Friends, I have officially discovered another game I can play with my life partner, who regards most games with enormous suspicion and fatigue. That game is Morels: The Hunt 2, released this week, and as you might guess, it is about finding and identifying various species of mushroom in lush, photorealistic wilderness locations. There are also unicorns, crystal skulls and robot parts. Slightly confused by the unicorns, crystal skulls and robot parts, if I’m honest. It feels a bit like developers Abrams Studios are unconvinced as to the popular appeal of mushroom hunting, and have garlanded the concept with random mythology so as to widen the Venn diagram overlap between “fungi fans” and “people who want to live in cyberpunk Narnia”.
The developers – who are indeed brothers – explain their thinking in broad strokes on the Steam page. “We loved morel mushroom hunting growing up,” they write. “We still do it every year. One of the greatest things about mushroom hunting is just being out in nature. We take a lot of photos while we are hunting which is how the game came about. We wanted to create an immersive experience of being out in nature, mushroom hunting, and photographing the beautiful environment around you into a game, without having to hunt something with a weapon.”
I guess the blend of photography and mushroom gathering makes sense, but I continue to be confused by the unicorns. You can also turn into one of the game’s animal in Exploration Mode, by the way – I’m not sure whether this extends to make-believe creatures. I do not feel a pressing need to either photograph a unicorn or turn into one, but I really want to fire this up and have my partner passenger-seat-drive while I go ferreting around for chantarelles.
