Morpheus is a third-person-style game which revolves around a spirit-like creature in an imaginative dreamscape. Players must use the spirit’s shapeshifting abilities to solve puzzles throughout the world, and piece together their past memories. The game is being developed by local outfit Infinitive Game Studios, which was founded by Roger Schoellgen.
Schoellgen began the project over a year and a half ago, alongside a handful of fellow University of Advancing Technology graduates. Several members of the Infinitive Game Studios crew were on the convention floor during Comic Fest, welcoming attendees to play through a demo of Morpheus and supply their feedback. Some of the reactions from the con-goers proved more eye-opening than the team expected.
“It’s been hectic,” admitted Schoellgen in a Sunday interview. “The first day we came, we didn’t have controller support. We gave them [the attendees] a mouse and keyboard and that’s overwhelming for players, unless they’re familiar with PC [games].”
Schoellgen went on to explain that this proved frustrating for the team to explain each game function to players, whom were timid in the face of using keyboard controls. Nearly overnight, the programmers worked to enable controller support and saw an instant improvement the next day.
“We give them a controller, they start figuring things out.” commented Schoellgen. “They want to play with the buttons and then they figured out how to shapeshift without us saying anything!”
As the demo shown of Morpheus was still an alpha build, the team was fastidiously documenting discovered bugs and feedback for future improvements. The Infinitive crew aims to eventually have the game polished enough to push for a Kickstarter, and get it released on Steam.
For Schoellgen, Morpheus is only a small step towards a much bigger dream with the Arizona-based Infinitive Game Studios.
“I don’t think Arizona has enough game companies and it bothers me,” commented Schoellgen. “I wanted to start my own game studio here and grow it, I don’t want to be indie forever. I actually want to see if I can get up to that AAA level and have really high-quality games that people around the world talk about.”
The alpha build of Morpheus is currently available for download on the Infinitive Game Studios website. Footage from the game can be viewed below.
