Gideon’s Perspective
Quasimorph caught my attention because I heard it was a single player extraction game and I found that concept intriguing. It turns out that Quasimorph is even more unique than that. The reality is, Quasimorph is in fact, a turn based traditional style roguelike that manages to capture the fun and addicting parts of an extraction shooter, and I can’t stop playing it.
The odd mixture combined with the games massive depth makes it difficult to explain, to such an extent that Quasimorph itself more or less gave up on it. There’s a short tutorial that doesn’t even scratch the surface and then you’re thrown into a massive corporate war between several factions trying to make a profit amid an invasion of extradimensional aliens that feed on suffering. The game explains almost nothing, which makes its on boarding process pretty rough.
You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!
At the same time, the learn as you go aspect can be a strength. For example, I was over 100 hours in when I learned I could tame hostile dogs by dropping raw meat, but that’s not even the best part. I could also give my new canine companion a gun and he would be happy to gun down his former allies in exchange for a raw piece of sirloin that was likely carved from the flesh of one his former owners. On the scale of weirdness, that doesn’t even break an 8 for Quasimorph.
You play as the leader of a PMC operating in the shadows and taking on missions for several factions while also stealing everything that isn’t nailed down. Or at least, everything that will fit in your various sized backpacks. Die and you lose your operator and will need to re-clone them and you lose whatever they were carrying. At least, that’s how the game was originally designed to be.
| Gideon’s Bias | Quasimorph Information |
|---|---|
| Review Copy Used: Yes | Publisher: Hypetrain Digital |
| Hours Played: 100+ | Type: Full Game |
| Reviewed On: PC | Platforms: PC |
| Fan of Genre: Yes | Genre: Traditional Roguelike & Single Player Extraction Game |
| Mode Played: Custom Hard Mode | Price: $24.99 |
An Important Note About Difficulty
One week after the games 1.0 release, the developers made an attempt to makes things a bit clearer and ease the on-boarding process but completely cocked up their own games core presentation. They redid the games difficulties and renamed Easy mode to Normal mode. This false “normal” mode removes the death aspect of your characters while softening a great deal of other friction within the game, making Quasimorph feel very different than what it’s Steam Page advertises. The problem is that most new players will assume Normal Mode is the default that the game was designed for, which is clearly not the case as it didn’t exist in its current form until a week after release.
The worst part is, they really didn’t make the on boarding any easier, it’s still obtuse as hell. They just gave unknowing new players a very poor impression of their game, or at least one that’s far different than what it was designed for. I’d advise anyone to treat the “Hard” mode as Normal, as it was what the normal mode originally was. That said, you can fully customize nearly every aspect of the difficulty to your liking.
Because of how differently the game plays based on what difficulty settings are chosen or tweaked, I’m going to list what I commonly play with because my review is based on the experience these settings give me and someone on a different set may have a wildly different experience. I just feel like transparency is particularly vital when discussing Quasimorph. Feel free to skip over it, the important part is that I lose my operators and gear when I die, and I need a new chip of that clone to reclone them.
| Start | Operator | Mission | Sandbox | Combat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unalterable Difficulty: No | Cloning: Chip Required | When a Clone Dies: Mission Ends | No Faction Destruction: No | Enemy AP: 0 |
| Tutorial: No | Lose Equipment on Death: All | Evacuation Rules: Chip Required | Faction Growth: 100% | Enemy Sight Range: 0 |
| Easier Starting Missions: No | Emergency Case: No | Repair After Missions: No | Reputation with Factions: 100% | Enemy HP: 100% |
| Random Starting Location: Yes | Lose Experience on Death: Yes | Number of Floors: 0 | Mission Reward Points: 100% | Enemy Damage: 100% |
| Random Starting Gear: Yes | Lose Rank on Death: Yes | Number of Enemies: 100% | Dignitas For Selling: 100% | Enemy Dodge: 100% |
| Starting Equipment: Normal | Perk XP Needed: 100% | Number of Items: 100% | Crafting Speed: 100% | Enemy Resistances: 100% |
| Random Starting Operators: Yes | Backpack Size: X1 | Moving Between Floors Costs a Turn: No | Mission Fails Upon Evacuation: Yes | Quasimorphosis Growth: 100% |
| Starting Operators: 4 | Stack Size: X1 | Random Events: Yes | Quasimorphosis Effects: 100% | |
| Random Starting Classes: Yes | Kcal/Weight: 100% | Random Event Frequency: 100% | ||
| Starting Classes: 2 | Mission Lifetime: 100% |
A Late Stage Capitalistic Sandbox
Extradimensional aliens have found a way to enter our reality by harvesting the energy from human suffering. How does humanity react? By trying to profit off it naturally. You take on missions for one of ten factions that range from an industrial prison complex to a pharmaceutical company that uses people who can’t pay their medical bills as test subjects. The world of Quasimorph is certainly a bleak one, heck even the Civil Resistance are using a cybernetic hive mind that dampens their emotions and individuality.
