Moroi Preview: Eerily Unsettling and Intriguingly Mysterious

The moment I truly grasped what Moroi was all about came during a rather bizarre encounter. Picture this: my character decided to feed himself to a talking meat-grinder because his instincts yelled, “Let’s do it!” Now, where most games might have tossed up a game over screen for laughs, Moroi played it straight. My character was promptly tossed head-first into the machine. It chewed a bit, then spat him out, deciding he simply didn’t taste good enough. I mean, who knew a meat-grinder could be picky, right? Later, I could offer this culinary critic a severed hand (don’t even ask), and it was thrilled. It grinds up the hand, leaving behind some bone dust, which I use to help an elderly woman make “soup” (seriously, don’t ask about that either). But as the hand goes in, it unexpectedly sets off an explosion. “You are on fire,” my character sarcastically notes as the machine explodes in a flurry of wires. With my bone dust in hand, I move on. At that point, I realized the kind of game Moroi was, and I was hooked.

Derived from Romanian folklore, “moroi” refers to a vampire or ghost, sometimes a phantom arising from its grave to drain life from the living. But how does this apply to Moroi the game? Well, your character—a burly, bearded fellow—wakes up in a mysterious, painful prison with no memory. Everyone seems to know him, but he’s clueless about their identities. A tall man with an odd hat suggests that maybe it’s for the best.

Your initial task is to escape, navigating through puzzles that basically amount to “find item, place elsewhere.” At one point, you encounter a self-cannibalizing artist who claims if eating himself isn’t his ultimate masterpiece, lightning should strike him dead—in no time, it does. You grab his severed hand, give it to that eccentric meat grinder, and receive bone dust in return. As it catches fire, you take the dust to the tall, odd-hatted man. He instructs you to bring the “salt” to an old lady making soup. Her pot calls her in, and as she’s pulled headfirst into it, your character observes, “I’m starting to think that wasn’t soup.” Spotting a trend yet?

Just when you think you’ve got the pattern down, things shift. Moroi arms you with a sword and throws a horde of enemies your way. The magic of it hits—combat is brisk and floating between top-down, twin-stick angles feels surprisingly fitting here. There’s a weight to each swing, and pulling off those Doom-style Glory Kills, where you teleport across the screen to brutally take down foes and gain health, is incredibly satisfying. Then, of course, you get a minigun that fires harpoons—and that’s just cool.

As Moroi oscillates between quirky puzzles—like counting corpses in a freezer for door codes—and intense combat against bloodthirsty adversaries charging at you like it’s Black Friday for the last grill in stock, it’s a thrill ride. And it keeps getting better. For instance, after rescuing a duck with human teeth from becoming dinner, it graciously offers its chompers so you can sharpen your weapon and adds a hint to leave through some bizarre dialogue.

Throughout, cryptic messages and environmental collectibles hint at more to the story. One memorable tidbit involves the duck of Eternal Torment as a proposed dish, while another features a poor cleaning lady convinced the ever-rearranging furniture is a ghostly prank.

The weirdness doesn’t stop. At one point, I found myself playing as a peculiar winged doll charged by its mother (another doll) to help its siblings, who are cranky trees, fend off some impending doom. It’s a weird chapter, but the narrative is oddly captivating. By the time the credits rolled, I was left pondering its quirks, eager to see where it might lead next.

However, Moroi isn’t without its quirks. I hit a few bugs in the demo: it crashed once, I frequently got sandwiched in a doorway by a bookcase, and, on one occasion, I plummeted through the ground. Some of the writing is a bit uneven as well. But those are fixable issues. Moroi expertly blends the eerie with the enigmatic, transforming my half-hour demo into a sequence of unexpected turns. While I still haven’t pinned down the exact meaning of a moroi in this context, I’m ready to unravel the mystery. After all, how can anyone resist a game featuring a picky meat grinder and a duck equipped with human teeth?