Others - MetaMorph [v0.1.3.5] [Balledra games]

Review of 1.3.5, after completing 2-3 full runs on Normal.
I have to say, I like what I'm seeing so far. Aside from some of the characters' faces when they're close up, which gives me a bit of uncanny valley, especially during some of the sex scenes.
Gameplay wise, it's an arena-based upgrade-driven loot-collecting twinstick roguelike shooter, but it kinda feels like some of the mechanics are... either not really explained or feel kinda off?
Like how stat gains after battles work, or the whole minigame in the middle of getting dicked by aliens. Or the whole process of inserting weapon upgrade materials into the syringe and THEN using it to get an upgrade point. It just feels kind of redundant, since the upgrade is otherwise eating into inventory space, and it's not like you HAVE to invest the point in a weapon as soon as you get it. You CAN in fact save points for when another weapon you may like shows up as a drop.
Speaking of drops, the inventory feels kind of confining, and not in a good way. Far too many times, I come into more wearable equipment than I actually need, and due to the lack of a storage system or any alternative, I constantly break excess gear into DNA. Which is a bit unhelpful since the earliness and frequency of the shops is such that by the time you have enough to actually buy anything from them, you're pretty much at the chapter end boss and there's not a shop in sight.
Speaking of fights, it feels fast-paced and frantic in a good way, really bringing in the feeling of running for your life from horny aliens. Then your character randomly gets caught on the corner of a pebble on the ground that blends in with everything else, and your immmersion breaks. Scuffed collision detection aside, the game at least functions as a twinstick shooter in a confined space. Even if occasionally the enemies pop out of literal nowhere in the most BS fashion.

Overall, I'd rate this a 3.5/5 if the system let me do half-stars. I'm docking points for how often the unexplained/badly-explained mechanics make my brain sizzle, and not in the good way. I'm not asking for a full-blown tutorial on anything and everything, but at least an explanation on how things work would be appreciated, unless you're going for the complete roguelike package of "We're not explaining shit. Learn by doing."
Which CAN work. IF the game's mechanics are intuitive enough that the player can learn just by doing it, generally in the "easy to learn, hard to master" way. This? This is NOT intutitive.

Tl;dr
The Good

• Fast-paced twinstick shooter action
• Simple equipment system
• Kinky corruption system that really nails in how the MC is succumbing to alien wing-wong (when I can actually make the corruption system work a certain way)

The Bad

• No gallery system
• Character faces occasionally trip into uncanny valley territory, mostly the close-ups in certain cutscenes/sex events.
• Unintiutive mechanics with little to no explanation just about everywhere. Corruption, the battle sex minigame, the random event system, the list goes on.
• Pathing feels kind of arbitrary. Why are there so many shops in the early to mid-part of the game, where I don't even have the money to buy anything?
• Clunky syringe mechanic to use consumables.
• Loot drops are far too skewed to give a few types of gear and completely shaft you on the rest, regardless of rarity.
• Even for roguelike standards, the plot is kind of just...there.

The Debatable

• Gay tag is there for a reason. If you don't like femboys having things shoved up their holes, turn away.
  • Also, I've not seen a single instance of the MC domming anyone across the runs, so if you wanted that, look elsewhere.
• Monster tag is also there for a reason. If you're not a fan of getting seggsed by aliens who look like they came out of a porny knockoff of a Ripley Alien movie, look elsewhere.

Really nice game. great art and I like what the story is hinting at. Gameplay is fun so you won't get bored either.
Saw someone write "brown cum = 1 star", the cum is a weird colour but it's a tiny detail in an otherwise great, if somewhat short, game.

v0.1.3.5

brown cum. I don't know why your human character has brown cum, but it's extremely offputting, sorry if it's a fetish thing. caught me off guard and basically ruined the game for me.

without the brown cum, 3.5 stars.

the in-game model also has a tennis ball groin for some reason, which I am also not a fan of. I would appreciate the option to put some underwear on the MC, but it's less of a deal since you don't look at your own sprite during the game as much

the actual game play is promising. but has definite issues, the UI is very in the way, and you are very zoomed in compared to your sprite. I would suggest the dev compare sprite/hitbox size of similar games for a reference.

also they have added hard to see rocks, and haven't done their collision every well so you stick to anything you touch.

