Morimens Is The Horror Gacha Game I Never Knew I Wanted

Many of my articles on games revolve around some pretty consistent genres - JRPGs, fantasy or sci-fi setting, the stereotypical "kill gods despite having a 0.01% chance of succeeding" trope - you get the idea. But when I'm not playing any of those games, I'm usually relaxing with a mobile gacha game or two.

The "mobile" part of this is easy - I just like being able to relax with a game if I have time no matter where I'm at, and as a professional who spends a ton of time already sitting in front of a computer, sometimes I just want to lay down on the couch and chill out.

The "gacha game" part is a bit more complex. If you're familiar with the genre at all, then your next question might be why I tend to favor games that at times seem like you're pulling the slots in a casino, complete with the pain of losing your currency and the enticing allure of buying more of it.

Fear not, for I am a notorious gacha game freeloader. I use only the free (and sometimes excruciatingly slowly earned) currency to roll on getting new characters. If I do spend money, it's only to on what I know will be guaranteed to me. The strategy has worked out for me - and it's saved me from bad spending choices.

Even then, I have mostly predictable taste. Honkai Star Rail, for example, which I've written about before, is the kind of turn-based JRPG-ish anime-style game that scratches the shameless itch I have for such titles.

Thing is, between patches, gacha games for me are mostly on auto-pilot - you log in, you do some daily questing, you get your currency, you log out. I've never been lured to the idea of min-maxing or endgame or anything like that - and when you have the schedule that I do, every hour is precious. All that boils down to is that I get kinda bored between patches for the couple of mobile games I play, and that's when another game can come fill the gap.

That's where Morimens comes in. The game is essentially a turn-based RPG deck-builder, with your character abilities and party made up of ability cards you play strategically to win battles. You have a single HP bar for your whole party, and the mechanics dictate that for most of the even-leveled fighting, you have to be paying attention, lest you die unnecessarily.

But it wasn't the mechanics that drew me in, but the setting and genre.

I'm not a huge horror game fan. Oh, don't get me wrong - I've played the prerequisites as an average gamer - the original Silent Hill is one of my favorites, I still laugh about badly voiced dialogue in the first Resident Evil, and more - but it isn't the first type of game I'd pick up. I guess I sort of mostly want something mildly uplifting for the most part with my gaming habit, and typically, horror is not where you want to go for that.

Yet there's something about Morimens that makes it charming to me. It's not like I'm completely closed to horror or dark stories – after all, my K-Pop readers know that I got into Dreamcatcher partially because of that concept. It might be because this is the kind of Lovecraftian horror that takes a dive into psychosis as much as it does monsters and things that devour souls, flesh, and everything in between. It might also be that it makes no compunctions about how dire things are - the main phenomenon, Dissolution, is so absolute that it erases knowledge of its victims from the minds of almost everyone around them. That's murder on a scale that is truly horrifying, but it sure makes for some urgency in fighting it, too.

Between that and the dash of JRPG-ish "special protagonist grows through tragedy and trials" the game adds, it's been pretty compelling to me. It probably helped that the very first scene has you carving your name onto your own, pre-made gravestone - the kind of totally metal prologue that tells you that in a twisted version of London, nobody is here to play or crack wise.

It also probably helps that Morimens is one of the most generous gacha games I've seen. Most of these games are stingy with their free currency used to roll to get characters, but not this game. I was practically showered with the stuff within the first two hours, and managed to pick up at least nine characters beyond my starting free four, all without spending a dime and with currency to spare. The fun and thrill of new characters and team makeups is part of a gacha game's charm, and Morimens has it in spades, with "realm" categories that represent different playstyles that remind me a lot of Magic: The Gathering.

This all really just adds up to having a game that I might stick with beyond my between-patch boredom, especially as the story, which doesn't tend to pull punches when it comes to acknowledging how twisted and horrifying its world can be, continues to persuade me to play more to uncover it. Playing each chapter is like walking through an X-Files episode, just set in the Victorian age, and I always look forward to more.

The fact that this game is not popular by any means (the official YouTube channel appears to only carry a scant seven thousand subscribers, and apparently almost shuttered twice, only to be saved by the community's support) means it's also a plucky underdog, and those of you who read me for K-Pop know I'm all about that. For my part, I'm going to keep on being the best horror and crime investigator I can be in Morimens, and if you're inclined towards these types of games at all, I'd invite you to do the same.