Chris InglisMoroi is a dark fantasy hack-and-slash adventure developed by Violet Saint and published by Good Shepherd Entertainment, releasing on Steam on April 30, 2025. The game plunges you headfirst into a nightmarish landscape populated by even more nightmarish inhabitants, all while maintaining a darkly comedic tone that is both jarring and effective to lighten the mood. This game is certainly different to anything I have played of late and had some quirky humour to balance the gore throughout.
You awaken as a prisoner with amnesia, forced to navigate the surreal and hostile “Cosmic Engine.” The story unfolds through encounters with the bizarre inhabitants and environmental storytelling, rather than straightforward explanations. The game’s atmosphere features claustrophobic hallways filled with twisted machinery, blood-soaked corridors, and the lingering sense of dread. You discover objects and interact with figures that will give you journal entries which become breadcrumbs that lead you from solving one problem to the next.
Yet, amidst this oftentimes ghastly atmosphere, Moroi has moments of dark humour through its dialogue and character interactions. While searching a bathroom I came across a plunger that gives me a health bonus, and then later I rescued a duck who gave me his teeth as a reward. His lispy thank you and goodbye prompted a chuckle from me that balanced the gore versus light-hearted jabs at the grim situations you are faced with. This pendulum between horror and humour is what kept driving me forward through the game, in addition to solving puzzles.
Some puzzles in the game require you to find previous items, follow lit wires or shooting through a grate to cause an explosion that opens a way for you to move forward. Others are more unexplained, with one outdoor section where I ran around aimlessly looking for interactable objects and almost gave up until I found I could interact with trees. At other times you learn to look for the different shades of lighting, particularly around doors where yellow/white lighting means a door you can pass through, compared to red/darker lighting meaning there is a door there, but it is not yet passable.
Combat in Moroi feels fluid and engaging for most of the time. You know you are about to enter combat as heavy metal music fires up, drawing comparisons to moments in the Doom games. The ability to seamlessly switch between melee and ranged weaponry is an excellent addition, though I found the ranged weapon options were frantic with the twinstick style aiming and a slight delay to ‘wind up’. I much preferred the melee approach, dodging where required and building up power to be able to execute and earn some much-needed health orbs. The ranged weapons did help to pass a puzzle, and once you have taken out a couple of mobs with melee, finishing off a distance monster with your ranged weapon and then switching back to melee for the next wave was still a good feature to have.
Overall, Moroi offers a unique experience with its dark aesthetic mixed with bizarre humour and intriguing story. The unsettling characters and strange world create moments that are both disturbing and amusing. While combat gameplay isn’t perfect, the game’s willingness to embrace its quirkiness makes it worth exploring for fans of unconventional and grotesque stories.
This review utilised a key provided by Good Shepherd Entertainment and Moroi is available now on Steam.
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