Morphblade, a recent abstract strategy game by Tom Francis, the creator of Gun Point. It is one of the games which looks simple, but hides complexity. In this game, you control a Morphblade, and all you need to do is to try to survive as many enemy attacks as possible. In itself, the game is a bit of an experiment in simplicity, as explained here: http://www.pentadact.com/2017-03-11-morphblade-and-imbroglio-making-a-game-to-test-a-critique/

The game takes place on a field consisting of hexagonal tiles. The core concept is that the Morphblade's abilities depends on the tile it is staying on. There are 6 different tiles. 3 attack tiles; The hammer (shoot one tile in any direction), the blade (move one tile and attack the tiles on the side) and the arrow (move two tiles in straight line, attack all in between). And 3 modifiers: Heal (heal the blade), Teleport (move to any tile on the grid) and poison (removes armor from armored enemies).. So far, so good. The complexity is introduced as the tiles can level up and combined with neighboring tiles. A tile can be leveled up when you have used it to kill 6 bugs. So a hammer tile can be combined with a poison tile, allowing you to shoot armored enemies, or two heal tiles can be combined into a shield tile. These tiles can be further leveled up again, adding more modifiers to them depending on surrounding tiles, resulting in over 700 tile combinations.

There are 5 different bugs - the normal bugs (takes away one life on hit, moves one square), flying bug (can move two tiles), pusher bug (can't hurt you, but pushes you one tile back, can push off the board), laser bugs (can fire a laser in straight line) and the elusive black level up bug (levels up the tile it is killed on). All bugs also comes in 3 'flavors' - red bugs (normal bugs), blue bugs (have armor, can not be killed) and green bugs (explodes when killed, removing the tile it is killed on).

The game is turn-based, and it is played in increasingly difficult waves (more and different bugs). The game starts with only 2 hexagonal tiles, and between each wave you can select a new tile to place from a selection of random tiles (though you can get "wild tiles" also). It sounds more complex here than it is to play, but it is one of those games that have the "i need to get to next wave" factor. It is relentless, but the turn-based nature makes it very fair, and when you loose it is always your fault for making the wrong move.

It is difficult to explain how it works exactly, but here is some videos explaining it much better than me:
The developer explaining the mechanics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxNX6-j9Ca0
Nerd-cubed playing the game - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux2myQ_Ch0Q

and one who don't get it at all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JSKnCG5bVg&t=42s

In short, it is brilliant... my Steam stats tells me that I have played it for 30 hours now... and I still have only reached wave 35...

Wishlist - https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/morphblade

Steam page - http://store.steampowered.com/app/494720/


(oh... and while you are at it, vote for Tom Francis next game Heat Signature - https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/heat_signature)

I played Morphblade a bit and i don't like it. It's decent for the first few minutes but the fact that there are no winning conditions totally ruins the game. You just keep playing until you die - lame! Just getting to the next wave is not enough to keep me motivated for more than a few minutes.
Overall it's a very bland game and it seems somehow unfinished, as if the developer just put in the minimum effort to make it playable.

Many people who got it in the Humble Monthly bundle were disappointed with the game.

IIRC more positive reviews suddenly appeared after one of those "youtubers" hyped it. It's funny how this kind of hype still works so well. :D

I think it is more of a case that it takes some time getting used to it, it is very different, and when the first people who only skimmed it (like you) left the bad reviews very quickly , the ones who liked it and spent some time with it (like me) did their positive reviews later. As it stand at the moment, it has "Positive" user rating on Steam.

And as you can see from the article linked, it is neither unfinished nor minimum effort . Minimalism can be quite tricky to pull off, and this game is about pure game play mechanics without any 'bells and whistles". It is a very honest game who do not try to hide what it is. It is in fact remarkably deep, and allows for very varied gameplay styles within its very narrow parameters.

(and apart from NerdCubed, I dont know any 'youtubers' who hyped it....)

edit - I should also add that many people who got it from Humble also liked it.

Voted, looks interesting. Just sad that it wants to chug on 4GigaRAM, too much for my current lo-fi setup.

Tagging to check it out this week.

(may as well vote for Gunpoint whilst you are at it - https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/gunpoint)