Morkull Ragast's Rage Breaks The Fourth Wall In 2024

Sep. 8, 2023

Morkull Ragast’s Rage is a platformer from indie developer Disaster Games. The premise here is that protagonist and proud villain Morkull, who is also the God of Death and Darkness and Lord of the Ragast, intends to escape from Ragast. He is not content with just ruling over his own kingdom, he wants to control the world.

Here is where things get interesting. Morkull is completely aware that he is part of this video game as well as the role both players and developers play. Because of this, he will directly talk to you as if you were both in the same room. Although, not many details have been provided yet beyond the usual discussion between your characters (and the pop culture references combined with horrible jokes that Morkull is known to be very familiar with).

With this in mind, will you be able to guide him to finally leave Ragast to inflict his evil plans on Earth? And will there be an option to foil his plan to prevent him from overtaking the world? We will most probably find out when we approach the game’s exact launch date.

Morkull Ragast’s Rage’s art style is an impressive feat in itself. Not only is the character himself together with the environment and monsters he interacts with are completely hand-drawn from the sketch, ink, and color, but also, the animation is done frame-by-frame. This is a touching throwback to animated films back then as well as 2D games that you may have come across growing up. The amount of detail Disaster Games has invested creates a vivid depiction of what life is like in Ragast.

There are also some sections in the trailer, that feature purple and haunted dungeons that closely remind us of Hollow Knight together with Morkull’s snappy movements. From the way he jumps into the air, evades enemy paths in an instant, and pummels to the ground to finally end them. Morkull Ragast’s Rage shows us that bringing back the techniques of yesteryear works incredibly well until this day to depict an engrossing environment filled with funny dialogue, harrowing encounters, and immersive action movements.

It has much-needed humor, which is absent from most Metroidvanias. So even if the art style is dark and gritty, Morkull Ragast’s Rage remains comically entertaining. It seems that the developers are the ones giving players instructions on what to do next such as the scene asking us to, “Deal with Morkull” after a peeing incident. One way to do this is by placing him in situations where his bony face can be deformed, and at which point he will exclaim, “My face! My beautiful face…” I’m positively certain that there is going to be a lot more of this out-of-the-box type of storytelling to set Morkull Ragast’s Rage apart from the platformers we know.

Because Morkull is the God of Death and Darkness and Lord of the Ragast he has a lot of abilities up his sleeve, one of which will allow him to reveal the dark corners of Ragast itself. But in terms of what these skills are specifically, we can only guess for now based on the game’s announcement trailer.

For instance, there’s the standard weapon slash, jumping from one platform to the next, and quickly dodging attacks like in Metroidvanias and platformers. And then there are unique movements such as turning into a deadly blade to ram down the target’s health as well as transforming Morkull’s hands into durable bone-like elements to effectively block any incoming attack. Furthermore, there’s an associated skill tree, which lets you choose the best path to take to make Morkull as deadly as possible.

Morkull Ragast’s Rage is a fast-paced action side-scroller where skill combination and practice are at the heart of the core gameplay loop in order to move forward in the story. Given how efficient the enemy moves are, Morkull needs to always be on his toes to ensure his survival. There are a couple of details that are currently missing though such as the possibility of having rest points to fully restore health and the presence of companions (if there are any besides the players and developers).

Morkull Ragast’s Rage can now be added to your wishlist. It will be available on Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and the Nintendo Switch sometime next year!

Auberon

Writer at Fextralife. I really like vanilla ice cream.

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