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Children of Morta
At $1.16 from 
Kinguin, Children of Morta is at its tracked historical low, making this a clear moment to add its family-led dungeon runs to your library. Its seven heroes offer distinct fighting styles, and progression builds both the chosen character and the wider family. Steam PC lists full controller support and a range of interface languages.
The story and Family Trials both support two-player online co-op, with local co-op too, so the game can suit solo sessions or shared runs. Steam reviews show 88% positive from 18,471 reviews; use that snapshot alongside the play style and language details that matter to you. At $3.29 on Steam, this offer is $2.13 lower for the same edition.
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All-time low ~ $2.19across Steam & third-party storesat the recorded all-time low
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $0.002023-09Current Low Across Stores~ $1.16Kinguin
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Children of Morta
Lead the Bergson family through a story-driven action RPG where each member brings distinct skills to fights against the Corruption. Explore procedurally generated dungeons, switch heroes between runs, and grow individual characters alongside the family, without permadeath. Steam player reviews: 88% positive from 18,471 reviews. Steam PC supports interface languages: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Portuguese-Brazil, Turkish, Korean, and Japanese. Release date: September 3, 2019.
Credits
Developer
Dead Mage
Publisher
11 bit studios
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$0.002023-09-09 · SteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Traditional Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Show 9 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Polish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Turkish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Korean | Yes | Yes | — |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-20
02Before you buy
Language and audio
Steam PC lists English and several other interface languages; English and one additional language have full audio. The listed languages include subtitle support.
Play together
Story and Family Trials support online co-op for two players, and local co-op is also available.
Controller support
The Steam PC version has full controller support.
03Frequently asked questions
How does character progression work?
Characters gain levels and skills, while the family also develops. You can change family members between dungeon runs, and the game has no permadeath.
Do dungeons change between runs?
Yes. Dungeon layouts are procedurally generated, and each dungeon has two to four levels ending in a boss fight.
Can I revisit earlier dungeons?
Yes. Returning to previous dungeons lets you gain extra experience or finish side quests.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
My 8 year old daughter and I play this game. She loves it. Great bonding time after homework. Mom yells at us to go to bed. I couldn't imagine playing a game like this with my dad when I was her age. I hope we still play MP when she's older. Great characters to choose from for your play style. Beautiful pixel art (my thing). You can save a puppy (her thing). Single player is fun and a relaxing 30 min after a hard day of work as well. Love this game.Show moreShow less
25.6 hours at review383 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Unfortunately the co-op leaves a lot to be desired, I assume the couch co-op was ported rather lazily which resulted in an incredibly half baked online co-op experience. Player A and Player B do not share progress online, you aren't able to upgrade as the second player and any upgrades Player A purchases are not given to Player B.Show moreShow less
0.8 hours at review292 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
»A song, but at the same time, so much more. A tradition that bonded the Bergsons together in trying times.« 🔴 Cons Some characters feel vastly overpowered Lots of grinding needed to advance There is no way to re-watch or re-read past events No roaming in the hub area 🟢 Pros Satisfying combat Gorgeously animated pixel-sprites Beautiful soundtrack Great writing, charismatic narrator Lots of between-mission events to show the bonds between the characters Huge variety between the runs The Bergsons each have their own unique style and class Even side-missions make narrative sense and feel fresh Two-player local and remote(!) co-op campaign 🎮 Gameplay Children of Morta is a Hack and Slash Action Roguelite in which you control one of several available characters, members of the Bergson family, to fight your way through procedurally generated layouts of the various dungeons. Depending on the Bergson you're using, the gameplay is either typical Hack and Slash combat or takes on qualities of a Twin-stick shooter. The pillars of the gameplay are exploration, combat and character upgrades, with the occasional addition of optional mini-games. Exploration: After choosing which Bergson to control, you get dropped into a dungeon that is randomly generated and has a lot of branching paths, secrets to uncover, temporary upgrades, environmental traps, and