Biomorph begins with two alien figures staring at each other, stuck in time. Suddenly, one of them is released from this stasis, and begins an escape. This is you, and you are Harlo. What you are is a bit harder to explain, as you don’t have all your memories, nobody’s seen anything like you before, you can briefly turn into liquid at will, and instead of arms you have two cantankerous floating robot hands (or heads?), Eny and Zeki, that don’t really like each other. What you do remember clearly is that you were on a mission to destroy the very vessel you now find yourself in, that the mission has gone wrong – you and your ally Kleio were caught and held in stasis after all – and now you need to escape. As you do, you discover you have another very unusual power: whenever you kill a creature, you can walk over to their remains and melt into a copy of their form. This is the titular Biomorph abililties, and its use allows you to become a whole host of strange creatures in the world.
Upon escaping in rather explosive fashion from the vessel you were in, you are picked up by a fishing boat and brought to the town of Brightmoor, a town that has managed to eke by in the shadow of the great alien craft for over a hundred years – turns out you were in stasis a lot longer than you thought. From there you set out on a quest to discover the means to once again enter the alien vessel’s main body (the main door is closed and your exit closed off an easy way back in), find a way to rescue your ally, and just as importantly, fill in the gaps in your own memory on how things went down a hundred years ago.
Biomorph falls into the Soulsvania subcategory of games. That mean it’s an action platformer with an interconnected world, traversal through the world is granted via ability upgrades to your character, and that it has Soulslike elements, like high difficulty including very high enemy damage, slow in-battle healing, opaque, often item-based storytelling, corpse-run mechanics, and stamina gages. Not every Soulsvania has all these elements, and you can often tell a game’s inspiration by what elements it does and does not include. In this case, Biomorph can trace a lot of its DNA to Ender Lilies, in that in it allows the selection of up to three attack abilities and that instead of a stamina gage it sets a usage limit on abilities that only resets at designated save points. It also uses an accessory system that grants each accessory a value that fills up an expandable accessory limit on that character. I started playing Ender Magnolia while also playing Biomorph which only made this more evident. It also highlighted the differences quite well too. Whereas Ender Lilies and Ender Magnolia are more deliberate, Biomorph is much faster and twitchier. The movement upgrades are completely distinct as well, owing to Harlo’s bizarre liquid alien biology. The biggest change is the very act of Biomorphing itself, which, given the name of the game, is quite appropriate.
As mentioned before, when you defeat most regular enemies in Biomorph, they will leave behind some cartoonish remains. You can then move over to those remains, press the Biomorph button, and turn into that enemy. You’ll stay as that enemy until either you press the Biomorph button again, or leave the screen. On its own, this would be enough to set Biomorph entirely apart from basically every other Soulsvania, but there’s a second layer to it. For every distinct instance of a specific enemy alien you defeat, you gain experience. Gain enough experience, and you unlock that alien form. This means that in addition to being able to transform into that form when you defeat it, you can equip it and then bring up that form to transform into at any time.
Now, you can only equip three Biomorphs at a time, and an equipped Biomorph almost always has a downside compared to a fresh Biomorph (limited uses of their attacks being the primary one), but nearly every enemy Biomorph has one ability to move or interact with the world in a way that no other has. Bringing the right Biomorph can cut out a lot of backtracking and tedium or grant access to areas that can’t be accessed using just the enemies available in an area. If I had to compare Biomorphing to another Metroidvania’s mechanics, I’d say they’re like the animal forms of the Shantae games, but more plentiful and stronger. One other aspect of Biomorphing is that they they act as a sort of opt-in difficulty. Every time you use an enemy’s remains to Biomorph, the game remembers that this specific enemy was used, both to grant you XP to unlock the Biomorph and to continually upgrade the unlocked form, but also so in the future it can use the enhanced version of that specific enemy. There is a clear visual change, usually the enemy gets a changed palette and some electricity crackle effects, and a distinct uptick in the enemy’s aggression and capabilities. After you Biomorph an enemy you can expect it to act differently, attack more, and attack harder.
So apart from beating up freaky creatures and then becoming them, what does Biomorph have to offer? Well, there’s the main plot, which involves activating a series of beacons around the planet in order to trick the alien spacecraft Harlo began the game in to opening its doors again, ever increasing exploration options, especially as you unlock more and more movement options like wall jump and line riding, in addition to whatever movement tech you can steal from Biomorphed enemies, and so so many sidequests. There are all sorts of sidequests, from rebuilding the city of Brightmoor to helping a father and son reconcile. The game definitely has a lot of content to offer.
That’s not to say everything is absolutely rosy. Biomorph has a couple weird rough edges. A lot of these involve the UI. For example, while most games will give you a warning before quitting, especially games with fixed save points, Biomorph just lets you exit out without warning. Sometimes when opening a menu, for example to change equipment and abilities at a save point, or when attempting to purchase items from a store, you will simply be unable to move your selection or change menus. The game has not frozen, you can exit the menu and re-enter it, and this usually fixes the issue, but it seems to happen seemingly at random. Lastly, and most irritatingly, is that, at least visually, multiple enemy hitboxes are very inconsistent. Primarily boss and projectile hitboxes. Given how fast paced and frenetic fights can be, it’s very frustrating to lose health because you still overlapped a boss hitbox despite appearing not too, or got caught in a projectile or explosion that did not appear to touch you. This is far from game-ending, but it does make Biomorph quite frustrating in several spots.
All in all, I have enjoyed my time with Biomorph. If you want faster-paced Soulsvania gameplay and more science fiction trappings while keeping most of the other mechanics and aesthetics of the genre, Biomorph is well worth checking out.
Tim reviewed Biomorph on PC with a review code.
