When American McGee made his Alice games, little did he know that he was blazing a trail for dark fantasy action games. Evil Twin or the Little Nightmare games probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for McGee’s twisted reimagining of fairy tales. Today, gamers rarely see macabre fantasy outside of the run-of-the-mill dark medieval soulslikes.
Starved for some evil whimsy, indie developers are trying to keep the style alive. While McGee relied on Lewis Carol for his inspiration, Violent Saint would draw influences from Eastern European folklore and Clive Barker-esque surrealist horror. Is Moroi a balls to-the-wall twin-stick action game, drenched in sardonic grime? What can gamers expect from this strange dark fairy tale? Find out in our Moroi review!
Moroi
Developer: Violet Saint
Publisher: Good Shepherd Entertainment
Platforms: Windows PC
Release Date: April 30, 2025
Price: $14.99
Moroi touts itself as a dark, surrealist fantasy and that’s exactly what you get. The premise revolves around a dumpy-looking amnesiac protagonist who kind of looks like he came out of the nastiest, filthiest cracks of Moria. The story begins with a prison break from a hellish spire with nightmarish visions book ending each scenario.
Everything about Moroi is unconventional. It’s dark as all hell and while it may have classical fantasy elements like magic, talking trees, ducks with teeth, animated skeletons, and goblins; everything is twisted and busted like a Brian Froud illustration dragged through the mud and thrown into a mosh pit.
The ambiance is beyond grisly and dank to the point that players won’t be sure if the setting is a dream or some kind of Clive Barkerian nightmare. Everywhere you look, there is layer of moist filth or rotting decay. Moroi is a game you smell and it probably reeks of festering pustules on the dark side of a bovine’s infected rectum.
After getting used to the controls and bumbling around a dungeon slathered in gore, our hero gets a sword and a goddamn gattling gun. Combat feels floaty and the kinesthetic feedback never feels like attacks are properly connecting and the protagonist moves like hes drunk. Foes rush in, flailing around and the player in-turn flails back, backpedaling and dodge-rolling out of danger.
The lack of audible feedback makes it hard to know when you’re getting hit, as the red flash does not suffice. The chaos and messiness of battle feels like how a real fight might be like since they’re always confusing, fast paced, and over before you know it. Yet, like a real fight, they are never fun.
Secondary attacks are devastating but require a cool down, and like everything about the combat, it feels haphazard. Land enough hits and the protagonist can perform impressively savage finishers that grant copious i-frames during their canned animations.
Combat is on the braindead side, evoking memories of the Loaded games on the original PlayStation. Getting into beatdowns with weird Frankensteinian freaks is mercifully only a piece to the grander Moroi puzzle… and puzzles are exactly what players will be doing.
Switch between ranged and melee is stiff, making the main guy have a slight pause when alternating. It would have been better if he didn’t have to change modes and players could seamlessly fight with both in a single fluid motion. The frantic pace of battle makes the weapon switching too much of a liability to take the time to change.
Moroi has a fair bit of exploring around and finding key-items, or discovering a thing for a thing that happens to be hidden behind a thing. Most puzzles are contextualized as some kind of fascinatingly grim fairy tale where players are pushed into committing some heinous act of self-destruction or violate some other creature. It’s awesome.
Moroi‘s strengths are in its dense atmosphere and darkly witty writing. This is a bizarre and absurd game that reads like a Terry Pratchett fantasy novel from hell. Characters are typically nonchalant about the horrors that surround them and the protagonist carries casual conversations with some nightmarish entities.
Most of the time you won’t feel sure if what you’re seeing is a dream or not. The lines of reality get blurred and it all seems like some kind of dying dream that’s trying to tell an ironic joke. Other times the scenario goes into some harrowing territory and makes you feel guilty.
If it weren’t for the sloppy combat, Moroi would be an engrossing experience that could have been on par with the likes of Little Nightmares or Inside. The overhead POV does wonders for its macabre setting and the distant view establishes a certain detachment to the horrors that lie within. Vistas are beautiful but also wistfully bleak, like the eclipse in Berserk.
Replaying isn’t exactly a new game plus run, but the story plays out slightly different. There are subtle changes in dialogue and surprises for anyone who thinks they know Moroi when they go back to it. They’re not exactly game-changing and not worth the hassle of having to endure the combat, but it’s something that might raise an eyebrow.
Moroi is a bit of a sloppy game where the graphics won’t always load properly, leaving meshes and textures in a permanent state of splotchy smudges. It’s a haggard and rough experience, but the world of Moroi is a haggard and rough place to be. In a way, it feel’s appropriate that it doesn’t always work and adds to the fecal-covered ambiance.
When Moroi works and has players trapped in an area where they are severing their own limbs, it’s a weirdly compelling experience. Talking to weirdos and monsters that would normally be hostile in any other horror game and helping them out us what makes Moroi fun and memorable, not the incoherent fighting.
Moroi was reviewed on PC using a code provided by Good Shepherd Entertainment. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy is here. Moroi is now available for PC (via Steam).