As a PMC you have the ultimate freedom to decide who to help and who to hinder, and that includes the Quasimorphs themselves. The factions fight each other throughout the solar system taking stations and gaining and losing power whether or not you are there. Each one also has their own tech tree that they unlock overtime, which means your rewards for aiding them and your experience fighting them can vary greatly. There are several storylines you can follow, but Quasimorph is one big sandbox, and you aren’t required to do so.
Missions appear around various stations all over the solar system, and time passes in a manner similar to X-COM. Traveling between parts of the solar system can take in game weeks or even months, and as time passes the factions get stronger, so you have to choose when and where to travel carefully. Interestingly however, the orbit of the entire solar system around the sun is simulated, so distances between planets actually vary depending on where they are in their cycle and that’s something you can plan around which is pretty cool.
Extraction Roguelike
Quasimorph is a turn-based game that probably doesn’t look like one at a glance. Turns flow smoothly, you have action points that are used for everything from moving to looting to attacking and whenever you use all of them, that’s a turn. The rest of the entities on the station then act and then it’s back to you. When you take on a mission, you outfit an operator and wander around various stations completing objectives but also looting everything while making painful decisions about what to keep in your limited backpack space.
While a handful of weapons, armor and items are common between them, every faction also utilizes gear that’s mostly unique to them. Battle against Daydream Chem for example, and you can loot things like Poison Needle Guns, assuming you survive the encounter. Gear isn’t the only thing you’re trying to loot, however. Your ship is your base of operations and a massive part of your power progression and extracting with the parts you need to upgrade it is vital.
Through your ship upgrades, you can gain the ability to manufacture items, upgrade your clones, scan map layouts and even take over a minor corporation. Acquiring those upgrades helps you keep pace with the factions as they grow stronger. There’s a catch, however. By default, you can only extract from a mission if you complete it, or if you find a valuable item, such as a chip.
The moment-to-moment gameplay of Quasimorph is one of tactical lethality. One wrong move could be deadly for your clone. You have to move around thoughtfully, utilize cover, take advantage of chokepoints and use your gear and class abilities wisely. Getting complacent is deadly, I would know, despite playing for over 100 hours, I still make the same dumb mistakes that I did when I started playing.
Open a door on my last action point and take a shotgun blast to face? Check. Turn the corner with my last action point into a set of turrets? Check. Swear that I won’t need water because I’m definitely not going to catch fire this mission only to catch fire and burn to death? Check.
There’s a quality to Quasimorph that I think is both rare and valuable. I get mad at it, and I never get mad at games. But I rage quit Quasimorph all the time. But the thing is, I’m never mad at the game, I’m mad at myself for being an idiot. I don’t think I’ve had a single death where I didn’t retroactively know exactly where I messed up, either during the mission or my prep beforehand. It’s always been my fault, and it’s never felt unfair. When I lose a high-level clone with a ton of good gear, that’s on me! I think that’s great, hurtful as it can be.
But what does playing well actually mean in Quasimorph? There are two sides of it, and both are important. The first is before you ever set foot in the mission area. It’s looking at the details of your mission and planning for it. Let’s say for example I have a sabotage mission against Daydream Chem. The mission details say’s it’s on a food factory, moderately sized and has three floors. Let’s assume the mission also has Quasimorphic presence.
This tells me several things. It has three floors, if I don’t have the floor scanner upgrade for my ship. I may struggle to find the elevators on each floor, so I may spend a lot of time wandering around. Clones burn through calories at a high rate, so I might struggle with food because of how much exploring I’ll need to do.
Furthermore, since Quasimorphs are present, that may also be an issue. The Quasimorph meter ticks up overtime, and it ticks up faster when people are wounded or killed. The higher the meter climbs, the more Quasimorphs appear and the stronger they are. That can be a double-edged sword since Quasimorphs also fight other enemies on the station, so it’s something to keep in mind. Finally, I’m fighting Daydream Chem, and they use poison weapons. I’ll need to prepare for that.
How I would prepare for this mission would vary greatly based on the operators, classes, gear and ship upgrades I have. If I didn’t have the scanner upgrade, I’d consider taking Data Miners to scan the floors. Alternatively, maybe I’d take an operator whose special perk makes them burn less calories so I’m sure I’ll have enough food. However, it’s a food factory and I’d likely find food onsite, so I’d probably focus more on the Quasimorphsis and send someone with an implant that lowers it, as well as some Morphine, as it lowers Quasimorphisis by 200 when used, but I’d only take Morphine if I also had Naloxone in case my operator became drug addicted, as drug addiction can be deadly.
I’d gear up with poison resistant armor, if possible, but I’d absolutely take a stack of Sorbent either way to deal with the poison, and some med kits. The best defense against poison is to not get hit, however. So, I’d probably take a class that has a dodge perk, and I’d try to lower the weight of my gear as much as possible to keep dodge high, weight lowers it.
If I’m in need of food, I’d be tempted to bring empty cans and a knife because I’d expect to find ovens in a food factory. You see, you can carve meat off of people and eat it, but that’s cannibalism which carries a chance of infection and actually increases Quasimorphisis. However, if you use an oven and combine cans with the meat and you get canned food, which is no longer cannibalism! I told you that giving a dog a gun wasn’t the weirdest thing about the game, and I meant it.