challenge rooms. You have a mini-map as well as a full map that gets unveiled as you discover more areas and it's up to you whether or not you want to uncover it all before you move on to the next stage. Since healing is limited and the enemy encounters can be quite tough, exploring a dungeon fully is a bit of a risk/reward system, as you run into more opportunities to be worn down and killed but also increase your chances of finding more upgrades, while gathering more experience and Morv (the currency). Completing the entire map can make a run last up to two hours. Combat: Combat in Children of Morta is very diverse as each of the playable Bergsons represents a different RPG-typical class. Where John, the father, represents the classic Warrior archetype, fighting with a sword and a shield, Linda, the second-oldest child, introduces the Twin-stick shooter mechanics as the Archer archetype. The other members of the Bergson household are unlocked one by one as the story progresses and add the Assassin, Brawler, Mage and Berserker classes in that order. Each of them has something unique about their gameplay but the basics are always the same - run, dodge, attack and two unlockable active battle abilities, as well as different gadgets you can acquire within each run. Upgrades: As the game belongs to the Roguelite-subgenre, you have several permanent and temporary (per-run) means to upgrade your characters, however in this game a strong focus is put on the family bonds between the Bergsons. As you improve a Bergson's skill tree, you will unlock certain perks that affect the entire family, meaning it is strongly encouraged to train at least some of the characters, if not all to unlock more perks. Mini-games: Throughout your exploration of the different dungeons, you may come across the occasional mini-game, presenting an optional risk/reward scenario. These mini-games are basically challenge rooms where you can gain a prize and/or a punishment in the form of a horde of enemies or an instant loss of a portion of your health. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124979933 🔥 Difficulty Levels in Children of Morta get progressively more difficult and often make leaps between different areas. While the challenge is mostly welcome, you do not improve any Bergson that isn't participating in the missions, meaning that if you used Linda to unlock the next level, nobody else gathered experience for it, making them vastly underpowered for the new missions, resulting in the need to grind, but which also incentivizes using all characters. 📖 Story / Presentation The game tells the story of the Bergson family, descendants of a fated family of protectors, who fight back the creeping corruption of their world. It focuses very strongly on the bonds between the family members and their individual strengths and weaknesses and it offers a lot of optional side-content, exploring other stories and expanding the family. The cut-scenes are beautifully animated with those tiny pixelated faces conveying tons of emotions somehow, and while the characters are silent, the narrator and the music evoke a wide range of emotions while telling you everything you need to know. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124978126 💻 Graphics / Art-style Children of Morta offers wonderfully animated pixel-sprites in a world that comes to life with wind effects, falling leaves and many more environmental effects. Even the color palette contributes to the dark atmosphere and it is daunting to see how the hub area transforms over time as corruption takes a hold. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124977273 🎼 Soundtrack The soundtrack for this game is instrumental for the most part and manages fairly well to be evocative of a melancholic mood that fits the plot. Based on the situation, the music changes accordingly, with soothing, calm notes playing in the hub area, somewhat more menacing music during the dungeons, a frantic, epic and almost desperate tune for boss encounters and a light-hearted, hopeful guitar-only melody in safe zones within the dungeons. To the developers: Release the Soundtrack as low-priced DLC - I'm sure a lot of players, including me, would love to own it. 👨👩👧👦 Target audience Fans of Hack and Slash and/or Dungeon Crawler games like Diablo II, Hades or Heroes of Hammerwatch, as well as fans of Pixel Graphics and story-rich games are almost guaranteed to find something to like here, as long as they come prepared to grind. 💯 Performance The game isn't very demanding by nature of the 2D graphics and the top-down perspective and I have experienced no frame-drops, stuttering or other performance issues, whatsoever. Tested with the following setup: CPUGPURAM AMD Phenom II X4 955 @3.20 GHzAMD Radeon R9 390X8GB 🔀 Supports [Alt]+[Tab]: Excellently 💰 Business Model Classic / Add-ons only: Buy the game, play the game. No paid DLCs, items, loot boxes so far. One paid Story expansion planned. 📋 Conclusion If you are into story-rich games and don't mind the Roguelite model, you owe it to yourself to play this game. With its wonderful visual style, beautifully told story about family bonds and defying a dark fate, pleasant narration, amazing soundtrack and responsive and challenging gameplay, Children of Morta has all the ingredients to keep you glued to the screen for hours upon hours, while the different perks give you an incentive to play with all of the characters at least a little. Add in local and remote co-op play and you have yourself some GOTY-material. The Bergsons well knew that even in the darkest of hours the Devils in the Detail would always shine a light with reviews that were free from the corruption.Show moreShow less
