Does the Bergson house feel a little lonely in Children Of Morta? Don’t you wish there was a whimsical owl waiting for you each and every morning? Dream no more, friend. The latest piece of DLC for Dead Mage’s family-focussed Diablike lets you adopt a herd of furry and feathered friends – and by picking it up, you’ll be doing their real-world counterparts a bit of good, too.

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Children Of Morta got its first free content update yesterday, the Shrine Of Challenge, introducing a hard mode to challenge the most veteran of players, as well as some new enemies and items to shake up the game even more.

The first of the new baddies is the Dark Blade, they’re the purple guys in the trailer below doing what seems like some scratchy spinning attacks. The other new enemy is the Mech Constructor that looks like it floated straight out of some Dwemer ruins.

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Xbox Game Pass for PC continues to be a pretty excellent deal for those not averse to subscription services. Microsoft have been adding new games to the catalog on the regular and you can still grab your first three months for 1/$1. Microsoft announced three more games coming over the next few weeks, making the deal better as usual.

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“Family is all”, a wise man once said. And then he half-drowned his nephew in a bucket of ice water, but let’s forget about that bit. The sentiment is what’s important. Families can be good and bad, dysfunctional or helpful. This is as true in videogames as in life. So that’s what we’re podcasting about this week. The brothers, mothers, aunts and cousins we have grown to like or who we watch with a wary eye any time we visit the local volcano. Come listen.

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Games about families are pretty uncommon. Ignoring the state of games about dads (because they’re about dads, not families, which is sort of accidentally on point), can you even name the parents of more than a couple of game characters? There are probably more about orphans than about someone who, even in passing, has parents.

Children Of Morta is all about the family. It’s a slashy light Diablo-ish game without the loot. Instead of classes you choose a member of the family to delve into the ISO standard monster cave underneath the family mansion. Each has their own weapons and talents, and there are endless cut scenes about how they all come together to stop the evil purple goop coming down the mountain to englubben everything.

Now read that last sentence aloud slowly enough that it takes several minutes, and as though it’s the most profound thing ever said. That’s how Morta presents itself.

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It wasn’t until I tried Dead Mage’s action roguelite Children Of Morta myself that I understood what John Walker said about it last year – that its pixels are brimming with animated charm. You can try it for yourself, too, and should probably do so quickly, as the demo available now on Steam is only going to be up for grabs for 72 hours. It’s an action dungeon crawl for one or two (local) players, but more story-driven than most, with you playing as a three-generation family unit of adventurers trying to stop a magical apocalypse while living their daily lives. Below, a new trailer.

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It is perhaps a little silly to get excited about a game based on screenshots. For all manner of reasons. But I can’t help myself whenever I pics of Children Of Morta. It just looked so astonishingly beautiful, especially in the last year. So I nagged at the PR team behind it, and they let me get my hands on an in-development build that doing the rounds at this summer’s shows. Oh my, it’s already looking splendid. (more…)

Children of Morta [official site], the pretty hack-and-slash that hit Kickstarter in 2015, is coming out for real in the first half of next year. It’s about the Bergson family, adventurers that guard Mount Morta and take it in turns to leave the house to hunt for loot and slay monsters. (more…)