Review: Metamorphosis
When I first saw Metamorphosis, I was left feeling that the weirdness of the game seemed right down my alley – with trippy and artistic games really resonating with me, like Paper Beast previously. I have been into the body and mind of a bug but, did Metamorphosis manage to dodge the bug swatter?
Release Date: October 10th 2024
Developer: Black Sun Productions
Publisher: Black Sun Productions Inc
Price: US $19.99 / £15.99
Reviewed On: Meta Quest 3
* Access Provided For Review *
One Hell Of A Hangover
Metamorphosis is connected to piece of classic literature, which is Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis and it’s narrative of a human being transformed into a bug. However, this more an inspiration than a direct take of the literature piece. The plot of the game is about your character Gregor, who wakes up in his friends Joseph’s house with a hangover after Birthday celebrations. However, he soon transforms into an unspecified bug, and finds his friend is embroiled in some legal issues. You now need to navigate a surreal insect world with corrupt politicians, lawyers and others shady bug characters in the search for the required documentation before he can can return to human form to help his friend.
Inhabitants Not The Only Bugs
As a game I think puzzle platformer would best describe what Metamorphosis is. This will see you in a world where the scale takes center stage, as you feel so small in your bug form. Be it giant pencils or seeing the huge human characters taking and moving in some parts of the game. It really does a great job of making you feel so small, and the gameplay elements could make for solid game and shows potential – unfortunately, there is way too much broken with the game for it to match that potential. So where does the game lose it’s potential? This is across some decisions made and the number of bugs/issues I encountered throughout my playthrough.
I think the team had good intentions with adding to the experience with controls, with them including two control types. One where you can move your arms to walk, tilting the controls to turn and flicking your hands up to jump, and also letting you use the analogues to move and buttons to jump. Personally I wasn’t a fan of the physical movement option and stuck to the analogues and buttons. On both control schemes you will be climbing objects physically by movement your arms, like you would in most climbing elements within VR. Where offering both is a good idea, my biggest issue with it is you don’t chose you control scheme, meaning both are active at the same time. This sometimes causes unnecessary issues, for example: When doing longer climbing sections, it seems like when you get the top you fly forward – like it catches up with your movements and thinks you are walking, which can take you straight of the edge of the platform you’ve just climbed to.
Add to the general movement issues, I sometimes found the hit boxes seemed to be away from items you are climbing slightly and when in VR you naturally try to put your bugs legs directly on the surface. Then when trying the physical control option to jump it seems to be unresponsive at times and where the jump feels floaty, sometimes you just jump a small amount – like your are being weighted down by something. With the game being a platformer all of this can lead to unnecessary errors and can be frustrating when you fall all the way to bottom and have to start again.
Outside of the control issues, there are also some other bugs that can have caused needing to close the game and unnecessary falls. The main ones being able to fall into objects you are walking on, with me getting stuck in the ledgers in the solicitors office numerous of time. Falling into objects can also happen very easily when climbing if you are not careful, in most of these cases you can pull yourself back outside of these objects but, it does result in losing your grip when climbing and falling back to the bottom.
Through my playthrough I also has a couple of major bugs show their face. One in the solicitors office section, where the solicitor should have opened the part of the desk for me to climb out – instead he just put his arms through to desk, meaning I could not get out. Reloading the game did not fix the issue and I needed to start to whole chapter again to fix it. The other one was a room where the police offers were stuck in t-pose and the audio was like they were speaking in tongues and I could fly around the room – flying to the where I needed to get to loaded the next part of the game, so this did not break to game completely.
It’s such a shame these bugs cause issues with the experience because, as aforementioned the idea and gameplay has potential, it just can’t reach it in this current state.
A Splattered Bug
As mentioned previously the game has done a fantastic job with the feeling of scale. With this they have also included an impressive draw distance to what you can see in the rooms but, again this has caused some major issues with the visuals of the game. Which personally I think they could have improved by maybe reducing the draw distance as, although this looks impressive it’s not making the best use of the mobile chip it’s running from.
This decision has lead to low quality textures in this surreal world insect you are exploring, with some of them coming into more detail when you are actually walking on them under you little bug feet. Add to these lower quality textures really bad pop-in that is happening about two-meters in front of you at times, and it becomes overly distracting and breaks the immersion you need so much in Virtual Reality. Despite the game not fairing well in the close distance, when you start to hit more dense areas like the town section I also faced some frame dips, which also cause issues when doing some of the platforming and with comfort.
I wish I could say it improves with the audio, but again this is riddled with bugs. The audio level mixing seems off, with sometimes it seeming loud and then dipping to medium during dialogue and the music. This will also sometimes lead to broken audio, with the frame drops sometimes stopping it completely. Again this is shame because I feel the voice acting is done well, but the bugs and mixing really takes from the sometimes humorous conversations that are going on.
Comfort
The Verdict
The idea of the story, the surrealness of the setting and gameplay elements in Metamorphosis show potential, unfortunately it never manages to fulfill this due to some design choices and the issues caused by the number of bugs – and not the ones inhabiting the world. The bugs can be very frustrating especially with the platforming or sometimes being game breaking. With a poor auto-save system it means starting further back than you probably should or sometimes restarting whole chapters. I am hoping the developers can work on patching the bugs, improve the overall presentation and add some settings to the game for comfort/controls as this would improve the game drastically, but in it’s current state I can’t really recommend the game.