Mate’Morphosis isn’t a Chess game. It is a single player trial-and-error-based puzzle game that just so happens to use Chess pieces and Chess rules.
As a comparison, you know those puzzle stages in the later Bust-A-Move games? Where you need to shoot the colored bubbles in a specific sequence to clear them all without having any left over? Sure, it will require some trial and error but this all-or-nothing gameplay is the gimmick within Mate’Morphosis. It is a single player puzzle game where you need to move and capture pieces in a specific order to defeat the king.
The player learns the mechanics without a dedicated tutorial. Starting as a certain Chess piece, the game is entirely offensive based. Meaning, the defensive pieces just stand there and cannot lower your piece count. Also, say you start as a pawn but overtake a rook, your piece then becomes the rook, hence the “morphosis” part of the game’s title. However, after a few stages, the player needs to keep a close eye on the number of moves available. Taking too many causes a restart. This grows in complexity as stages are composed of unique tilesets, some tiles can breakaway, there are gaps, and there are arrowed tiles.
Unfortunately, the game doesn’t explain the arrowed tiles and took me a while to figure out how they work. By traveling over green arrows, the player gains a move. Moving a piece onto an orange arrow tile reduces a move from the queue. Then, this grows in complexity as some tiles have more than one arrow. Because of this, each stage only has one answer. At times, I wished there was a built-in hint system, but that is what internet walkthroughs are for, I guess.
Visually, the pixel presentation is nicely done but I most appreciate the tile-by-tile play control. Meaning, the hand icon moves one tile at a time instead of freely moving like a mouse cursor. This makes movement precise and snappy. Unfortunately, there isn’t any replay value once all 60 stages are cleared. Since there is only one way to clear each stage, there is no possibility for high scores or ways to lower the move count.
While I wish the game explained some of the mechanics a little better, it isn’t anything a Chess player cannot figure out with some time. However, I think it is important that the player already understands the rules of Chess before playing. There is a brief “how-to” screen in the menu, that demonstrates each piece’s moveset within one image, but already knowing how to play will undoubtedly be beneficial. Still, for a five-dollar game, this is a fun and interesting puzzle-based take on classic Chess, something dedicated fans will most appreciate especially given the low price point.
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
X/Twitter: @ZackGaz
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RATING
OUR SCORE - 8
8
SCORE
Mate’Morphosis turns classic competitive Chess into a creative and well-designed single player puzzle game.