Doom engine FPS-RPG-soulslike thing Mohrta has gotten a new trailer highlighting its strange world and 2025 release window as part of The PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted, but you don't have to wait until next year to check this one out—I spent nearly three hours playing Mohrta's generous demo on Steam, and it got me giddy for the full deal even with the glut of boomer shooters in recent years.
Mohrta casts you as some kind of dieselpunk terminator—something halfway between the assassin from Mad God and the riot cops from Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. You've been sent to the farthest metaphysical frontiers to assassinate a rogue member of your warrior caste—who naturally is probably 100% the good guy—but to reach him you'll have to kill his equally tragic and sympathetic followers while exploring dreamlike worlds connected by a hub design lifted straight out of Demon's Souls.
The thing that got me in love with Mohrta was its sense, not of being weird, but utterly alien and alienating. Taking the place of your classico FPS flashlight is a vulture companion perched on your shoulder: activating it triggers a few annoyed squawks, an animation of it flapping its wings on your arm, and some handy but inexplicable bioluminescence to light your way. Rather than an Estus Flask of some extraction, you befriend an irresponsibly cute little living doll friend with an absurd healing animation where you squeeze her and she then does a little dance to restore your health. You upgrade her by finding the button eyes of other, fallen dolls out in the world.
- Romanian folklore, David Lynch, and heavy metal come together in a dark fantasy hack-and-slash action game 'with an even darker sense of humor'
- I felt goodwill and hope for the future seeing Cybrlich and the Death Cult of Labor, an FPS that's 60% HUD and looks like an Adult Swim cartoon where you smoke 'deepweed' to restore your health and blow clouds that spell out 'doink' and 'loud'
I dug Mohrta's introductory level, a more linear affair than what comes later. It's set in a dusty canyon village, but first setting foot in its hub area is what really had me making the Sickos face. It's a combination bazaar/subway station in some corner of a metropolis beyond time and space, weirdly lively for the dour soulslike genre—and the rest of Mohrta, come to think of it.
It's giving Mos Eisley cantina by way of one of those interior city zones from Morrowind like Vivec or Ald'ruhn, with anonymous throngs of robed, misshapen aliens lending the impression of a much larger world. Its vendors manage a real winning impression with very little dialogue: Your mana gets upgraded by a haughty teal lion wearing a fez and smoking a hookah, while weapon upgrades are handled by a great big steam golem smith who turns out to be piloted by a cheeky little imp.
From the warp stones, the first of seemingly five three-level worlds is available in the demo, and I was taken with the one on offer: A valhalla for warriors who laid down their arms in a forgotten war, its lush natural scenes punctuated with Greco-Roman temples and inhabited by skeleton creatures caked with mud and vegetation from how long they've laid undisturbed. Mohrta seems set to have a visually and mechanically unique set of enemies for each world—an impressive commitment to variety from its pair of developers.
Mohrta's demo is already an easy recommendation from me, but if you're more of a "wait for the full game" kind of player, you can still wishlist Mohrta over on Steam ahead of next year.
