The Dark Queen of Mortholme Review

A Royal Underling crawls into the tower, warning that a relentless creature has breached the castle, slaughtered the royal guard, and is now headed for you, the Indomitable Majesty. The Dark Queen states that she will deal with the foe herself. A hero wearing a red hood and carrying a large sword storms in, declaring that the Queen's reign of terror is over.

You are playing as the evil empress, so you stand up and confront this wannabe hero. One swing of your large spiked staff and the threat is dealt with; that was easy. To be sure they are actually dead, you snap, engulfing them in a purple flame, and turning them into ash. As soon as you go back to your throne, another hero appears looking exactly the same as the last … But this time you get to select a response to their declaration that your reign is over. This is the same hero as before, but they were burnt to ash, so this shouldn't be happening. What is going on here? You battle again with the same result, and once again, the Hero runs in. Are we trapped in a loop?

The interesting thing is that the Hero is learning from their previous attempt, just like we do when facing a boss in a game. In their first attempt, they stood still, but in the second, they tried to move around. Though the new hero isn't the only one improving, instead of just swinging the staff; you now have three additional moves available to use. By the fifth battle, the Hero has realised that the Queen has a variety of different attacks at her disposal and states that they will need to figure them out one by one.

This game is so different from any other that I have played before! The whole game takes place in the throne room, but it was so fun to try out all the different attacks and adapt to the Hero, who was continuously learning. The dialogue exchange between the two is great, and I really enjoyed picking how the Queen would respond to their rival. Once you defeat the Hero, you will have to go to their fallen body and use your flame spell to burn them; this will trigger their next attempt.

The Dark Queen of Mortholme has great-looking pixel graphics with some animated touches to bring it to life. I love the flickering candles around the room and hanging on the well and the characters that are moving up and down; they never stand still. The Queen's headpiece looks like a creepy demon hand with long fingers and the nails painted red.

There isn't a huge variety of music, but that makes sense since you are essentially playing the same section over and over again, but the music that is there is very dramatic. The sound effects are great, especially when the Queen is walking around and you hear the echoes of the footsteps and the snap, followed by the burning of the defeated hero's body.

Every spot where the Hero died is marked with blood on the floor; it doesn't take long for it to look like there was a trail of blood leading right to the throne. As the Hero gets stronger, they will land some hits on you, but the Queen has four health bars, so it will take quite a bit of damage before you are really in danger. Though it definitely gets harder as time goes on, and the Hero finds new weapons to use against you in the battle.

As you progress, the story between the two characters gets quite interesting and deep, as you learn the motivations of both sides of the story. I don't want to spoil anything, but there are a few interesting twists to look forward to. The game is quite short and can be completed in a couple of hours, but it is worth the playthrough. This is an experience I won't be forgetting any time soon!