This game gave me flashbacks to a Haunted House I visited once as a child.

There were no witnesses, so keep this between us, Steam. Don't snitch on me. I'll make you pay for it.

As far as top down shooter goes, this game does what it needs to do. It's not a masterpiece, nor does it try to be. Just have fun with it. Shoot some zombies. Shoot down some floating, screaming ghosts. I didn't know it was a lady in a costume on ropes, okay? I didn't know.

Just...

It was an accident.

Larva Mortus is a top-down shooter. You go from room to room killing everything with up to eight different weapons. You can level up your stats, play through tons of levels, or you could just play something else.

The biggest problem with LM is that the difficulty is unbalanced. When you select your difficult setting, you're actually deciding on how much you want to be annoyed. This game features a lot of small enemies, some that leave trails of fire everywhere, spit multiple projectiles, and even randomly become invincible. The harder difficulties mean you have to put up with more of their crap, blow through all of your ammo, and possibly get killed in the process. The easiest setting seems like the best choice, since all difficulty really affects is how much the player does and takes damage. However, this setting also makes the game too easy...which I guess is to be expected...hm. Regardless, the alternative is pointless frustration.

Insta-death also starts to become a common theme later in the game. Devils and Champion Knights have attacks that'll kill you regardless of health or difficulty. Circle-strafing is a good method of avoiding this deadly attack, but these jerks tend to attack in groups, and other enemies lending a hand. Still, death really isn't very punishing, unless of course you managed to collect a rare item. There are a number of unique treasures that strengthen the player or offer a big XP bonus. These are lost if you die before completing the stage. Strangely, all of the achievements are tied to these rarities, you don't even get a cheevo for beating the game.

Larva Mortus is just a very dull game. Within 15 minutes you've seen most everything the game has to offer, and yet it just keeps going for hours, without purpose or entertainment value. There are a few moments of satisfaction, like blowing up a half-dozen monsters with a cannon, or shooting a werewolf in the face with a shotgun, but you can get more entertainment from playing a classic FPS like Doom. This game consists of running through rooms, occasionally finding something interesting, sometimes dying, and just never really caring. Your free-time is more valuable than that.

Not one of the best PCgames out, but... Well, its better than many of the games that were coming out for the Atari 400 back in the early '80's. In the '90's it would have been shareware or freeware. But due to inflation over the last twenty years what used to be free now costs money. Well, maybe that's not exactly why, but it's the best lie I could come up with on short notice.

The game isn't all that bad if you come home from work or school brain dead and need something really nit-witted to unwind with, or if you happen to be an anacephalic gammer, in which case you probably aren't reading this review. For those of you who are off to uni and have to work your way through, this is the game equivilent of ramen noodles for supper every night. You put up with it for a few years so thatyou can get a better job and the better standard of living that goes with it. Or so the schools' admissions propaganda would have you believe. The fact is that you can get an Ox-Cam education and still end up eating dry cat food, living under a bridge, and playing the solo version of tic-tac-toe in the dust. That's when ramen and Larva Mortus start looking really good.

The game does have its place,even in the library of a power gamer. Just make sure you get it when its on sale, and preferably when its under 75p (1 dollar for those of you in the US.

This game lacks any remarkable quality that justifies buying it, even on a sale. It's basically a twin stick shooter (without controller support) where the player scuffles through randomized (but persistently unstimulating) dungeons, fending off flocks of uninspired enemies to tediously grind through a few repetitive mission objectives, all tied together by the most perfunctory of stories.
The game's design and visuals transpire blandness. Enemy variety consists of the trite assortment of bats, spiders, skeletons, zombies, werewolves and respective supersized variants. Moreover the monsters are afflicted by extremely constrained behaviour types, limited to either rushing the player, casually flying around or throwing the odd missile. This cognitive impairment makes the enemies prone to getting stuck behind objects and frequently kamikaze into the environmental traps, and the only challenge comes from the occasional overwhelming numbers of enemies.
Due merits for the low hardware requirements, which allow to run it in a modest 5 year old computer, but when the game looks over 10 years old that's hardly a redeeming feature.

This is an inexpensive game that nevertheless feels too cheaply made for its price, and I can't find any reason to recommend playing it even if it finds its way into your steam account after a bundle sale.

You are a hunter of supernatural creatures in the 19th century, sent to performed exorcisms on the demons and hellspawn that litter the land. Five men stumble across an evil artifact and split it between them, now for some reason evil wants the five pieces back. It’s up to you to reunite the five pieces before the evil demons do.

Gameplay is of the top-down variety, movement is done with WASD and aiming is done with the mouse. Your weapon selection is pretty generic and grows as you find new weapons. Monsters are also pretty generic, running the gambit of skeletons, spiders, bats and zombies. The graphics are decent and the story is told via static images, done in a comic book style. The game is terribly average and doesn't try anything new, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, however that isn't the part that makes the game boring to play. It’s how the developer setup advancing the story that bores me to tears.

