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Mörk Borg Heresy Supreme’s Morbidware on making failure fun, even when you’re cursed to wander the land as a goblinTälk Borg
Tälk Borg
Image credit:Morbidware
Image credit:Morbidware
Both part of Italy’s “not very big” developer community, Morbidware’s Diego Sacchetti and Misbug have known each other for a long time, but hadn’t had the chance to collaborate together until 2019’sThe Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia- a bullet hell where you dodge projectiles and type in exorcisms to banish demons. They worked well together, so started looking for their next project - something full-time that could take the place of the increasing instability of freelancing.
It was a shared passion away from videogames that ended up moulding the shape that project would take. “We love tabletop RPGs,” says designer and programmer Sacchetti. “So when we stumbled into Mörk Borg, and then we started to play, we looked at each other in the eyes and said, ‘Why don’t we make a game out of it?'”
MÖRK BORG Heresy Supreme Announcement Short AdvWatch on YouTube
MÖRK BORG Heresy Supreme Announcement Short Adv
Since releasing in 2020, dark fantasy TTRPG Mörk Borg has gone on to capture adoration, several Ennie awards, and a cyberpunk follow-up, Cy_Borg. Through creators Pelle Nilsson and Johan Nohr’s - let’s face it, punk as hell -Mörk Borg licence, it’s also inspired a trove ofexpansions,hacks, and modules, all of which are free to be monetised without the creators taking a cut. However, Morbidware’s gameHeresy Supreme(currently crowdfundingon Kickstarter) is a little different. After sending a prototype demo to the creators, they got not just their approval, but their involvement.
He feels lucky, then, that Mörk Borg’s creators have “basically joined the team” as consultants. “Johan helped me a lot, understanding his style and providing suggestions on how to improve certain graphics, not only on a concept level, but also on editorial design level. When we start work in more depth, his contribution will be the most important thing.”
While something like a CRPG might have seemed liked the obvious choice, Morbidware didn’t just want to have players interact with character sheets. “We basically decided to go for something which was at the intersection of a Metroidvania and aroguelike,” says Sacchetti. “We don’t want to have the players think too much about the stats of the weapons or the armour. We want players to think about their choices during gameplay, and know that each choice could lead to death. But we try to make death fun.”
A spread from the TTRPG. |Image credit:Mork Borg/Free League
“You don’t get used to having a hero,” he continues. “Sometimes you’ll have to sacrifice the characters you’ll spend the most time on, maybe to try and avoid something very nasty coming at you. If the game is ‘unfair’, I don’t know. It’s unlucky. It’s unfortunate. But it must feel fun.”
Making death feel fun, says Misbug, is “all about the type of reward that you give the player at the end of the experience. What we’re trying to do - which is a really hard task - is to translate unfair into fun. We know that unfair games are not fun to play. They look like chores that don’t reward you for anything. But we’re trying to create a system that basically puts the player into situations that there’s always ways out of - but they’re hard to achieve.”
For Sacchetti, it depends on the stakes. Imbalance, he says, works both ways - critical misses make critical hits that much more satisfying. “You may get your hands on a Fanged Deserter class with a very high strength, but one HP. With just a few blows, you kill everybody, but that only lasts until you get hit once.”
Image credit:Morbidware
“An example of that is also the ‘broken’ state, from the original manual of the game,” says Misbug. “Basically, when you reach zero HP, you have this bullet time effect. If you’re able to slay the enemy that provoked the broken state on your character, you will gain back one HP. We’re helping the player in a way, but at the same time, things are not really easy if you have just one HP. So it’s always a balance of putting the player in a situation of stress and then rewarding them.”
Levelling up in the game won’t involve experience. Instead, says Sacchetti, it’s “more like small achievements.” Kill 10 goblins without taking a hit, for example. Once fulfilled, these milestones can be spent on bonuses at Galgenbeck, the game’s hub. Like in the TTRPG, though, levelling up can actually make your stats worse if you roll poorly.
Character concepts from Morbidware’s game. |Image credit:Morbidware
“About the getting better and worse,” says Misbug. “The idea is always to not be completely unfair. So this means that even if some stats go below the previous value, the player will still be able to complete the game.” There are no restrictions on weapons or armour, so “if you find that super duper knife that kills the enemies in just one hit, you can still use that even if your strength is minus three. You’ll probably be slower. You’ll have less stamina, less hit points. It will be really dangerous for you to get close to certain enemies. But at the end of the day, you can still complete the game.”
“The seventh Misery will always be 7:7, and the world finally dies. The seventh seal is broken for the seventh and final time. The game and your lives end here. Burn the book.”
A pre-alpha image of Heresy Supreme. |Image credit:Morbidware
Sacchetti says that once a Misery is triggered, it’ll affect the entire game from then on, but “you’ll be presented with options to maybe sacrifice a character, or lose something very important to you. Not to avoid the Misery, but just to be more lucky with it.”
If these sound too punishing though, the team are planning on working in tweakable difficulty parameters - similar to The Texorcist - for the miseries and other elements, like how harsh the randomness ends up being. On the other end of the scale, there’s a planned “Mörk Borg mode” - effectively a hardcore options for players who want the full, punishing experience. You’re also not completely alone out there. You’ve got your party, vendors at the hub, and you might meet others out adventuring. Friendly characters, I hope?
“Well,” says Misbug. “Friendly is a big word,” though, you will get the chance to meet other lost souls through a “semi procedural” quest system. Conversations mean stat tests. An NPC might try to rob you, and you’ll have to try and convince them you’re actually skint. Sacchetti also mentions what they’re calling “Friend or Foe” situations.
Image credit:Morbidware
“You encounter one of the playable classes, and they may want something from you. And everyone in your party has their own agenda. If you don’t make them happy, they might turn their back on you. You may need to fight them. And maybe you levelled them up a lot, maybe you gave them better equipment, and that’s a problem. Or maybe they just leave, but then you encounter them later. Again, It’s a friend or foe situation.”
With the bright yellow book obviously acting as a design bible of sorts, I’m curious about the team’s influences outside of Mörk Borg. “I really love some Nintendo games for for the atmosphere they have, like the old Super Metroid,” says Sacchetti. “I may like the way they explain things, the user interface. Another game that I love very much isDevil Daggers, I could say that’s my inspiration for some kind of mood, some kind of emotions.The Binding of Isaacis a good match for this, too. Still, our game is not linear, so it’s not a descent into a single dungeon.”
“It’s bit trivial to say, but probablyDarkest Dungeon,Dark Soulsand stuff like that. But these are grim, dark fantasy scenarios. The comedy aspect is lacking if you compare it to Mörk Borg. It’s just so over the top, sometime that becomes funny.”
Sacchetti also mentions one of my favourite dark fantasy RPGs, Fear And Hunger. “I love those games. It’s quite cool and very unfortunate. At the same time, we try to have the same thing in a more deliverable way. I think that Fear and Hunger, for example, doesn’t necessarily want you to succeed at the game. We want you to to succeed in the end.”
