I thought March couldn't get any more tailor-made for me between long-awaited sequel Dragon's Dogma 2 and surprise Vanillaware tactical RPG Unicorn Overlord, but now I can add promising Metroidvania Biomorph to the lineup too. It's out March 4 on PC and Switch, and I am way more excited than I thought I would be.
Biomorph is a 2D Metroidvania with a Kirby-like hook: you can turn yourself into the monsters you defeat and use their abilities to solve problems, whether the problem is a wall you can't break through or another monster that's lookin' at you crossways. It's been on my radar since developer Lucid Dreams released a short demo in early 2023, and after playing its new, much better demo, it's one of my most-anticipated early 2024 releases.
Kirby and Hollow Knight are the headlining inspirations, but the core idea for Biomorph actually comes from Super Mario Odyssey, which Lucid Dreams CEO Maxime Grégoire happened to be playing around the time the studio was stewing on its next release.
"There are so many Metroidvanias out there that we didn't want to release a game that was only a twist on the lore," Grégoire told me in an interview. "There are many where it's always the same mechanic but some are sci-fi, some talk about different aspects, but there's not much new mechanically. So we thought that by adding that biomorph mechanic, we actually add something that is quite different. It's a player fantasy sometimes, that you get to play as creatures that you killed. So this is how the idea came to be. Initially, it was really Mario Odyssey."
It's a fascinating mechanic for a game built around combat and exploration, and it felt intuitive in Biomorph's new demo. I'm looking forward to finally seeing the full world, which has an almost Flash-era charm to it, for myself.
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