Steer an orb to push back the darkness and find your way free of a sinister temple in Morkredd.
Morkredd, from Hyper Games, is a puzzle platformer all about steering a giant orb of light through a mysterious, deadly series of locations. The rules of the game are simple; stay in the light or be dissolved by the darkness. Simple enough, and that threat manages to turn a game about rolling a ball into something that toes the line of the horror genre. The name is perfect, it’s the Norwegian meaning for fear of the darkness.
I was lucky enough to play through some of Morkredd while I was at the recent Casual Connect, its atmosphere was just as daunting as the above trailer demonstrates and I felt a jarring, cold sensation as my character was shattered into pieces by the darkness.
While lanterns and mirrors do occasionally dot the halls, the claustrophobic darkness is always following you. The trickiest bits of the game are when the movement of the ball is snatched from you — be it by gravity or by the strange beasts which live in the land.
The idea behind Morkredd was originally concocted as a purely cooperative game as an entry for a one week game jam which took place in January 2017. Aside from the obvious features you can see above, a core point that they wanted to focus on was that stepping into the shadow of another player could also kill you, making cooperative play a double-edged sword. Back then the plan was to have the game three-player, three is — after all — a crowd.
You can see the original game jam footage below.
Morkredd doesn’t currently have a release date or even announced platforms. Although the original version was playable on PC and it was showcased at Rezzed 2018 on the Switch.