29.9 hours at review231 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Children of Morta, in my opinion, is an example of imperfect game design. I don't have any problems with the art side, with exception of mostly bland level art in dungeons, and I'm mostly okay with the plot. It won't set the world on fire, but it has some effort put into it. Below I'll be explaining main points which made me give this game thumbs down. RELIANCE ON PLAYER GRIND INSTEAD OF BALANCING TL;DR: you are forced to grind to meet DPS/health checks Imagine a hack-n-slash / ARPG where you have to heavy grind the same random generated areas over and over just to meet damage per second / survivability requirements. No, not just clearing side areas once to get better loot / skill points (Diablo 2, Path of Exile). Not just replaying the same location with different characters to complete kill challenges (notorious hot Nobody Saves the World). In Children of Morta you need to make runs again and again to earn coins and buy the very basic stats like basic attack damage and health, as well as more advanced crit and dodge chance, and crit multiplier. Even the movement speed stat needs to be grinded. In the beginning almost every character will move like a turtle, and only tickle the most basic enemies, while dying from several hits. To be honest, if the initial numbers weren't so small, the game would be much, much shorter. It is possible for skillful player to complete Hades, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Wizard of Legend on the first run without investing into permanent upgrades. Children of Morta? Totally different story. PLAIN UPGRADES = PLAIN COMBAT TL;DR: you basic attack baddies 90% of the time, skills are bland and don't make impact There aren't many active skills, only 2 per character. These can sometimes be interesting: ranging from summoning a cyclone that pulls enemies in, to an area attack that stuns the enemies and ummm... pulls them in. And ummm... there are ranged area attacks. And just strong melee area attacks. And area attacks that apply slow. And knife throwing. These skills have really big cooldowns and mostly deal unimpressive damage. The problem is, only one active skill is available in early game (and a certain character gets it even later). In the midgame, if you endure several runs with one character, they can finally learn the second skill (with even bigger cooldown). And you can unlock rage state. Once the character makes about 1-2 minutes worth of basic attacks, they can enter a rage state for a couple of seconds, in which the basic attacks are faster/more powerful. One character simply creates a barrier instead. The other skills are passive. Either increasing the character's dodge or crit, or creating a simple % proc effect. Some modify the character's dash. So, even when you spend skillpoints, the combat barely becomes more juicy. Sometimes you can find active items during the run and take up to two. You are able to use them with a huge cooldown. While there are a few cool ones, most of them just summon creatures or do weak area of effect attacks. POOR CROSS-BALANCING TL;DR: one character is OP, most are weak as a kitten. But devs force you to use all of them One character shoots while moving and has an AoE skill. Other is able to block a few attacks completely and also has an AoE skill. The third attacks faster with each melee attack and throws knives, the fourth attacks faster with each ranged attack... but there's Mark. His basic attack auto-targets enemies, closes the distance to them, stunlocks them, and simultaneously lets Mark evade other attacks. Oh, and he has the largest AoE stun in the game. Which pulls enemies. And also Mark is able to get damage resistance just by beating everyone with basic attacks. And the damage resistance boosts his attack in the midgame. And he has one more stun. And high crit chance. Mark is cool. Be like Mark. It's okay to have powerful classes, but there should be some downsides. Not in this case though. How are developers mitigating this? First, when you level up characters, they give passive boosts for all family. Not that they are good enough until very high levels, but it's still cool. What's uncool though, that when you play one character their health drop drastically for some time, forcing you to do runs with non-viable, non-upgraded characters. It would be okay, if not for the fact that only Mark is actually overpowered, right from the beginning to the high levels. EMPHASIS ON ANIMATIONS TL;DR: how would you like unskippable animations during fast-paced combat? There are unskippable animations happen in combat (and outside of it). When you open a chest in the heat of battle, with the enemies on your tail, hoping for something useful, your character decides to stand in place for a second and half. When you activate a Diablo 2 style buff shrine the character is also