No exceptions. No excuses. No mercy.
Quasimorph is a top-down, turn-based rouglike RPG extraction shooter developed by Hypetrain Digital that entered early access on the 2nd of October, 2023. You take control of the PMC Magnum in the year 2200, after an unspecified event results in a race of interdimensional invaders known as Quasimorphs manifesting in our reality. With the solar system divided between constantly warring megacorporations, you'll have to pick your contracts wisely, print and level up your mercenaries and acquire more and better gear in order to stay on top in this dog-eat-dog universe.
Contracts range from assassinations and sabotage to defence or brute force conquest across a wide array of environments including research labs, space mines and wrecked space ships. Each level is divided into floors via elevators - the deeper you go, the more dangerous your foes but the more valuable the potential rewards. Upon completion, not only will you strengthen the relevant megacorporation, you'll also earn reputation and rewards depending on the difficulty of the contract, along with any loot you found along the way.
Quasimorph contains examples of:
- Abnormal Ammo: Nailguns, disc throwers and liquid acid are just some of the odd things you can unleash on your foes.
- Agony of the Feet: Each foot are their own medical zones that can be burnt, blown off, amputated or melted with acid just like every other part of you. Damage to your feet prevents you from sprinting, and losing one reduces you to limping.
- Always Chaotic Evil: The Quasimorphs, to a tee. Their arrival marks the beginning of the End of the World as We Know It.
- An Arm and a Leg: Losing limbs is a very real risk for your mercenary clones, either through damage inflicted by enemies or thanks to an impromptu amputation to halt infection.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Just about the only bone the game throws you is a small package provided when a mercenary dies, which includes a knife, pistol, ammo, and some basic healing items. According to your Mission Control, this is actually an insurance payout.
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Despite the laser weapons, automatic shotguns and alien gun-staffs floating around, the humble Varangian axe can serve a mercenary very well, especially earlier on.
- Armor Is Useless: Heavily averted. Good armour can be the difference between walking a fight off and bleeding out before you can reach the nearest autodoc. Commander enemies wearing armour are notably tougher to kill than their grunt counterparts.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The disc thrower can take limbs off at ten paces... And has a nasty tendency of richocheting back at whoever fires it. Flamethrowers can clear out whole rooms of enemies in just a few bursts, but the flames they spread everywhere can be just as dangerous to your mercenary.
- Big Bad: Tezctlan, King of Gannix, Bramfatura of Venus. He's the only of the King Quasimoprhs able to permanently materialise in our universe, and his arrival marks the beginning of 'the end of the world,' if the intro is to be believed. To a lesser extent, the other leader Quasimorphs, although they're unable to cause as much havoc as Tezctlan... For now.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: None of the megacorporations are good, but at the end of the day they're all still interested in seeing humanity continue, if only because they are humans. The Quasimorphs on the other hand...
- Brainwashed and Crazy: A particular favourite of the Church of Revelations and their competitors the Sunlight Coven, whose facilities tend to be filled to the brim with Acolytes who love to Zerg Rush you wearing mind control headsets.
- Breakable Weapons: All of the weapons your mercenary can get their hands on will steadily deteriorate with each shot fired- often far quicker than they have any right to. It's not uncommon to finish a particularly long-winded firefight with one of more of your guns on the verge of completely falling apart. Luckily, an enterprising mercenary can keep guns working for a mission so long as they have enough spare parts, and their durability is entirely reset upon returning to the Magnum.
- Chainsaw Good: Although it's one of the few melee weapons that requires fuel, the chainsaw is also near-guaranteed to dismember anyone unfortunate enough to be caught on the receiving end, allowing it to mow through crowds of lightly-armoured foes.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Missions on Mercury will often be filled with bubbling pools of magma. Unless someone is unfortunate enough to be directly knocked into it, it's completely harmless.
- Critical Existence Failure: Averted. Both your mercenary and enemies will usually accumulate multiple, often very ugly wounds before they finally collapse dead, with each mauled body part impacting them in its own way.
- Crutch Character: Isabella Capet, whose unique passive makes her immune to infection. This frees you from having to pack antibiotics and allows you to freely consume otherwise dangerous food sources like human flesh. If you're on Mars or its moons, the lack of Quasimorphosis completely negates the other downside of human meat. However, basic anti-infection drugs are easy to obtain and cannibalism quickly becomes more risky when you leave Mars' gravity well, and Isabella's lower health pool and melee synergy both hurt her in the midgame.
