Coming Home

I burned through entire summers in those early SNES RPGs. Secret of Mana, Terranigma, Chrono Trigger—games where you could lose yourself in a pixel world with a band of companions, where magic mattered and the story felt inevitable. I’d disappear into a single game for weeks, not because I was chasing the ending but because I didn’t want to leave.

Children of Morta tries to capture that feeling. It’s a rogue-lite from 11 Bit Studios where you play as the Bergson family, magic users living quietly in an enchanted forest until darkness arrives and tears everything apart. Suddenly it’s about saving the world, protecting Mount Morta, uncovering the rot spreading through the land. Each family member fights differently—weapons, magic, fists—and as you move through the dungeons you unlock new abilities and watch the story unfold. Love, loss, hope, all rendered in pixel art that feels like someone painted it from the memory of how those old games felt.

What works about it is that it operates on two levels. The nostalgia is obvious, the way it captures what made those SNES games actually matter. But there’s also the design itself—the pacing, the way you learn each character by how they move, the sense that you’re watching something unfold rather than just grinding through dungeons. Out on PC, heading to PS4 and Switch eventually.

The family is real. The pixel art is beautiful. The story lands. If you’d rather play Fortnite, that’s your call.