Sanity of Morris, the latest release from developer Alterego Games follows protagonist Jonathan Morris on a quest to find his estranged father. The developers are previously known for the drastically different puzzle adventure, Woven. It has a fairly simple premise that grows significantly hairier once aliens (and government plots) get involved, leaving both the player and the protagonist questioning what’s real.

At first glance, it should be said that I’m always wary of games that rely on “sanity” in their titles and/or game mechanics. Where Sanity of Morris is concerned, I would still call it something else if it were up to me. There is a lot of ableist baggage that comes with the word, and its gamification. However, this game’s approach to it is one of the more interesting interpretations I’ve come across.

Blurring vision and seeing things in your periphery that aren’t there out of already being on edge or being in the dark comes over as a much more believable human behavior than the usual outcome of faltering “sanity” in such games. What’s unfortunate, is that this stage-setting mechanic seems to more or less fall by the wayside after the game’s earliest segments. Ultimately the game undergoes a pivot from an aspiring horror entry to something more closely resembling an adventure game with the occasional stealth or puzzle segment.

To be clear, horror is a lot harder to get right than successful creators are often given credit for. I don’t think Sanity of Morris is by any means a bad attempt. I do think that, if Alterego Games want to continue pursuing horror, they have some things to learn, and Sanity of Morris may have wound up more tame and less frightening than they initially intended.

There’s some valuable ideas to work with present, to be sure. The soundtrack of the game is suitably unnerving, though the sound stings sometimes feel a little excessive after a while. The voice acting is overall solid and genre-appropriate.

That said, the verbal expressions of the protagonist’s anxieties are doing a lot of heavy lifting toward telling the player what they should be scared of. The aliens (in particular) don’t have much establishing them as a threat. Although you do die if caught by one, it’s something that essentially happens very quickly and off screen. I’m not sure I was really convinced, ultimately.

Further, though the relatively narrow field of vision is good for immersion, it can make navigation feel clunky and awkward. Where the game gets challenging as a result, is less because the puzzles are hard and more because there’s information conveyed awkwardly or that is more easily missed because of this narrow FOV. This proved particularly frustrating at times in some of the more tense stealth sequences. Particularly in areas where I was simultaneously trying to avoid an alien or a soldier, and struggling to figure out where I was supposed to go.

The graphics are nothing much to write home about. I’ve said before that I don’t mind lackluster visuals. In fact, I would rather have simple graphics in exchange for solid atmosphere and a well-crafted narrative. Given that the atmosphere and narrative stumbles a little here and there, and the game feels very heavy and resource-intensive despite this relative simplicity, I’m not quite sure that tradeoff worked in Sanity of Morris‘ favor.

At the end of the day, the story’s conclusion isn’t exactly surprising, even as it twists on itself and then twists back again. Despite that, it’s intriguing, and closes a surprising amount of distance toward bringing the game back into the horror genre after its adventure-puzzler turn. It’s only a shame then that it took this slightly meandering path to get back there. Because of the first person view, we didn’t even get to see this final climactic shot.

A PC review copy of Sanity of Morris was provided by Alterego Games for this review.

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Sanity of Morris

19.99

6.7

Score

6.7/10

Pros

• Intriguing approach to alien lore
• Interesting take on the otherwise problematic "sanity" mechanic
• Decent voice acting

Cons

• Narrow field of vision feels awkward
• Fairly resource-intensive
• Doesn't quite establish its enemies as threats to be feared