unable to defend or attack. When you cast a skill the same happens. Even Mark with his 90 degree stun cone will get punched in the face if you miss a single enemy - it will have enough time to hit you. I'm not even talking about the ranged attacks that might be targeted at you. Moreover, the map is made of "rooms" separated by doors. In order to open a door you need to step on the button. After you've done that, you have to wait three seconds for the door to open. Of course, you can move around, but it's creating unnecessary waiting about hundred times per run. CONCLUSIONS I got really tired of this game. I'm even glad that me and my friend didn't wait for the online co-op release. Because for me from the gameplay perspective Children of Morta was nothing but disappointment. For roguelite lovers I would also recommend looking into great titles like Hades (single player), Crypt of the Necrodancer (local co-op), Wizard of Legend (local co-op), and Nine Parchments (online&local co-op, but make sure to cheat-unlock all the characters).Show moreShow less
13.3 hours at review283 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
for the random dude that likes to buy random games on a impulse. this is a decent pick up.Show moreShow less
3.5 hours at review181 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Children of Morta is a diablo style hack and slash game with six playable characters. Two ranged - an archer and a mage Four melee - a shield wearing warrior, a two handed warrior, a monk and a dual dagger wielder. They play sort of how you'd expect if you've done any other RPGs at all. The mage can't move and cast while the archer can move and attack and that's their primary difference. Each of the melee characters is mostly focused on how fast they attack rather than anything else. It does make them play differently and tries to give a playstyle that'll suit most people. The annoying side of this part is that even if you do find a character that clicks you can't go on loads of runs with them because the game gives them "corruption" which reduces their maximum HP. I'm not a fan of that - let me play who I want when I want please. You spend a lot of time just left clicking to shoot off characters attacks. The story sort of brings the game to life even with this and the story unlocks each character - effectively after each failed run you'll get a snippet of story and work towards another character being unlocked. A few characters will require an item from a run to unlock them when you hit a specific story point as well. Those are unmissable so you will eventually get the entire roster unlocked after say 3-5 hours. The actual gameplay involves going through randomly generated corridors. There are 3 acts - act 1 and 2 have 3 stages and act 3 has 2. The stages of each act are basically identical. They'll mix up the enemies a little bit but the area you're traversing is pretty much the same. This is where my disappointment comes with the game I think. Each stage will have 1-3 floors but those floors are identical. So you're kind of doing 9 absolutely identical randomised levels to get to a boss. And the bosses are a pain - I'm not calling them hard, but they all seem to be huge HP sponges and took a bucketload more time than I'd expect. Each of the 3 acts has their own little library of enemies as well as "Corrupted" enemies which are present in every act. Act 1 has Skeletons, Goblins, Big Goblins, spiders, spitting spiders, big spiders and bats for example. And you're doing 8 or so corridors of that. It gets repetitive fast. Act 3 really lays on the corrupted enemies too, you're going to get REALLY bored of fighting them after a while. After a few goes of this the lack of variety begins to bite. Do I really want to spend an hour going through three identical corridor levels and then 20 more minutes on a boss? I don't think I do. The levels do have little walled off areas where you'll get some story. Rescuing a wolf to take home or a little robot girl. I like the idea of these but I don't feel like they do enough. My wolf has a kennel but he doesn't actually....do anything. They don't even mention him in the story bits. It was nice at the time but I wanted more, again. Some of these little side quests also take forever, like watching the son of a Stargazer mining to make glass and following him around to protect him from enemies was just a slog. The levelling up process isn't too exciting either. You get a point every time you level and skills cost 1 point to get to level 1, two points for 2 and then 3 points for three which is where they cap out. Taking 3 level ups to finally do something feels like a long time. It's strange - I'd say out of the 13 hours I played I feel like I was just doing the same thing over and over and over and now even though it's a relatively short amount of time for a game I'm bored of that gameplay now. The game sort of tries to mix up your runs by dropping either usable artifacts or passive bonus artifacts, but there's so few that are legitimately actually useful that I usually just found myself going "...oh." Effectively unless it makes you hurt more when you attack it's kinda pointless. What's the use of a DoT that ticks twice for 10 when each hit I do is for 40 and the enemy takes 6 to kill? Why bother? I'd