I'm hoping the gameplay can be improved, because it has a lot of potential.

I didn't find any of the sex scenes in the screenshots, and the ones in game aren't as good. it's fine, just not the same as the screenshots. the cum thing is just offputting.

Insanely good, I was expecting this too be a lot worse when I saw it was a early first release like this. The only bugs I saw were it ignoring your skin tone and hair choice at the begining in every cut scene (easy fix) some text over laying and general clutter. The character also gets stuck on a lot of objects, however it's not that big a deal.
Stores got a lot of potentional, game shows some very good bones for what will come.
graphics are nice, clean, and a little better in game then the previews here suggest.
Honestly as is this is a very fun 30 minute to an hour game, maybe more. I can see the later releases being a lot longer and more filling, but that's not what I'm reviewing.

This is in general what I'd want to see from someone that releases a new game here in general. A functional game with some thing to it. Even if it is bare bones.

H content is decent but the 'survivor' gameplay is horrible. Played it on normal difficulty and it was impossibly difficult to kill anything before 5 more things had spawned (and that is with the game saying it had a slower difficulty ramp for this demo) so no faith they have any chance of balancing a game to be challenging in a fun way considering there was an even higher difficulty available and there is no meta-progression (atleast currently). Rocks in the combat zones have infinite friction which is what killed my run, always great when the environment feels like a bigger threat to look out for than the enemies. The combat itself is boring, just run around hoping the game doesn't spawn things right infront of you leading to unavoidable damage while you tickle things with your attacks. Nothing you got felt impactful, gun was seriously under-powered and the in run power-ups were boring and equally under-powered. There was also pretty much zero variation in the path you took, there were around 5 paths and they were all 99% identical across the board with the only differences being some ? events instead of combats. I don't think there were any meaningful choices I got to make the entire time I was playing.

Text is full of spelling and grammar errors. Doors on the ship were stupid, running into them waiting for them to open would drag you with them and half-glitch you into the wall and doors are allowed to close on you trapping you inside them until you open them again. For some reason after every mission you are placed in the middle section of the ship in an empty room. Everything there is to do is located in the bottom room of the ship, why couldn't they just respawn you there instead of forcing you to interact with their shitty doors after every level. Had character customization at the start but had no impact on the character sprite you actually look at moving around, only the transparant version of yourself on the side of the screen.

I know it said it was a demo, but this had no polish at all just making it a pain to play. It would be more accurate to call this a MVP (Minimal viable product) which is not what it was advertised as. MVP's are great for getting early feedback to help shape a game into what your audience wants during its most early stages, but that almost never amounts to an enjoyable experience for the player. The only reason this got +1 star is because it had h content integrated into the gameplay which is a lot more than most other games accomplish. This could potentially turn into something good but right now there is no reason to play it unless you want to help shape what the game will become. Game needs atleast 6 months of updates before I would even consider trying it again, at which point it might actually be considered a demo and give an enjoyable experience.

Really fun and interesting game so far, with a super cool focus on "xenos" basically just the alien from the alien franchise movies/game but that's awesome imo and super ironic as I just recently played the alien game and intend to watch the movies!

Anyways game mechanics: pretty easy shooter doesn't feel clunky and is straight forward which i like

Art is AMAZING, all pixel art that looks really well done if ur into pixel art especially. I love how the fetishes come together especially I think the overall concept is great and the vision is there!

My only critique so far is the scenes could be added to somewhat, for example, and btw I haven't finished the game so far just wanted to drop a review causee I'm really enjoying, but the first h scene is a blowjob, it's animated really nicely and its super hot, dialogue is solid enough, but we don't see the alien, or any other angles, etc, and while that's not an issue, it would be nice to have things like that in certain scenes such as changing thee camera angle to see thee whole scene rather than just a pov, however, thats just a kind of subjective thing and it is still really cool as is and even depends on the specific h scene which is why it's not worth dropping a star or something.

Def worth a download if you're into the tags, especially the alien franchise, otherwise a good game but the fetishes may not be for u.

Can't wait to follow it's development and see its completion!