Andrew Braybrook‘s 1987 release, Morpheus, is a strange mix of space shooter and resource management. Management of your ship’s shield’s mostly, which can be prolonged by adding extra generators, or by building up the size of the hull.

The aim of the game is to find and destroy the Nuclei, and shoot the resulting Morphai, without wearing out your shields due to impacts. Your ship is quite big on screen and overly-sensitive on the controls, so positioning yourself to shoot the Nuclei can be awkward. It’s also quite difficult to defend yourself against sprites moving so fast when you can see so little.

Morpheus is an enigma. It is brilliantly made, looks fantastic, is different and interesting, but it just isn’t good enough gameplay-wise to hold the attention for long enough for the player to make any real progress. It’s too hard; too esoteric; to ambitious; and too restricted in terms of the on-screen view.

At least Andrew Braybrook made good use of the Morpheus “metal” graphical style, by using it in Paradroid Metal Edition, so that’s a good thing! 🙂

More: Morpheus on Wikipedia