WWBP: Morphblade · 11:07am Jul 5th, 2017
So Morphblade is a fun little pickup I got on Steam recently, and it's a really fun little tactical/strategy combo game in a weird way. I liken it to chess where you build the board one piece at a time, and what piece you're standing on dictates what your piece is. Except if chess also played with a levelling up system?
Oh wait, pawns. Right.
After the break, a runthrough of a game I really like and highly reccomend, it's like, $2 on Steam.
This is how Morphblade starts. You're the little white player icon, the red are enemies, and the tiles all have their own effects. Right now I'm sitting on a Hammer tile, which makes me a hammer; I sit still and squish any bug on a tile directly next to me. Squish!
Killing enemies with a weapon gives the weapon an experience. Killing them on a non-weapon/utility tile gives it one xp. Optimal play, then, is killing every enemy on non-weapon tiles.
After the wave is cleared, you get to select a new tile, your choices are random. I selected a teleporter; I can move to any other tile in the game from here. Obviously not useful right now, but it will be later...
Wave 2 cleared, here's what the new tile options look like. You select them by moving onto them. As you can see in the left, every tile can be upgraded - when it's full of experience, you link it to an adjacent tile, and the link increases its upgrade.
Therein lies the strategy element of the game; Figuring out the optimal layout of tile interactions to link together. Some tiles will always be useless, but invaluable upgrades to tiles they're next to. Here I buy a teleport, which when upgraded and linked together, means that teleporting from one of these tiles becomes a free action.
This becomes insane later on, and is possibly the second most powerful tile upgrade in the game.
Killing isn't your only option for clearing a wave: Sometimes it's best to shunt enemies, push them. No tiles get experience this way, but hey, it's a useful tool. Especially when you get to... well, I'll get to that when I talk about acid.
Blades are the least useful weapon tile. They kill anything to either side of the tile you move to, and push the enemy directly in front of you like usual... however, they're probably the best weapon upgrade tile.
This is what a tile looks like when it's full levelled. Here's an acid tile, with the most powerful single upgrade being... acid-acid. It's the only thing that can neutralize explosive bug enemies. Explosive bugs have nasty green tumours on them that detonate when they die, destroying the tile beneath them... eliminating all its upgrades and experience, and the tile that replaces it at the end of wave is chosen at random. Nasty.
Acid tiles strip armor from enemies, initially. Blue enemies that are only pushed by attacks otherwise. Acid-acid takes the green tumours off. Acid-hammer makes this splash to all adjacent tiles. Acid-blade make it kill everything it strips here. And, why yes, every tile can have every upgrade at once, so long as it has the experience and correct neighbours.
These are the most important tiles to build around.
Arrow tiles move you two spaces, the only other tile but teleporters that affect your movement, and are probably your most important late game weapon. An arrow-arrow link makes their range infinite, you see, and mobility is the single most important thing you'll have.
A few levels in you get a title -- here it's 'somewhat good' -- and a black bug. These things fully upgrade whatever tile they die on, and are always the only enemy in the wave. Use them to upgrade tiles that wouldn't be upgraded otherwise... I use them for acid-acid synergies on acid tiles that are important, but hard to put weapons near.
Let's skip ahead a bit.
Wave 26, and enemies are just about to spawn in. Here's what the board looks like - tiles have little icons showing what their upgrades are. Oh! And if the tiles it's linked to are destroyed, that upgrade goes with it. Explosive bugs are nasty.
Small enemies mean that they haven't spawned yet, but will spawn there next round, unless you move on top of them, which delays their spawn until you move off the tile.
I move on to the teleporter. Poison and armored enemies. Winged enemies move two tiles in one turn, but can still only attack if they start the tile next to you. Enemies can move or attack, not both.
Oh! And that little bubble around me? There are repair tiles; usually you have a two-hitpoint maximum, and repair tiles heal you of damage. A repair-repair tile gives you a third hitpoint, a forcefield. Incredibly powerful, mandatory for every end-game.
I move to my acid-acid, they follow.
Hammer-bladed-acid. No more armor, and the explosive enemy is flat dead. Now I'm on a teleporter, I can move to any other tile on the board and kill them at my discretion. Kiting enemies is most of the tactical aspect of this game, because you need the right enemies to die on the right tiles... or figure out which moves aren't going to kill you.
Especially when you get to shooter enemies. These guys attack you in a straight line, infinite range. They can move, or shoot, but not both... but they're the hardest to kill because they run away, and they're the most problematic threat at any time. These guys are what make the late game so challenging, and why teleporters are so important; A lot of the late game just becomes bouncing to the only safe tile not covered by a shooter, and hoping enough enemies move on your landmines that you can teleport to somewhere else safe, until you have a swarm you can handle conventionally.
It's insanely fun if you like games like chess.
That's about it! I got up to level thirty seven here before my pinkie hit 'q' and closed the game, no saves, ergh, but I've done better;
My record for this game, which I don't have a screenshot for because I died really unexpectedly and the game doesn't linger after a death -- I'd moved onto a tile with a kill effect with an exploding bug, which means I blew it up when I meant to shove it, falling through the hole it made -- was level 75. I do have this screenshot of 66, where the rank stopped levelling:
You shouldn't be able to get this far.
Screenshots are loading fine for me, so I hope that's true for you as well.
I also don't have any screenshots on me of what the late game, 60+ waves can look like, but they're insane. It's like playing Dance Dance Revolution on a checkers board.
Images work for me. and very impressive looking. bit too intellectual for me though. I'll throw it at Oliver though.
Curse you for my new game distraction. Lots of fun.