The game starts off by showing a mission that will start the story, but you cannot start the mission without leveling up first. You level up by selecting other non-story missions that will appear randomly after every level you beat. Each non-story mission can have a different flavor: save X amount of people (which you don’t even have to save technically, you just get a higher score if you do save all of them), clear all rooms of monsters, defeat X boss monsters, or remove X ritual circles from the area.

Here is the crux of the problem. The game requires you to be X level before continuing the story, you level up by repeatedly playing randomly generated dungeons with a very limited amount of goals for each dungeon, with a very limited variety of enemies, on levels that use a very limited number of tile sets. After the first few playthroughs of the levels just to start the storyline line I saw every level and enemy type. I played through the story mission only to find out the next story mission was yet again locked, and I had to be a certain level to play it. Which meant more grinding through randomly generated dungeons with little variety to advance the story again.

See the rest of the review here: http://www.skepticalminotaurgames.com/larva-mortis

I really like this Monster hunter RPG. Tons of action and fun for a top-down shooter. Only regret is I wish I had the soundtrack! Both game and music is highly gothic and dramatic. Worked best for me in lower resolution window, which I like games like this as well, then I can play them while waiting for rare spawns late at night on Everquest.

Brough the game as I had a 90% off coupon, worth the discount but not sure if it would be full price. Saying that so far i have enjoyed it and would reccommend if you want a fun game for 30-45minutes at a time that doesnt realy require any thought.

Overall, I enjoyed Larva Mortus. I got the game very cheaply using a 90% off coupon and had low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised! It is a solid top down shooter game. The graphics are decent and it is the kind of game you can just play 10 or 20 minutes before bed to relax. The music is solid for the setting. It's easy to learn and get into. There's 9 different weapons, 6 stats you can raise, and the plot isn't bad. Without grinding, you could probably beat the game in a few hours. I leveled up more than necessary to get more of the achievements, ended up beating the game at level 26 but you can beat it much earlier than that. There's 24 achievements that are pretty easy to get and random drops. I was able to 100% the game in 10.5 hours. The last few drops can be tedious but otherwise it's pretty fun overall. Grab this game on sale if you enjoy top down shooters!

First thing first.

Larva Mortus isn't a high quality game, it does not even try to be one. Larva Mortus is a top down shooter with flaws which offers you couple hours of entertainmentish.

You play as a monster hunter doing various monster hunting tasks. Across your journeys through abandoned warehouses to cemeteries you deal with undead monstrosities, werewolves and such. All are classic horror monsters, even main character is very classical monster hunter manly man. Weapons of slay include revolvers, two handed sword, machine gun etc. etc. Nothing new, you've seen 'em and know em. Oh, you'll gain levels too.

Controls work the way they should, you'll run around using wasd and with the power of mouse you'll aim and deal lead to monstrosities.

First hour of this game is pretty much fun. Also first hour of this game is pretty much all this game has to offer. You run around rooms, killing monsters with guns. Then you run around killing some more. It's really repetitive, but sometimes that is just what we need.

Larva Mortus has serious balancing issues. Instant death dealing monsters, unbalanced weaponry, easily predicted enemies. Difficulty level is a rollercoaster ride in this game. Too easy from pain in the behind hard, no gradual progress in there. Character development is simple as it should be. Problematically you can level up your character to be almost useless. (Free tip, first 5 points goes to walking speed) Still the game has few good horrorish moments and pretty good ambience. Music is nice for the first hour and then it you'll start wishing this game had few more songs. I had no techical issues with game and it ran smoothly.

Main campaing is playable only by leveling up via random quests. These put you around the globe for uh, monster killing, saving people or, you know, killing monsters. Also you can get quest for eradicating monster sings, which is basically the same thing as monster killing.

I recommend this game for horror and top down shooter fans who can deal with B-quality stuff.

I bought this game as part of a bundle. It was dirt cheap, so I wasn't expecting much.

Long story short: this game has a ton of atmosphere draped over a fun little action romp. You move from room to room, clearing out monsters, the undead, and cursed altars (monster generators) while switching between your different weapons and trying to stay alive. What makes this game unique is its dedication to its bizarre and weird story. There's lots of little touches - fog effects, spooky hallucinations, creepy music and sound effects, and a storyline that would feel right at home in a Weird Tales action story.

It's cheap, fun, and spooky. You can't go wrong.

Fetched it on sale.
Good game from what i've played.
8/10

Larva Mortus is dumb as hell. Larva Mortus has a name that is dumb as hell. Larva Mortus is a "twin stick" shooter. Larva Mortus is filled with zombies.

However. HOWEVER. Larva Mortus is better than Destiny.

