Review | Biomorph

A short review

Biomorph is a Soulslike Metroidvania video game developed and published by indie company Lucid Dreams Studio from Canada. Ubisoft Montreal funded and provided support for the game's development. The game was released for Microsoft Windows on April 5, 2024, for PlayStation 5 on November 22, and for Xbox Series X/S on February 26, 2025. A Nintendo Switch port is also in development.

Considering this is an indie project, I'm quite satisfied with the results and the ground this team laid down — plus, if you plan to play it now, you’ll play version 2.0, which comes with a more detailed map and almost no bugs whatsoever! I mean, I had none — just one or two visual bugs. The game runs and plays smoothly, no worries there.

Don't expect breath-taking sceneries or something extra - it's a decent indie game with solid visuals

Story and the characters

I can't say much about the story. It's a story about memory loss and Sentiles — creatures/machines that seem to be eradicating humanity — and you are meant to stop them. That can only happen if you restore your memories and activate the starting location, so prepare for a journey of collecting powers and meeting NPCs that will help you along the way.

The story is minimal, and the characters are ok-ish. I can't really say the lore hit me, because it's all short and basic. Usually, Metroidvania games are not known for good storytelling, and this is the same thing. I do like the humor and some NPCs, but overall, I wasn't really that impressed. The real power comes from the gameplay, exploration, and boss design — I love the boss fights in this game!

I really love the boss design - both gameplay-vise and graphically

Game design, exploration

At first, I wasn’t really into the game, but slowly the fun started. Without any powers you feel weak, but soon you get to feel the power of skills. Your main power is morphing — when you defeat a new type of morphable enemy, you get to steal their power and form and use their attacks and skills. It's a neat concept to extend the gameplay and puzzles. When you morph enough times, you get to keep the transformation, which then helps in many areas later — or in some that you’ve missed due to lacking the right skills.

That’s the main thing, really — the rest is simply following different questlines and the main one. All areas are different, and they all keep many secrets. I love how they circle the room with yellow when you find everything — that really helps with tracking progress on the map. Of course, there will be a lot of backtracking due to the nature of rooms being quite big at times, and you miss many skills needed to reach certain parts. Fortunately, you can fast-travel very early, so this doesn’t feel like a drag. But at the same time, I’m not a big fan of revisiting areas.

Overall, the design for exploration and progress is good. I was constantly trying to overcome puzzles and challenges while morphing and thinking, how can I do this or that? It was fun.

If you want, you can build your settlement with new houses and bring back people to help you with the journey

Combat

Combat is neat. It's polished, fun, and not that hard — but at the same time, it can be challenging at first. The boss fights are definitely the best aspect of it, but overall the combat is probably the best thing alongside exploration.

You have three main skill slots where you can put your fist, bombs, or shield, for example. I was that guy — shield up, toss some bombs, and then kick them all. The variety of main attack skills is decent, although I just love my fists and didn’t have the urge to change them. Passive skills give some boosts if you want, and permanent items like health or attack increases are really welcome. You can't take many hits — you die. Every boss fight was challenging just enough not to feel like just another numbers game. The design is also cool, so I really loved the fights.

I love when you extend your terrain skills like directional dash and incorporate that into your fighting. Don’t expect something mind-blowing — probably the most variety comes from morphing and then attacking — but I was most comfortable with my basic form. It's cool that you get to keep all permanent terrain skills while morphing, but you can't wall-jump when you transform into a turtle, for example. Cool overall, and fun.

The only downside is when you see you're short for money to fully upgrade. 

Side Content

Side content is just quests and finding everything you can. It's not that hard! You can get some skills to help, but the thrill of getting that yellow room on the map is enough to keep you invested. Rewards are good for doing quests, so it’s advisable to do them — plus, they get marked on the map. The game doesn’t guide you much, but with markers it gets easy to track things, and it doesn’t take away from the experience.

I can’t say the quests are awesome (some are cool and funny), but I can say that reaching some edges and areas feels challenging — and for the most part, fun. That is all I need sometimes. Don’t worry too much — this is a typical Metroidvania game where you progress your moveset and reach areas you couldn’t before.

I miss the double jump as a basic move. The dashing and gliding is fun though

Conclusion

Biomorph maybe doesn’t bring anything new to the table, but it will keep you entertained while it lasts (for around 15-22 hours), while offering a bit of a challenge. With fun exploration, enjoyable boss fights, and a cool morphing system, it will definitely scratch that itch if you're into the genre — but don't expect something mind-blowing from the experience. It’s a solid game in the genre, but not more than that.