination that shows the realities of the world from a bugs-eye view.

The game will easily set players back a considerable amount of hours, perhaps five or six depending on their desire to dip in and out at will. Morphopolis is clever, and truly needs to be experienced to be understood. It certainly is obvious just how much work went into making a world that we so easily overlook.