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I always try to keep an open mind when playing unfinished games and ones that are slow to start: even when it's just not clicking for me, I'm looking for how it could improve or what about it might be more to someone else's tastes. Then I'll play something like Metamorphosis, whose demo is available now on Steam, and it just smacks me in the mouth with how bracingly, shockingly excellent and unique it is. You should play this demo for yourself right now, or at least wishlist it. From the second it starts, this is so profoundly my shit I'm willing to blaspheme to get that statement on the record.
Still here? Well I'm flattered. Metamorphosis' reveal trailer is what first got my attention: It looks incredible, with gruesome pixel art that feels like a cross between Signalis, Blasphemous, and the yet-unreleased Radio the Universe. That last one is a game I'm still holding a candle for despite a decade-plus development. Its demo is still on my Steam Deck like I'm a divorcee who just can't bring himself to take off the wedding ring.
I love games that are impenetrable, crusty, and make me feel really bad. Mostly this means CRPGs like Pathfinder: Kingmaker, but I will always make time for a freaky-looking indie that cribs off King's Field or a Japanese action game I've never heard of.
Metamorphosis' trailer is an unrelenting cavalcade of body horror, but the demo is far more reserved. The sound design is superb, with more actiony areas boasting a synthy drone, while oppressive silence reigns supreme in the abandoned cathedral you start out in.
Article continues belowThat silence will be broken by the glitchy rasps of Metamorphosis' insectoid monsters, or even just great deployments of diegetic noise. My favorite touch was the periodic sound of someone knocking at a door—with headphones on, I thought someone was knocking at my door. Just horrible. I love it.
Metamorphosis does a superb job of building up to its first real scare, one that had me hooting with laughter after the shock wore off. The first room is a safe zone to get acclimated to the controls—it has real save room vibes. Interact with a bookcase to get a nice first person view, and oh god, what is that outline of a ghoulish face in the shadows?
Gotcha! It's just the little homunculus you carry around and use to access your inventory and menus. It has a command line like MS-DOS, and the inventory screen is one of the most beautiful bits of user interface design I've seen in years.
Moving on to the next room, there's a sequence of increasingly disturbing paintings you can interact with to get the survival horror protagonist "Hm, I'm describing what I'm seeing in a little subtitle while the game pauses" beat. On the last one, you get the whammy "(This is not a painting)." What the hell? Then the horrible bug thing with the face of a cherub falls down on top of you, looking for a fight. Roll for initiative—as soon as your heartbeat comes down from somewhere in the 200s.
Afterwards, you'll find your first save point, a confessional in the Catholic tradition, with one booth for the priest, one for the penitent, and a mesh grate for them to communicate through—the game gives you a message explicitly forbidding you from entering the confessor's half of the booth.
When you step into your side for the first time, something with a vaguely feminine face addresses you from the other half. It looks like it must be a giant, just barely able to wedge its head in horizontally. Before you enter, and after you leave, it is nowhere in sight. I wanted to screenshot every single thing it had to say. The confessional abomination was spitting bars:
- "WE WERE MANY. MANY HANDS. MANY MOUTHS. MANY."
- "HE FOUND YOU FIRST, HALF DROWNED IN THE DEAD SEAS."
- "BUT MEN… DISGUSTING AS MEN DISGUSTING AS MEN DISGUSTING AS MEN DISGUSTING AS MEN."
- "SOMETHING PERFECT CAME DOWN."
Sickos: "Yes… Ha ha ha… Yes!"
The atmosphere is suffocating and the vibes are rancid. I would be happy to play a game that looked, sounded, and read like this of practically any genre. Visual novel? Easy dub. Walking sim? Makes sense for horror and trauma, yep. Realtime strategy? I'd make it work. Roguelike? A little oversaturated these days, but it's popular for a reason. Gacha? We might have a problem, though the "Cockroach Body Horror Insectoid Abomination Nun" gacha does sound like the first one I might be interested in.
But Metamorphosis is none of these things. It is, in fact, a 2D platformer that the developers strenuously avoid describing as a metroidvania. That stood out to me, because it seems to boast a similarly interconnected world, but not the "new powers unlock new parts of the map you have to backtrack to" hallmark—which I always find to be the genre's weakest link anyway, the "where the hell do I go now?" of it all.
Our nun's moveset reminds me of Hollow Knight, but with the bug man's key tech unlocked from the start, rather than gated behind bosses: You can double jump, wall jump, dash, and pogo from the word go. This is, quite frankly, one of the most cracked and deadly nuns I've ever seen in a game. She'd get along well with the Undertaker from Elden Ring.
Rather than teeing you up to scour the world for your most basic tools, Metamorphosis has this brash confidence: No, you can double jump wave dash short hop neutral air from the very start. In fact, every encounter has been designed with those tools in mind.
There are no i-frames, near as I can tell, just some deliciously unforgiving, simple to learn, hard to master combat that emphasizes positioning and timing. It feels like Metamorphosis was made by a truly obsessive action game devotee, and when its oppressive atmosphere is punctured by a moment of shock and horror, it rewards you for keeping your head and pulling some Devil May Cry acrobatic combos out of your ass like it's no big thing.
I love this game. It reached out of my monitor, grabbed me by the shoulders, and shook me really hard. I want the whole thing right now. Metamorphosis' Steam page lists the release date as "To be announced." Somebody get Satan on the line for me—I've got a Faustian bargain to make.
