For an Indie game, in a team of just four people, it staggered me just how well detailed and precise every location was. This is a stark contrast to Seat of Infinity, an almost abandoned beautiful monument of sharp, tall towers, some of which have fallen, cascaded by the shine of an yellowy orange sun. Fallgrim is feral and vicious, with no palette of any colour bar grey to show the lifeless, murderous monsters lurking everywhere.
#MORTAL SHELL FOUNDLING FULL#
The world is a mixture of vast lands and large structures to worlds that would once be full of life. If you do fall again, it is game over, but upgrades can fix that, which I will go onto later. But, if you manage to get back to your vessel, you can consume the warrior again and fight once more. Upon death, which will happen quite a few times at the beginning, the Foundling is thrown out of the shell, and is open to a single attack which will kill you. It says a lot about my play style, but I don't care.
My preference went towards Eredrim, The Venerable, who has much more health and much less stamina. Your starter shell, Harros the Vassal, is equal in health and stamina, but others vary. Each shell operates to be different from the last. You are pale and faceless, and easy to kill, but once you take control of another warrior, you are in with a chance of fighting. You begin the game as an a Foundling, a empty entity which consumes the bodies of fallen warriors. This is the mechanic that separates Mortal Shell from Dark Souls, with a much more forgiving advantage to combat. Its in this mysterious, overshadowing and poisonous swamp that you will have to locate the four shells. The central area that intertwines each location is a swampy, dark and dangerous woodland called Fallgrim and its outskirts. Within the tightly knitted exploration, is a vast selection of enemies, that of course, will kill you given the chance. It blends genres of mild horror and deep role playing fantasy, whilst having four small stages of exploration, all different from the last. To me it shows a great degree of respect for a developer thats created some of the most absorbing video games ever, to mimic their style into something of your own.Ĭold Symmetry has done exactly that with Mortal Shell, a small indie game that often rides on the substances of Dark Souls, whilst doing just enough to separate it from FromSoftware's excellent games. Some have gone on to be fantastic titles like Nioh, The Surge, even Hollow Knight to a degree.
From this, FromSoftware has single handedly created a subgenre of games called "Soulslike", games which essentially use the same mechanics, HUD, gameplay and difficulty, but change a little so it differentiates from Dark Souls and other titles.
FromSoftware changed the face of gaming as we know it, and often explored the idea of accomplishment and satisfaction in video games due to being crushingly hard to beat. It captured the hearts and, er, souls, of a generation of gamers for being a challenging fantasy game, with rich detailed characters and a world exploration that told the story, rather than have it spoon fed to the player through a linear narrative. There's something very special that Dark Souls did when it all begin back in 2011.
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