Presentation
It's pretty obvious at first glance that Larva Mortus isn't going to be a life-changing experience, and for most of us playing it won't even be a day-changing experience as what seems to be an addictive and fun game at first, will turn into a boring and repetitive experience in a matter of minutes. The story takes place in the 19th Century, following a young recruit of an agency responsible with concealing and exterminating all evil creatures and their sources of power, so it won't be long before you start travelling around the globe to find all the evil lords that hold the main pieces of an artefact that allows evil to exist and expand throughout the lands, but as cool as that sounds, the way in which the game tells that story makes it boring and pointless as there is nothing else to fill in the blanks between missions and expand on the universe, instead the story turns into running from point A to point B only to then find out that you've been mislead and the thing you're looking for is at point C, kinda like a Mario game if he was looking for evil artefacts. There are also no cutscenes or voice-overs to add to the presentation of the story, so you'll be stuck with some lines of text that for most times are pointless since you can pretty much figure it out by yourself that after killing an entire castle of vampires, werewolves and bats, and still not finding the missing piece, the thing you're looking for is definitely not there.
Rating: 3.5

Gameplay
Larva Mortus had something good going on for a while and that was due to its focus on gameplay, which looks and plays great for a few minutes, as you use different weapons ranging from swords to machine guns and explosives to eliminate all sorts of enemies while you take on different objectives such as freeing lost souls, eliminating sources of power, clearing the entire area of evil presence or defeating a boss; and to make it even more appealing the game promises randomized map so no matter how many times you replay a stage, it will be different each time. The problem with all that is that once you get past the first 10 minutes, you start to realize that no matter which enemies you'll face and where you will still do the same thing over and over again; the best strategy to defeat almost any type of enemy is to run around in circles shooting forward or waving your sword around if you're out of bullets, because as long as you do that properly you'll be just fine and no matter the objective you're following, you will still have to do this over and over again just so you can eventually reach an area where you have to shoot or walk through an additional thing. As for the bosses, all of them are just versions of normal creatures with more HP, and the random maps don't really change the game at all since they just move the rooms around, so instead of taking a left, you'll take a right the next time, but end up in a similar area with similar enemies.
Rating: 4.5

Graphics
You can't expect quite a lot from an indie game with a limited budget, but the biggest visual problem with Larva Mortus isn't even the engine it was built on, which is obviously old, but instead the repetitive design which makes the already boring game even more monotone, always using the same colours and textures, putting you in similar looking rooms with the same objects sitting around the same monsters coming at you every single time you play.
Rating: 3.5

Audio
The audio quality overall is just horrid, with missing tonality, sound effects that have no place there and even worse sounds that should've been there and they are not, and just that one song that keeps repeating again and again, and again with different effects added on the background when you enter a boss room or get overwhelmed by enemies, but even with that added, you still have to listen to the same tune that was bad to begin with.
Rating: 2

Extras
Finishing the main campaign takes less than two hours, and even though you can play the game for as long as you want to since it will constantly provide you with missions with various objectives, taking in consideration that no matter how many of those you'll complete, nothing will change probably no one will bother to play for longer than 8 hours, which is the time it takes to obtain all items that award you with achievements if you're into those.
Rating: 5

Verdict
Larva Mortus is an indie title that had something going on in there for a while, starting with cool ideas that failed to entertain for more than a few minutes due to its poor execution that ultimately provide more boredom and dullness than entertainment, making this title become nothing more than another leftover in your collection. It does come with its fun, and for a few cents that fun is probably worth it, but then again, don't expect it to last.
Rating Overall: 3.7

A good game to play and it's only $5.00.

This is one of the funnest overhead shooters I have played in a long time.

haven't played much of it (as of this review) but I can tell this game is fun and metal as ♥♥♥♥

Awesome top-down shooter. Good enemy variety and challenge, though I would have liked a few more types of traps to deal with. Some of the game is a bit tacky like when a random face appears or bats fly across the screen, but I think it adds to its charm.

Full Review

To tell the truth, I was surprised by this game.

It doesn't look like much as a top down horror hack'n'slay, but exactly this spartan design is what is captivating about this, kill hordes of monsters with whatever weapon you got. Later in the game you will get better and more powerful weapons. You have to destroy monsters, hordes of them, zombies, animated skeletons, bats, spiders ... demons.

I bought it as it was very cheap during last years winter holiday sales - and it lay in the backlist of my library, just recently I started to play it.

Given, it isn't the best game around, but this type of game never gets old, or can bother you to be a bore. The gameplay is similiar to Binding of Issac and Our Darker Purpose. Some goals are hard to reach, but if you try to prepare you'll get more and more items that help to end your mission.

For the price I bought it the game is a gem, even at the original price of 4,99 it is worth your time. The game is no hype, but it is rock solid.

7/pizza wouldn't bang - IGN

I enjoyed this game immensely. It was very obviously made by an indie studio and it shows in the minor grammatical errors (which do lend it some charm). There are lots of different types of weapons, each having their strengths & weaknesses. You can only carry a limited amount of ammo which means you'll be using all of the weapons instead of just the most powerful one. Has minor RPG elements. Graphics are good and quite charming. The dungeons are randomized, but the game probably doesn't have much replay ability. I heartily recommend this game!