Once you’re actually in the mission, your tactics will once again vary based on the operator, class and gear you brought. On the basic level you want something in-between you and enemies to use as cover and you want to use the action point system to your advantage. For example, by default you walk, which gives you two action points per turn. However, you can switch to stealth or running. Both are misleading, stealth doesn’t make you harder to detect and running isn’t just running. It’s essentially how fast you are moving in general. Stealthing only gives you one action point but lets you interact for free and sense nearby enemies through walls.
Running gives you three action points, but you can’t interact with doors, or any inventory. You could open a door, and switch to running on your next turn. Then because you have three action points you could step into the doorway, shoot and then step back out of view. Knowing when to switch between those stances is vital, as running at the wrong time could be deadly, as you can’t heal any wounds you may have taken.
You might funnel enemies into a chokepoint, use nearby explosive barrels, set land mines or turrets of your own. Sometimes your tactics might depend on the class or operator you took. For example, one class has a perk that delays enemies noticing you for a couple turns that might allow you to move a bit more freely into a room. Another stuns nearby enemies when you land a critical hit, combine that with something that helps you land those critical hits, and you might devise a set of movements to help you clear rooms unopposed. Heck, you might even take advantage of the Quasimorphs, pitting them and the other enemies against each other while you wait nearby or run away.
Enemies play by the same rules you do. They take wounds, which can deal damage overtime. They feel pain, which can remove action points from them if it breaks a threshold, and they have to reload their weapons, just like you. All of that is information you can use to your advantage. Quasimorph has a wonderful level of tactical and strategical depth that keeps me coming back for more. No matter how many times it kicks me in the teeth.
Layers & Layers
Quasimorph is a game with layers, to such an extent that it’s more than I cover in detail in a single article, but I can try to paint a picture. There are 18 unique operators with varying stats, but two perks unique to them. For example, one doesn’t feel pain, another can interact while running. There are also 14 unique classes with several passive and triggered perks. Naturally, you can combine the two in interesting ways, but all of it also combines with your gear.
For example, there is an implant that massively increases the pain that melee damage deals but also increases the pain you feel. Slap that on the operator that doesn’t feel pain and give him a melee focused class, and you have the start of something beautiful. Once you have some specific ship upgrades, you can swap perks from classes to make a Frankenstein custom class. Then you have the Quasimorphs themselves. There is much more to them than you might think.
There are a couple of types that are common between them. But each celestial body has a unique kind of Quasimorph alter reality linked to it. Each of which has its own types of Quasimorphs. Most of which are based on some type of real-world mythology, such as ancient Greece or Aztec myth. In addition to adding a massive variety of enemy types to fight against, each type of Quasimorph harbors different gear you can steal…and pacts.
By defeating a Baron, all of which are also unique to their worlds. You can acquire pacts, these are more or less alien spells you can link to an operator that also have a curse attached to them. One ship upgrade allows you to upgrade or alter what these pacts do, and there is a bunch of them, each one further expands the type of builds and combos you can do. Eventually you can obtain a ship upgrade that allows you to enter the home reality of the Quasimorphs, and each one is unique.
The only issue is, there are a couple of ship upgrades that are obscenely overpowered. For example, there is one that allows you to take over one of the minor corporations to use as a proxy. It’s a very cool concept but breaks the game. Once you take over a corporation you can visit any of their stations to trade, and they will give you their entire stock, for free. You might leave a single station with 15 rifles, 20 electrical components 30 repair kits etc. A large part of the extraction element dies when that happens, and the thing is, it can happen somewhat early.
Your progression is non-linear, the ship upgrades you obtain and the order you obtain them is based on your ability to acquire those components. There have been times that I’ve taken over a corporation late in the game sure. I’ve also done it two hours in while none of the factions were above tech level 3, and I’d never even encountered a Quasimorph Baron yet. When you take over a corporation, it kind of feels like you won, and that’s not a feeling I want to have in a sandbox strategy game two hours in.
That upgrade certainly needs to be toned down and then I’d feel the game is almost perfect.
Verdict
Quasimorph has cemented itself as one of my all-time favorite games, I’ve played for over 130 hours, and I have no intention of stopping. It’s replay value is off the charts and it’s the type of incredibly deep game that I really enjoy. It can be obtuse and difficult to learn, but the payoff is well worth it. The extraction aspect intertwines perfectly with its turn based tactical elements and X-COM like base progression and really proves that the concept of extraction games can work great in a single player game.
Quasimorph is a deep, complex and challenging game that makes it satisfying to puzzle out it’s wide array of systems. As you grow accustomed to its ways it’s more than happy to punish any arrogance and complacency you develop, and that makes it a game that keeps you on your toes even after countless hours.
Quasimorphs brilliant tactical gameplay, strategic planning and addictive extraction elements blend into something truly great. Yet it still has that fun rogue lite combo system, but in a different way. Instead of picking from a set of choices every now and again, you build out those synergies over a long campaign through your upgrades, and equipment you acquire, more X-COM and less Slay the Spire, and it feels fantastic.
I’m giving it my Golden Shield Award.
