Developer: WiseMonkeES
Publisher: EastAsiaSoft
Platform: PC, Switch (2), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Tested on: Switch 2
Mate’Morphosis – Review
It has been a while since we last took a look at one of EastAsiasoft’s bite-sized puzzle games, hasn’t it? The last one of these we reviewed was Rat Protocol, and that was over two months ago. Well, once again, we’re jumping into the fray with Mate’Morphosis. This chess-inspired puzzle title looks interesting, if only because of that theming, but is it worth taking the Queen’s gambit with your hard-earned cash, or is it checkmate before the game even started?
Story
It isn’t exactly surprising, given both Mate’Morphosis’ theming and its gameplay, but there are no narrative elements or even characters present in the game. It’s a bit of a shame, because the world of chess is rich with imagery and iconography, and you’re not even playing regular chess here, so even something as little as a blurb could have gone a long way here, but alas, you’ll just have to come up with your own lore… or take Mate’Morphosis at face value and accept that the game has no story whatsoever.
Graphics
Opting for readability over visual splendor, Mate’Morphosis features a minimalist 2D pixel art presentation. Levels consist of chessboards, featuring unique tilesets. These include terrain elements, such as gaps, breakaway tiles, and special arrowed tiles. Green tiles add moves and orange tiles deduct them. The game’s pixel art presentation is colourful and feels retro-inspired. The overall simplicity of Mate’Morphosis’ aesthetics belies the deeper puzzle design. The minimalist presentation also isn’t too taxing, and we didn’t run into any performance issues as a result.
Sound
Minimalism is something that permeates Mate’Morphosis’ soundscape as well. While you could describe the audio as barebones, we’d say that this approach fits with the overall design philosophy of the game itself. Music is present but forgettable, and sound effects do what they need to do without standing out. Voice acting is, of course, completely absent. It’s not a huge miss, and given that sound is irrelevant to the gameplay, we found ourselves simply shutting it off altogether and listening to podcasts as we made our way through the game.
Gameplay
The main focus of Mate’Morphosis is gameplay, rather than immersion. Although the core mechanics are based on chess, you don’t need to be a grandmaster to find your footing here. Taking control of a single chess piece, your task is to navigate across a grid-based board to capture enemy pieces and reach the opposing king. Upon capturing an enemy piece, your own piece immediately transforms into the captured piece, adopting its unique chess movement rules. It’s important to note that this is still a puzzle game, rather than a turn-based strategy title, and the puzzles are tightly designed. You have a fixed move allowance, and taking too many moves results in failing the level and restarting.
As we mentioned earlier, terrain plays a part in solving the puzzles, with arrowed tiles altering move counts, for example. Enemy pieces remain stationary and do not actively attack you. The game makes use of a tile-by-tile play control style, where your hand icon snaps to individual tiles rather than moving freely like with a standard cursor. This results in controls that feel precise and snappy, where every move you make feels deliberate, and where it’s difficult to blame level failure on misclicking. And trust us: you will fail levels, if only because of Mate’Morphosis’ poor onboarding. There are no upfront explanations or tutorials. Your only help is a brief “how to” menu screen illustrating movesets, so having at least basic chess knowledge is recommended. To Mate’Morphosis’ credit, in-game visual move indicators assist you with where you CAN move; it’s HOW that this knowledge helps you solve a level that is up to you.
There are over 60 levels to complete here, though it’s worth pointing out that progression is strictly linear, and that you can’t skip a level you’re stuck in to come back to it later. This might have to do with the way new mechanics are gradually introduced, but the difficulty of the puzzles is uneven, so you might hit a frustrating wall before breezing through the next three or four levels. Not that Mate’Morphosis is a particularly long game, though how quickly you’ll finish it depends on your puzzle-solving skills. We were able to complete it in an afternoon. Like most of EastAsiaSoft’s budget puzzle titles, Mate’Morphosis has little to no replay value, but for the €4.99 price tag, it’s a fun little distraction.
Conclusion
We’ve reviewed quite a few of these budget puzzle games by this point, and although they are rarely disappointing, they won’t set your world on fire either. Mate’Morphosis fits perfectly in the same lineup as Avenue Escape or Tiny Biomes, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s a budget-friendly “snack” in video game terms, and if you liked any of EastAsiaSoft’s previous puzzle titles, you’ll enjoy what Mate’Morphosis has to offer.
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