say 70% of the items you pick up feel that way. I'll also note that the English in the game isn't great. Some skills have descriptions where I'm genuinely not sure what they do. Some unlocks happen in weird orders that make no sense - you find a guy who fixes runes for example before the game has explained what a rune even is, and get skill ups that reference runes in the same way - and the story is told in this manner as well at times. Those moments of "Wait, what?" ruin the story for me and make it so that the big selling point of the game falls flat and all you have is constant walking and shooting. I also feel like the game is set up for Co-op and is expecting you to play that way. Maybe if I'd got it on my Switch instead I'd have liked it better but I'm not really co-op playing on my PC.Show moreShow less
12.6 hours at review226 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Children of Morta is an action RPG that strongly focuses on the rich story and family bonds. Together they have to stop the Corruption to save their home and free their land from the evil. Pros: + Outstanding rogue-lite gameplay + Every single family member has their own unique class so the player can always choose the right one for their needs and desired playstyle + Satisfying variety of items and upgrades in every run for every single member of the family + A captivating story that is extremely interesting to follow + Beautiful visual art + Top-notch voice acting Cons: - A few characters feel a bit overpowered compared to the others - A constant need in grinding in order to progress with the story The review is still WIP and a subject to change. One of the best feelings in gaming is when you wait for the game and never expect too much from it but then it releases and blows your mind. This is exactly what happened to me with Children of Morta, a new ARPG with rogue-lite elements, developed by Dead Mage and published by 11bit Studios. What’s really beautiful about Children of Morta is that it masterfully combines neverending action with dungeon explorations, rogue-lite elements, and extremely captivating rich story. In my memory, this is the first game of this genre where the story is THAT important and being told in such a way. I've only spent about six hours in Children of Morta by the moment of writing this review and I am still on my way of finishing the story but I can already say that this game is a true masterpiece that has a chance to get an “Indie of the year” award. Story Children of Morta tells the story of an extraordinary family, that fights the Corruption since forever, living on the magic distant land. The game focuses a lot on the idea of the most valuable things regarding the family and shows us a strong and friendly family where everyone follows the rule “one for all”. Gameplay The game starts quite cheerfully with a friendly tutorial, showing us fast pacing combat and how the game works in general. We start the game by playing as the head of a family John Bergson and his eldest daughter Linda. John is a typical sword and shield warrior, pretty common class that can be tanky and deal a lot of damage in the close range at the same time while his daughter Linda prefers to play it safe, dealing damage on the distance using her bow. It’s important to state that John also has two younger kids named Kevin and Lucy, who want to help their family and fight against Corruption as well, and they do their best to train as much as possible to join their family. They eventually join the fight while the player progresses with the story. Kevin is a typical assassin who uses daggers to quickly strike from the shadow and move as fast as possible confusing enemies all the time. Lucy was trained as a dangerous fire mage by her grandmother and her abilities are probably the most fun among all the classes in the game. There is also a Mark, martial art specialist and Joey - extremely brutal brawler who uses a hammer to stomp his enemies. Every family member has their own skill tree with dozens of active and passive abilities to level up. Some of the members feel pretty weak and useless until you level up them a bit while others are pretty strong from the beginning and getting even more powerful after leveling them up. It’s interesting how every single member has special family passive skills that work when a few people from the family are together during some missions so they can be useful buffing them and helping during the intense battles. And these passive skills open up every few levels and that makes the player to play every single character for a bit just to unlock these useful family-based abilities. In general, the whole idea of the game is in clearing a set of different dungeons from Corruption and every single dungeon is divided into two-four locations. If the player dies they have to begin the dungeon all over again. There is always a dangerous boss at the end of each dungeon and I really loved the variety and creativity of them. During these dungeon runs, characters can pick up different power-ups and runes to make them more powerful and make their life easier. The player can find them randomly and they can be a crucial tool in finishing certain dungeons. Divine Relics are probably the most notable and useful powerups in the game as they give the