The most surprising thing about Moroi is its sense of humor. Moroi is a top-down, dual-stick action and puzzle game set in a dungeon of surreal horrors, where each cell contains a unique and grotesque vignette. In the first area of the map, there’s a cell containing a sentient meat grinder that craves human flesh. In another, a dead man is strapped to a feeding tube that’s still pumping slop into his bulbous, pulsing stomach. The next room over, you meet a talking duck with far too many human teeth in its mouth. One tooth would be too many, but this duck has a full, smiling set. And then he rips them all out for you, leaving behind a bloody, empty bill.
And this moment makes me laugh out loud. The gore in Moroi is so ridiculous that it turns the corner into hilarity, tapping into the gruesome absurdity that makes b-horror movies so charming. You don’t expect the duck to have human teeth, but what’s even more surprising is their sudden removal and the duck’s leftover, blood-smeared smile. These shocking moments of levity appear in Moroi at a rapid-fire pace, twisting the vibe from brutality to bizarreness and back until it feels like you’re trapped in a Francisco Goya fever dream directed by Sam Raimi. It’s pretty awesome.
Moroi comes from creator Alex Stanescu and his independent studio, Violet Saint. Though he’s now based in Switzerland, Stanescu is Romanian and Moroi is filled with grimdark takes on his homegrown fairy tales. The game’s name refers to a vampire in Romanian folklore, even. Stanescu was also inspired by David Lynch, Heironymous Bosch, H.R. Giger and Little Nightmares, with a dash of Robert Sheckley and Douglas Adams for humor. But at its core, Moroi is a completely original world of creepiness, Stanescu explained during a media briefing hosted by the game’s publisher, Good Shepherd Entertainment.
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“There's a big pool of things in my subconscious from which I pull,” he said. “General grotesquery, maybe carnival art, Bosch and early medieval art, and caricature. I always try to find my own style.” Stanescu later clarified further, saying, “Creepy things. Like, for example, in a puzzle, you have to vomit blood into the mouth of someone else. And you will find reality shifting in some places, like in a room you find someone else than you expect to find, and so on. Let's say dream logic.”
Violet Saint
It’s more like nightmare logic, really. Each of the cells in Moroi is connected — get the severed hand from the autocannibal so the meat grinder can make bone dust, which you can then give to the creepy wizard, who turns it into salt for the witch, who’s then devoured by her own potion, and so on. Eventually in the introductory level, you find a sword, break down a door and continue your quest to escape, but the prison only grows more strange. Every now and then, a voice interrupts your progress, whispering for you to find it. The creatures in the cells seem to know who you are, even though you have no memory of this place. There’s way more going on in Moroi than meets the eye.
“I tell a lot of it through the lore and collectibles, so those will carry a lot of storytelling,” Stanescu said. “The storytelling given by the characters and by the gameplay is pretty cryptic. You have to find and pay attention to what's happening.”
There are no branching storylines in Moroi, but your choices throughout the game will affect how it ends, according to Stanescu. He said the full experience should take about nine hours to complete, but this can be extended if you hunt down all of the secrets.
Violet Saint
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