Quasimorph Review Summary

Despite steep and unbalanced difficulty and poorly explained core mechanics, this game charms with customizable difficulty, varied weapons, regular updates, and delightful pixel art and soundtrack.

Overall game enjoyment: Many players find the game fascinating, fun, and engaging, with a unique and enjoyable experience overall.

Highly customizable difficulty: Players praise the extensive difficulty customization options, allowing them to tailor the challenge to their preferences, from casual to hardcore.

Huge weapon diversity: The game offers a vast array of weapons, gear, and playstyles, including melee, ranged, and various damage types, providing extensive variety.

Active developer updates: Developers frequently update the game with new content and improvements, showing active support and listening to player feedback.

Charming pixel art: The pixel art style and atmospheric visuals are widely appreciated for their charm and beauty.

Difficulty indicators are confusing: Players frequently report that mission difficulty indicators, especially the skull rating system and power numbers, are unclear, misleading, and inconsistent. Easy missions can feel harder than hard ones, making the system unreliable for planning.

Difficulty curve is very steep: The learning curve is described as a steep cliff, particularly in the early game, leading to demotivation and frustration. New players often feel overwhelmed and punished.

Balance is severely broken: Complaints about overall balance being a mess are common, with many stating that balance is non-existent or terrible. This affects multiple aspects of gameplay across different difficulty levels.

Core mechanics are unexplained: The game fails to explain essential world mechanics and key features, expecting players to learn by dying and pressing buttons. New players are left confused and without guidance.

Limited and repetitive content: The game is criticized for repetitive grinding, boring gameplay, and a lack of story missions. Players want more variety and meaningful progression.

Roguelike turn-based dungeon crawler: Players describe the game as a turn-based roguelike dungeon crawler with deep mechanics and extraction elements.

Extraction shooter mechanics: The game blends roguelike extraction shooter mechanics with turn-based combat, similar to Tarkov but with a science fiction theme.

Turn-based tactical combat: Combat is turn-based and tactical, often compared to XCOM, with a cover system and action points.

Customizable difficulty settings: The game offers extensive difficulty customization, allowing players to adjust challenge levels, including presets and sandbox options.

Ship upgrade system: Players can upgrade their ship and craft items, which is a key mechanic and a core goal of the game, requiring items from specific factions.

Overall performance praised: Users highlight good performance including smooth running on integrated graphics and ultrabooks. The game is described as lightweight and runs well in general, even on older hardware.

Steam Deck performance mixed: While some users report it runs nicely on Steam Deck with cloud saves and adjustable controls, others note roughness due to control binding and UI issues. Compatibility is generally acceptable but not perfect.

Linux and Proton compatibility praised: Multiple users report the game runs flawlessly or without issues on Linux using Proton, with one noting it works well on a 486DX machine. Performance is consistently praised across various Linux setups.

Freeze and crash causing progress loss: Users report dead-hang freezes and crashes that result in lost progress, including a freeze that wipes progress and a crash that sends players back to mission start. These stability issues are very frustrating.

Late game lag from cargo stacking: A specific report indicates that cargo stacking causes massive lag in the late game, significantly impacting performance during extended play sessions.

General strong recommendation: Many reviewers simply recommend the game without specific caveats, indicating broad satisfaction.

Great turn-based combat: Players who enjoy turn-based combat mechanics highly recommend this game. It appeals to strategists and grinders alike.

Great for roguelike fans: Roguelike enthusiasts find this game highly rewarding. The recommendation is especially strong for traditional and hardcore roguelike players.

Game is worth buying: Many reviewers say the game provides good value for its price, with some even deeming it worth full price.

Not for casual players: The steep learning curve and high difficulty make it unsuitable for casual players. It is recommended primarily for hardcore gamers.

Community fair range: $10.00 - $20.00.

Session length: 1.5h.

Quasimorph has a steep initial learning curve and punishing early hours, but after about 6 hours many players report the gameplay 'clicks' and becomes highly addictive, though mid/late game can introduce new frustrations.

Reported time to anchor: 6h.

Friction: steep learning curve; unclear tutorial that resets progress on death; RNG one-shots and inconsistent enemy difficulty; inventory management and resource scarcity; progression wall in mid game; time-consuming grinding for ship upgrades.

Unlock drivers: learning to use different movement modes and cover; understanding resistances and damage types; utilizing the disassemble feature for economy; recognizing enemy weaknesses and room patterns; planning missions and managing gear proactively; reading faction lore to guide decisions.

Hardcore Extraction Veteran: Methodical turn-based planning, careful resource management, embracing permadeath and gear loss, and using adjustable settings to fine-tune the grind. Motivation: The thrill of high-stakes risk/reward in a fair but punishing extraction shooter environment. Stance: buy.

Frustrated Casual: Attempts to engage but quickly becomes frustrated by unfair deaths, lack of guidance, and overwhelming complexity. Motivation: May want an accessible challenge but is deterred by the steep learning curve and punishing mechanics. Stance: no buy.

Roguelike Strategy Enthusiast: Focuses on meta-progression, class/operator synergy, learning through repeated attempts, and optimizing runs for efficiency. Motivation: System mastery, build experimentation, lore discovery, and strategic depth. Stance: sale.

On low VRAM hardware the game runs well, while mid-range VRAM systems report mixed results with both playable performance and memory leak issues.

Windows <8GB VRAM: positive. Reports on 4GB and 0GB VRAM systems indicate smooth performance and low system requirements.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: mixed. One user reports lag with large inventories, while another reports instability, memory leaks, and crashes.

Steam Deck: The game suffers from poor controller support, frequent crashes with data loss, and UI/UX flaws on Steam Deck. Although it runs well for some Linux users, the widespread issues make it unsuitable for a reliable handheld experience.

Linux and Proton: Quasimorph works perfectly on Linux via Proton based on all available reviews. No tweaks, workarounds, or compatibility issues are reported.

External guides: The game suffers from a severe lack of in-game tutorials and documentation, forcing players to rely heavily on external wikis. This is compounded by the fact that the wiki is frequently outdated or abandoned, leading to frustration. The core issue is instructional: players need external resources to learn basic mechanics, quests, and combat strategies, which detracts from the experience.

Add limb continuity feature: Players suggest adding visual continuity for missing limbs after missions to enhance immersion and realism.

Add name/merc customization: Players request the ability to customize mercenary names and appearances for better personalization.

Supporter pack purchase noted: A player reported purchasing a supporter pack, indicating financial support for the game.

Save editing guide shared: A player provided a save editing guide via Bilibili, suggesting interest in modding or workarounds.