player an extra ability that is active for the current run only. There are also Divine Graces that give you passive effects with some great improvements and also negative effects at the same time. And the Charms are temporary buffs that give you some kind of passive effect until the end of the run as well and it usually should be triggered by a button, so the player has to save it until the most needed moment. Also, the player can find runes that greatly improves the character’s abilities and Obelisks that provide the player with temporary buffs. It’s absolutely amazing how all these powerups work combined all together with different characters making them extremely powerful and all these combinations make every single run unique and not like the previous one. However, despite the fact that these powerups really help the players during their adventure, it was a moment when I really felt extremely weak and that I had to come back to the previously completed dungeons to grind a little bit to level up characters and buy special upgrades. Speaking of upgrades, there is a special hub where the player spends time in between dungeon runs and intense fights. Here the player can upgrade all the characters with better armor, greate attack power, critical chance and ability to dodge, etc. There are also upgrades that affect player’s luck and the duration of blessings, they are all very crucial for the game progress, but to level them all up you will need plenty of money. One of my favorite parts in this game is the way the story unfolds and how the developers show us all these small, touching and even heartbreaking cutscenes in between dungeon runs. Keeping in mind that Children of Morta has a pixel art graphics, these cutscenes are absolutely genius and the story is extremely interesting to follow. Graphics Children of Morta has a gorgeous pixel art graphics and the way it’s implemented in the game, the way they created plenty of different various colorful locations is outstanding. The game has been delayed a few times and now I can see that it was a good idea to polish everything up before the initial release, it was definitely worth it. Sound The music is absolutely delightful and charming in this game, it never bothers the player and changes respectively according to the situation: during the stay in the hub it’s calm and sweet music that soothes your heart and it dramatically changes once you step into the dangerous dungeons. A separate item is worth noting is the narrator’s voice who accompanies the player during the whole adventure, his voice really reminded me of those classic Documentary movies about nature and animals with a narrator’s golden voices that really hit it. Conclusion Children of Morta is probably one of the best indie games I have played in 2019 and it’s a breathtaking and unforgettable experience for every ARPG lover, who wants to try something new with a fresh take on mixing this genre with rogue-lite mechanics. I highly recommend this product if you are looking for a good looking quality indie ARPG with a rich story and charming atmosphere. Enjoy! Follow our curator page, OCG Curations if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.Show moreShow less
5.7 hours at review138 people found this helpful
Received for free
Not recommendedSteam player
A hack-and-slash game with rogue-like elements, Children of Morta unfortunately didn't provide me with any of the satisfaction associated with either genre. I usually like to start with the positives but they're scarce here. The pixel art looks excellent but even that is squandered in drab and uninspired levels, of which there are mainly only three types: a cave, a desert town and a volcanic industrial area. The music, although competently made, sounded very unmemorable to me. None of the tracks were catchy or went beyond doing their job. The programming itself was stable during my playthrough, apart from a bug that prevented me from loading the game right after beating the last boss, forcing me to redo that fight for the save file to register their defeat. When it comes to gameplay, you have a short campaign with levels that must be beaten in succession but can be revisited at will. The longevity of the game comes from its difficulty, as it's easy to get overwhelmed and die, in which case you must start the level from scratch. Before entering a level, you must choose from one of the unlocked characters to play as; they all have their own gameplay style and skill tree, which can be upgraded by leveling the character up. During a level, you'll find several ways to improve your character for that run only: Divine items will grant passives, active skills or buffs, obelisks give you buffs that last a short while, and collecting Runes slightly modifies the character skill they're applied to but they have limited charges. Outside of a level, you're able to spend earned gold to permanently boost the attributes of all characters for future runs. Therefore, you have a considerable pool of options when it comes to making the game easier. The problem here is that none of these options display the depth of the genres they come from. Characters have very limited skill trees and you're not so much making a build for them as you are prioritizing skills that are clearly better than