For thousands of years humans have put in the work to be the top predator on Earth, not realizing how much that makes them a big fish in a small pond. Getting out into the universe and seeing what it has to offer isn’t a bad idea at all, but doing it without intense levels of paranoia is a less efficient and more expensive version of taking a graceful dive into a wood chipper. On safe old Earth people can be taken out from catching any number of terrible things by breathing near a puddle of standing water, so meeting an entirely new ecosystem needs to be handled just right, otherwise you get an infected ship like inMoros Protocol.
In Space It’s Not That Nobody Can Hear You Scream, It’s That There’s Nobody Left
Moros Protocolis a roguelite FPS set in the derelict spaceship The Orpheus, named after someone whose most legendary accomplishment was to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (Orpheus: brave enough to venture into the underworld, talented enough to win back his dead wife’s soul, dumb enough to lose it all by failing to follow the most basic of instructions). It’s a terrible name for a warship and sure enough, The Orpheus has managed to live up to expectations by failing at… whatever it was trying to do. As a memory-deficient survivor (named Alex) fresh out of a stasis tank, there’s no telling how things went so wrong, but the ship is infested and its former crew lying in bits strewn throughout corridors and rooms covered with alien grossness. The situation is basically hopeless but lying back and dying would be boring, so the best plan is to grab a sword and get hacking.
Deep Space and a Derelict Ship in Darkverse: Rogue Demo
WhileMoros Protocolis an FPS, the S part frequently stands for Slashing both because the sword is a good strong weapon and also it’s all you’ve got to begin with. Tap to rapidly swing the sword or hold for a charged attack, but physical attacks eat up stamina, so just flailing away isn’t an effective tactic for long. A room with enemies is in lockdown until they’re all cleared away, so retreating to let stamina recharge isn’t an option, but it doesn’t take long for the first gun to show up. Even so, it’s a good idea to keep using the sword because ammo is more likely to drop from an enemy killed by melee attack than bullets or energy blast.
The flow of each run ends up being a regular swapping between the three weapons that eventually fill up the loadout, with the sword used for weaker or melee-based enemies and guns for those best kept farther away, plus keeping an eye out for secrets and bonuses. Purple and gold growths on the walls drop biomats and money, respectively, the former of which is used to power up between runs and the latter to get a variety of upgrades at the occasional shop. Hidden rooms frequently have red keycards used to open locked doors leading to safe areas with weapons chests waiting inside, or maybe a vendor. Keeping an eye open for chests and destructible containers can go a long way towards gathering all the resources you’ll need to survive a run, no matter how easy it might be to lose track when the room is particularly gory.
In addition to a variety of weapons including pistols, rifles, shotguns and more exotic weaponry, all of which comes in both ammo and energy varieties, certain rooms can also be devoted to holding a chest with an augment inside. Alex comes equipped with armor that’s got three upgrade slots, and weapons have at least one and up to three slots for more enhancements, if you can find them. Is it worth significantly increasing the rate of fire while cutting damage mostly in half? Depends on the weapon, but maybe. Other augments help with healing, increase hit points, give lesser weapon enhancements without the need for a debuff tradeoff, etc. If you’ve got the money and the spare slots vendors frequently have a good selection of augments to choose from, and the rare vendor can even level up a weapon to increase its base stats.
One Playtest, Five Floors Of Alien Bug Evisceration
TheMoros Protocolplaytest is the first of three areas in the game, taking place over five floors of the ship’s storage area. Once you’ve found the elevator to the next floor and decided the current area is cleared out enough, there’s a branching path that lets you choose rooms with bonuses or challenges, all leading to a final boss encounter, that as the video below shows, I’m still working on beating. The charged roll it uses is probably best avoided with a strafing sprint-jump, which doesn’t give the same burst of distance coverage as one running forward but should be capable enough with the right timing. Like any good roguelite it’s a practice issue, getting familiar enough with the systems to exploit them fully on the path to being strong enough to turn a major challenge into a pile of goo. It also helps that the forty-minute video below shows a run that I thought at the time was maybe fifteen to twenty minutes, which both makes it very easy to restart and is a slightly worrying lapse of temporal judgement. It’s dangerous on The Orpheus, in more ways than one.
TheMoros Protocolplaytest is the first of three areas in the game, taking place over five floors of the ship’s storage area.
IfMoros Protocollooks familiar it’s because it was initially calledDarkverse: Rogueright up until this December when it got a name change. The initial demo came out in 2022 and then things went quiet for a while, but the playtest opens every other week toall players on Steamand is worth checking out when it’s taking new sign-ups. The Orpheus is a bloody, violent, gore-soaked mess overrun by ravenous space-bugs and the occasional zombie-ish crewperson, but Alex has a sword and there are more than enough guns on the ship to make up the difference. Whatever The Orpheus was up to that mission has gone completely south, but maybe it’s possible to hack through the alien infection and avoid seeing the ship live up to its namesake.
