Time to Morp (PC) Preview

Sometimes sandbox games drag on, giving you a bit too much freedom. Others give just enough freedom while letting you establish a casual, relaxing gameplay loop. Time to Morp, developed by Team Halfbeard from Latvia, manages to rein things in properly but has a few warts in its Early Access state.

Time to Morp puts you in the role of a spacefaring intern who has followed an SOS signal to an unknown planet. With your crew, you must study the native creatures called Morps, set up a base, and explore to find the source of the signal. Time to Morp is currently in Early Access, so some story content has not been implemented yet, along with gameplay elements and features that may not be finalized.

The narrative starts as a relatively bare-bones situation. The first hour or so gets you into the action and teaches you how you can interact with things, build things, and more. It is also important to note that you can play in single-player or with up to three other people. This allows you to build your base at a faster rate really but doesn’t change much mechanically.

I like that multiplayer isn’t required, as what is in Time to Morp is well done so far. There are a lot of different things to find and build, the characters are interesting, the morps are cute, and the gameplay loop overall is fun. You breed different types of morps to get certain resources, then research new things to unlock upgrades and other ways to build and advance.

There are a few issues with this general loop though. For one, at this stage in Early Access the controller support isn’t complete. You can do most things with a controller, but certain things need a mouse and keyboard. Also, there are a few minor bugs here and there, and I’m not entirely a fan of how the habitat system is set up.

Habitats, or “areas” as they are called, require certain things within them to qualify for whatever type they are. This is usually fine, but certain quests want you to have certain natural resources in those habitats, which means you generally have to build the habitat around that resource vein. Later on, you get the ability to move natural resource harvesting points to different areas, but early on it becomes very annoying trying to lay out and plan your base.

With that in mind, Time to Morp is a cute, fun, low-impact sort of game that really lets you play at your own pace. I could see people flocking to it in the same way that they rallied around games like Astroneer or Satisfactory to a lesser extent. The creature-raising side of things is simplified, but it does change up the sandbox resource-gathering gameplay loop a little bit.

If you like games like Astroneer, or other base-building, spacefaring games, then I think you’ll like Time to Morp. It needs a bit more time to grow and develop, but I have played Early Access games that were a lot worse at this stage of development. What the developers have delivered so far is a heartfelt, relaxing yet engaging experience for all ages.

A PC preview copy of Time to Morp was provided by Yogscast Games for the purposes of this preview.