others. Items rarely feel interesting or have gaming-changing impact, acting more like small power-ups. Permanently boosting your characters' attributes with gold lowers the uncertainty factor of every run onward, turning your victory into more of a matter of "when" than "if". There is no late game, secret bosses, areas, or challenges. There are a few optional quests you can pursue during levels but they'll mostly reward you with an item for that run only, a decoration for the house or a piece of lore. Once you beat the final boss, you've beaten everything the game can throw at you. There is a New Game Plus option available, but all it really means is increased numbers. So ultimately what this is is a one-and-done, short hack-and-slash game with power-up and character variety. It relies entirely on its core gameplay and plot to retain player motivation, and I have to say both didn't do it for me in the least. Combat felt like a chore, with enemies that are tanky, pesty, and come in large amounts which is compounded by summoners, dragging combat even further. Skills are often underwhelming. Every level is a bland looking collection of small rooms and corridors. Some of these rooms require you to play a mini-game to get an item and they're all bad, from the awful Pong-like one to another that simply gives you a 33% chance of getting the reward. There is no reason I would ever play a level in this game for fun. Then, despite allowing you to play as any character in the same playthrough, this is hardly used in a tactical way such as requiring the player to consider who to use and when, since the only real challenges in the game are bosses. Sure, the choice of character adds variety to a playthrough, but since each character represents a time investment you have to consider whether it's worth playing as them at all versus just getting through the level with another, more powerful character. Compare that to the more classic system of having the player pick a character from the start, which allows for distinct playthroughs where challenges must be overcome with a character with their own strengths and weaknesses, thus increasing replayability. As it is, in Children of Morta I feel it's simply human nature that people will gravitate towards 1 or 2 characters they particularly enjoy playing as and/or have found the most success with. Predicting this, the developers have implemented two mechanics to try and increase the value of this whole system: skill passives called "family traits" that are unlocked from each character and affect the entire roster but, again, represent just one type of small bonus in a pool of them and make you ponder whether it's something even worth pursuing; and, unfortunately, a health penalty for using a character too much, which only goes away after a number of runs with other characters or by spending a rare item. This penalty, if ignored, will eventually grow to unworkable numbers. Now, this penalty isn't a huge issue if you enjoy playing with more than one character as you can simply rotate between them (though I've found you need to play as at least three for this rotation to completely work), but the principle of it bothers me. It artificially extends playtime by berating the player for having a preference or, Heaven forbid, having found out there's no good reason to switch characters all the time, and it disallows playthroughs where the player limits themselves to a single character in an attempt to generate challenge and/or replayability. It's just generally a negative way to make a system "work". I understand it's also a vehicle to reinforce the family theme, but I don't defend theme over design. It's an unconvincing way of pushing this theme anyway, as it only forces you to play with a couple other characters, hardly the entire family. Then there's the story. The plot is intriguing at first but becomes real standard fare. Nothing particularly surprising happens, things just move on with little effort. The ending is unsatisfying. Worldbuilding is poor; nothing is given proper development or context. The levels you visit are supposedly located around the eponymous Mount Morta, but because you access these areas via teleporting only, they never feel like real, organic places with interesting landmarks. The player has no freedom to explore, to discover anything interesting; the game's structure just doesn't support it. There are notes you can find containing more information about the world, but those are no substitute for actually experiencing things for yourself. The narration, although made by a good voice actor, gets old since it is the only voice you ever hear and nothing in the game progresses without his take on it. When it comes to the family of characters, the game fails to develop any of them beyond what can already be mostly surmised by their first impressions: one is young and playful, another is old and wise, etc. The narration robs the characters of their own voices and thoughts, and, thus, much of their ability to express themselves. Instead, we are incessantly told how they feel, how they act, what happened here and there. Instead of being fully-fledged, they feel like tiny actors only there to be observed. Better developing these characters and their bond would have contributed to the family theme far more than any ill conceived gameplay mechanic ever would. All in all, although I've given it as fair of a shake as I could, there was pretty much nothing in this game for me. I like the premise of a family of characters and being able to play as them, but none of the systems at work here have grabbed my interest. The game does nothing particularly well, and by blending genres without adopting any of what gives them depth, it provides a shallow experience accordingly. It feels overly unambitious. It's a shame, because I can see there was real love behind this game and I fully went into it expecting to like it. But it is what it is.Show moreShow less
