I think the first time I really understood what Moroi was, I mean the down-in-your-bones feeling you get when youre playing something and the lighting bolt of understanding strikes you right on the noggin, was when my character fed himself to a talking meat-grinder because something inside [him] screams let's do it! Admittedly, it would have probably been funnier if Moroi had flashed a game over screen, and most games mightve as a gag, but Moroi plays it straight. Into the meat-grinder you go, head-first. It chews for a bit and spits you out. You taste terrible, you see, and the grinders palate for manflesh is, for whatever reason, a bit more refined. Later on, you can offer it a severed hand (dont ask) and its happy about that, and to grind up the bones and turn the leftover dust over to you so you can use it to help an old woman make soup (again, dont ask), but eating the hand causes it to explode. You are on fire, your character remarks glibly as the machine spits binary. But you have your bone dust and its not your job to save sentient meat grinders who have developed a taste for longpig, so off you go to break some more stuff. And I said, out loud, Ah, its a game like that. And I was intrigued.The word moroi comes from Romanian folklore; its used to describe a vampire or ghost, or in some cases, a phantom that rises from the grave to draw energy from the living. I dont know which part of the definition Moroi the game draws from. What I do know is this: your character, a bearded bear of a man, wakes up in a strange prison, in pain, with no memory of how he got there. Everyone else seems to know him, but he doesnt recognize any of them. But maybe, as a very tall man in a very strange hat tells him, thats for the best.Screens - MoroiYour first order of business is to get out, and that means solving simple puzzles, many of which boil down to acquire item, take it somewhere. Go talk to the cannibal eating himself as performance art who asks that, if eating himself isnt his magnum opus, lightning strikes him dead. When lightning strikes him dead, take his severed hand and bring it to the sentient meat grinder, who gives you bone dust before catching fire. Then you take that to the tall man in the funny hat, who tells you to take it to the old lady making soup (she needs some salt; you have bone dust. Same thing, right?) before reminding you that Death will meet you soon enough and weirdly offering up that his name is Edgar. So its off to the old woman, who gratefully accepts your salt and is pulled headfirst into the cauldron by the soup to see whats on the other side. I'm starting to think that wasn't soup, your character says. Noticing a pattern here?Its got Dooms Glory Kills, which quite literally teleport you across the screen for very satisfying slow-motion execution that drops health.On and on it goes, whether its a toenail from an overfed corpse still being pumped full of something, or taking the old womans spoon and using it to wake up the rat with the important job of running in his wheel and powering The Horrors (and the doors). But then something strange happens. Moroi gives you a sword, and throws a bunch of enemies at you, and thats where the magic happens. Combat is simple the top-down, twin-stick perspective seems a little weird when youre solving puzzles, but then you get to a combat section and its like Oh but its fast and hits feel weighty and satisfying and its got Dooms Glory Kills, which quite literally teleport you across the screen for very satisfying slow-motion executions that drops health. And then you get a minigun that shoots harpoons. And thats rad.PlayWhen Moroi is flipping between the two quick, simple puzzles like using the number of corpses in a freezer to work out a door code, and combat sections against multiple enemies howling for blood like its Black Friday and youve just snatched the last George Foreman grill its pretty grand. But theres also plenty of weird stuff beyond that, too. At one point, you save a duck with human teeth from being turned into a wide variety of duck-based cuisine and he rewards you with his teeth so you can reinforce your weapon, and then explains the way out through bloody gums. Sometimes messages pop up on-screen offering cryptic hints at something more. Other times, story details are left to collectibles scattered around the environment. I particularly liked the one that listed Duck of Eternal Torment as a type of potential meal prepared from our toothy friend, and the one where the cleaning lady resigns because the furniture is upside down every day and shes convinced the place is cursed and/or haunted.PlayAnd its never afraid to be weird. One of my Moroi demos last segments thrust me into the role of a strange, winged doll tasked by his mother (another doll) with helping his brothers an increasingly rude group of trees survive some incoming horror thats killing all of them by literally giving away pieces of himself to do it. Its an odd segment, but a compelling one, and when the credits rolled shortly thereafter, I wasnt quite sure what to make of it, but I am interested in seeing where it goes from here. There are some things about Moroi that concern me: my demo was buggy (It crashed once;I got stuck between a door and a bookcase a couple times; once I fell through the floor) and some of the writing is uneven. But those are things that can be ironed out. Moroi marries the macabre and the mysterious, and it often went to places I didnt see coming in my half-hour demo. Im still not sure what a moroi is in this context, but I would like to find out. After all, who can resist a game with a meat grinder that lusts for the flesh of men and a duck with human teeth?