- Corporate Warfare: The job of you, Magnum PMC. Almost all contracts you take (aside from those involving the Civil Resistance or the Quasimorphs themselves) will involve you working for and/or against one of the many megacorporations.
- Crapsack World: An anarcho-capitalist hellscape where human life is cheaper than having robots do the work and where interdimensional invaders can cross through the veil to murder you and everyone you love without warning.
- Cyberpunk: Widespread high-end cloning technology, megacorporations superseding nation states, the blind chase of profit over humanity... All here in spades.
- Death Is Cheap: Since your mercenaries are all vat-grown clones, dozens can be sent into each mission. See Expendable Clone further down.
- Determinator: Since there's no extraction until the mission is complete, each clone is encouraged to be this. Lose a limb? Bleeding from several different gunshot wounds? Map overrun by interdimensional demons? Still need to earn your payday.
- Dimensional Traveller: The eponymous Quasimorphs, who pierce the veil between their universe and ours.
- Emotion Eater: Implied with some of the Quasimorphs. Nobilis, the King of Duggar introduces himself by asking you not to cry, as tears are a waste of good suffering.
- Energy Weapon: A favourite of media magnate SBN, and while low-tier, generic energy weapons need to be powered by batteries, their unique series of 'Silver' guns have no ammunition requirement.
- Enemy Mine: Most enemies will prioritise fighting quasimorphs over the player, which can provide a beleaguered mercenary with some breathing room. Of course, this usually means that more are on the way...
- Equipment-Based Progression: Although your mercenaries will progress along an RPG-lite skill line for each mission they complete, the benefits from doing so are peanuts compared to those of better armour, guns and healing items.
- Evil Is Visceral: Missions against Tezctlan tend to be filled with dismembered body parts strewn around.
- Evil vs. Evil: Xiomara and her Feathered Masks are fighting a war against Tezctlan. Seeing as they're also quasimorphs, no matter who wins, humanity loses.
- Expendable Clone: All of your mercenaries are actually vat-grown clones with their skills and abilities determined by brain chips. When one dies, another one can be printed and sent into the fray within the hour.
- Future Food Is Artificial: Chick-Chick and Moo-Moo, artificial foodstuffs essential to off-Earth colonisation, can be produced on the Magnum with just a single piece of plastic.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: In a universe where interdimensional invaders are attempting to subjugate all of humanity, the megacorps still can't put aside their bickering and power-jockeying to put down this threat. Worse still, the Hexarchy are doing everything they can to bury the truth about the Quasimorphs.
- Improvised Weapon: Many examples, from repurposed nail guns to pipes, saw blades, saw blades attached to pipes, bones, jackhammers and mining lasers.
- Inventory Management Puzzle: Inventory space is extremely limited, forcing the player to decide if they prize valuable barter items over food, medicine and even ammunition.
- Lethal Lava Land: Mercury, although unlike a typical lava level, this is mostly used for aesthetics.
- Magnetic Weapons: The Engima series of energy weapons, which are unique in that they all count as silenced and do not require ammo, but have very low durability to compensate.
- N.G.O. Superpower: The "Hexarchy," a collection of the (presumably six) most powerful megacorporations, powerful enough to prevent any non-corporate persons from landing on Earth.
- One-Man Army: Your mercenary will almost inevitably carve through dozens of targets each mission, from scientists and blue-collar miners to trained security, killbots and the eponymous quasimorphs.
- Sharpened to a Single Atom: The razor, a monomolecular sword that can dish out more damage than any other weapon made by humans, with the exception of the chainsaw.
- Shovel Strike: The MPL-95, which is actually classified as an axe, commonly found in the hands of free labourers and dirt-poor miners. It's only slightly superior to the starter knife, and should be discarded as quickly as possible.
- Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: What equipment a faction can provide to its employees and as payment depends on their tech level. As the trend is for every faction's tech level to slowly progress the longer the game goes on for, the later the game goes, the better everyone is equipped, including your mercenaries.
- Space Romans: Each of the various Quasimorph Bramfaturas draws upon a historical culture. Quasimorphs of Shartamakhum are Arabian inspired, those from Gannix are Mayincatec and those from Duggar draw from early Middle Age Europe.
