Don't Forget To Back Children of Morta on Kickstarter, Closing In On Stretch Goals
Update: There’s a little over three days left for you to back Dead Mage’s ambitious roguelike title, Children of Morta. In excellent news, the game has already hits its initial funding goal of $65,000. From here on end, it’s all about the stretch goals. At the time of writing, the game had brought in almost $87,000 meaning there will also definitely be a PS4 and Vita version. At $95,000 the devs will implement local co-op and a new chapter, which seems to be the most exciting stretch goal by far. Going beyond that means we could also get a Wii U version ($100,000,) Arena Challenges ($105,000) and an Xbox One version ($110,000).
Original story: Back in September, we rather excitedly shared what little details we had on the upcoming project from Shadow Blade developer Dead Mage, called Children of Morta. Speculate no longer, good people. Dead Mage has just launched a Kickstarter for its game, which is already well on the way to being funded.
Children of Morta is being billed as a story-driven hack-n-slash game with roguelike elements, citing inspiration from games such as Binding of Isaac, Rogue Legacy and Risk of Rain. The art style brings to the surface nostalgic feelings of games of yesteryear, with a 2D pixel art aesthetic mixed with more contemporary effects.
The game itself revolves around playing as members of the Bergson family. From the Kickstarter pitch:
“The family have lived on the outskirts of Mount Morta, guarding it for many generations. As a tragic event in Morta corrupts the roots of life deep in the mountain, all the creatures turn into furious, mindless monsters. Now the land’s only hope is for the Bergsons to find the seeds of life and use them to cleanse the corruption.”
The Bergson family is quite a large one - like some twisted version of the Brady Bunch - with John and Mary, Mark, Linda, Kevin, Lucy, Uncle Ben and Joey and Grandma Margaret. Each member comes with their own backstory and unique abilities. For instance, Kevin is the nimble one of the bunch with a dagger throw and roll ability. Joey, on the other hands, wields a massive hammer with a rage and smash ability. Grandma Margaret is not one to be ignored either, being quite accomplished in the art of alchemy.
Like any good (and unforgiving) roguelike, permadeath is a given. Procedurally generated content is also a welcome inclusion, promising a significant amount of replayability. When you combine this together in a big pot - coupled with the insane amount of characters to pick from and a promising story narrative - it means you should never go for lack of content.
Over on the Kickstarter page, Dead Mage takes the time to lay out the enemies you’ll encounter along the way including some of the more intimidating bosses, such as Jariuth the Goblin King and Scorpital. The variety of enemies is impressive and I imagine we’ll need a fairly tight strategy to best some of them. Remember – permadeath!
If the devs meet their funding goal of $65,000, Children of Morta will be coming to Windows, Mac and Linux in October this year. If we start chewing into the stretch goals, then PS4, Xbox One and Wii U owners will also be invited to the party. At the time of writing, the devs had already hit more than one-third of the funding goal with $24,000 pledged and 28 days left.
Be sure to head on over to the Kickstarter page for lots more information about the project, as well as what you can expect to get for backing the project. Dead Mage is a great studio with a number of solid titles under its belt. Already, Children of Morta is shaping up to be their next big hit and to read more from the developer, check out our exclusive interview in Episode 2 of Grab It.
Writer:
Stephen Mitchell
References:
- Shadow Blade