36 hours at review174 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
RELEASE EDIT: Now that I've had a chance to sink my teeth into the game and unlock and play all the characters, as well as beat the entirety of Caeldippo Caves (the first section of areas) - it holds up extremely well. The pre-alpha/Kickstarter promise has been delivered on. Gameplay: Each character not only plays differently, but *feels* different to play. On paper Kevin and Mark are similar at first glance; both are fast melee attackers with great mobility. In practice? Kevin switches between a frenzied flurry of daggers to silent and stealthy takedowns, where as Mark controls the enemies around and flips and dives around the battlefield. Each area has felt distinct in their own manners so far, and while it doesn't seem like there's a ton of items to find in runs at first, once you unlock Runes for your skills, between Relics, Graces, Runes and Charms each run, even with the same character in the same area can play out very differently. Example: I played a fair bit of Kevin during the Caves while I tried to get his assassin style abilities unlocked. I found a charm that removed my ability to evade, but granted me greatly increased dodge chance and movement speed. Combine that with extra attack speed, damage scaling on attack speed, chance to heal on hit and several other items, I was able to take what was previously a challenging boss to the area and utterly shred it to bits. There are incentives to play each family member, as you are able to unlock family-wide passives for each character, as well as picking and choosing how you want to build your character via a unique skill tree for each character. Combine that with between run customization in the form of family-wide stat buffs and similar upgrades you can unlock and even the worst runs will still provide some sort of progress. Visuals, Sound, Story: Beautifully crafted pixel art, smooth animations and a wonderfully detailed world. This is a prime example of pixel art done right, and it really lends to the narrative, which is provided in vignettes between runs. Speaking of the narrative, there's not only an overarching narrative, but a great deal of smaller stories and details interspersed throughout the game, which really helps to bring it all to life. The attention to detail of the family's life, as well as a very fitting narrator and excellent sound design really brings it all together and pulls you into the world. Recommended? Absolutely yes. Pick up this gem and enjoy. EDIT: Finally have my hands on the full game, I'll update the review after some playtime! So far, only Kickstarter backers of a certain tier and above are able to play the pre-alpha build, and for a pre-alpha build this is already quite good. I've run into maybe one bug and some minor nitpicks, but for the most part the game plays buttery smooth, each of the three currently available characters plays quite differently, and despite nominally completing the current content (there's more than just going through the caves and beating the boss, there's at least one quest that persists over multiple runs), I still haven't found everything there is to be found, and some of the things I've run into I haven't figured out. Game is fun and I look forward to more!Show moreShow less
6.3 hours at review136 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
The game does a lot right. There's passion put into it. There's good ideas in it. Some of the writing can be a bit unnecessarily poetic, but it sort of works to give the game its own identity. However! The gameplay of the game has pretty big issues. If you've played Hades, Ys, Diablo-likes, Crawl or other games like those, you might feel something's not totally responsive or right about Children of Morta. The visuals and the way enemies deal damage and how your character receives it isn't implemented in a good way. You will often be like: "Why did I die? What happened?" and you might go from 70% HP to 0% hp within 50 milliseconds and be unaware of what hit you and how. The game doesn't feel responsive or have invulnerability after taking damage, like many games do. Enemies also don't have much of a visual cue for them being about to attack. Some bosses also show which area they will attack, but at the last moment that changes in a way which seems like a bug. The gameplay of the game is its weakest element. If the gameplay was a little better, it'd be easy to recommend it due to how the other elements in the game can make up for slightly lackluster gameplay.Show moreShow less
15.1 hours at review168 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.