The Dark Queen of Mortholme
A downloadable anti-game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
You are the Dark Queen—the most powerful being of your entire universe. Your lair is breached by an aspiring hero—a pitiful thing, easily crushed.
Except they keep coming back.
--
A 20 minute anti-game about an unconventional relationship and the capacity for change.
English, Español, Español (LA), Français, Galego, Italiano, Português (Brazil), Pусский, Türkçe
The Steam port includes controller support and achievements.
Download
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Development log
- Back to usual54 days ago
- The Dark Queen of Mortholme Steam launch59 days ago
- The Dark Queen of Mortholme coming to Steam!May 26, 2025
- Multilingual MortholmeMar 16, 2025
- Another bug fix updateDec 17, 2024
- Post-release Bug FixesDec 10, 2024
Comments
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I seem to be running in issues with the game, sometimes all of a sudden certain keys seem to be kept down, even though they aren’t physically being pressed nor seem to have any issues in other apps. This makes it difficult for me to play the game, or even outright impossible.
Is it possible to download the game on mobile?
Very good anti-game with short but good story
Está chulo el juego, buen girito a la narrativa del héroe. Lo jugué en steam y hablo un poquito de él en este vídeo:
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honestly the best game i've played in 2025
what a masterpiece! thank you very much, I wish you the best in your life as a game designer
Hello. In Russia, we really love your game. I would like to ask for your permission to dub it into Russian. Whether it's official or not, it's important that you allow it. As fans, we would love to further engage the audience with the game through dubbing. If there is a possibility to do so within the game, we would appreciate it. Sorry for my bad English.
Cool idea, cool visual but... Too long animation, your atack dont placing in queue to hit then animation of previous atack finish (its kinda inportant for this typo of game). While playing u dont know there your atack ending and where next start, too long "standing" animation before and after every atack move.
In general i would love to play in this game again (or in better version of this game in future when control\animation issue will be fixed. Coz rn u write game not for player, but for npc)
I bought this on Gog.
Tried to run on Linux through Lutris and didn't work.
Found this and there's a linux version. Yay!
Will you please add the Linux version to Gog?
A thought provoking game about the role obstacles (even really big scary ones) play in our development. I really liked it! Play it and see what it means to you.
A poignant masterpiece. I found its story, while somewhat simple, to be very thoughtful, thoughtprovoking, and wise. The characters themselves and aspects to them, like the Queen’s hopelessness/denial of improvement, add lots of depth.
It lacks minor, very specific, player interactions but those barely matter for the most important aspects are covered. Despite how much the story hurts, this game made my day and has left an imprint on me more than once at this point.
Great anti-game.
Hero/Queen relationship aside, I felt a lot of deny from the Queen's true self ("It's all I've been given. There's nothing to change. You are the only one to have this opportunity given." / "What are you afraid of ? - To lose who I am." / "Eternal things do exist. Will you brandish your swords against laws of nature now ?" BTW sorry if my quotes are not verbatim, I played in french) that hit really hard as a trans person. And I'm not even talking about her final form which she's afraid of showing.
So, really an LGBTQ+ (anti)game to me.
I'm not sure I can do more that 3 runs though, it's a bit too painful to me. But it's an absolutely amazing game. Thank you.
That probably explains a part of why I resonate so heavily with the Queen.
The lesson this game teaches can be applied to many many things in life.
All that exists is not meant to end, but to move on.
I loved it. The art is gorgeous, the music really good and the story really beautiful!
Acabo de jugar al juego. Trae un recuerdo retro muy molón. Muy imaginativo y creativo, gracias por compartir tu trabajo. un saludo desde España
The story is geniously made to take place in just 2 scenes the main menu and the boss room and it has a deep story this is just incredible
The game is awesome! Story is real sad I was touched
On steam the game appears to be tagged as Romance & LGBTQ+, considering that neither of these things are true in the current game, you should probably look to correct that so that people don't get mislead and buy the game expecting something that is not there (like me).
well they are both womans so lesbian and there is romance in the way of the queen of course so yeah both tags are correct
Having two women does not make something queer by itself, there has to be romance between the two, and there is not in this game. You could, if you wanted, interpret their dynamic as romantic but if we're getting into "You could ship it if you wanted to do that", that applies to literally every piece of media ever. The romance tag is for media with romance included already.
Those tags are correct.
But there's not romance between the queen and hero. There *could* be, there's romantic potential, but that does not equate to having romance because you could say that about any two characters. I would enjoy the game more if there actually were romance in it, like a romantic ending, but as far as I can tell, there is not in the current game.
I understand where you are coming from.
I will look into removing the tags! We generally don't like to because they were given these tags by the community, and Steam urges you not to remove those types of tags.
Heyyy, I'm not sure where else to reach out about this since I don't have Twitter, but I'd be interested in translating this game into German (obviously for free). I loved playing the game and just keep returning to it, and being a part of it in some way would be a huge honour to me :)
I feel like the behavior of re-releasing a once free game as a paid version while it having no extra content is scummy as hell.
It sounds like the greedy stuff a corporation would do. But I suppose we should overlook that because this is a indie game made by a single hard-working person. So all criticism should be ignored right?
Honestly this would have not been bad to me if the game had a price from the start but that isn't the case.
The game is cool, but regardless of the quality this feels scummy to me.
Edit: edited for grammar.
The publisher (a small indie company) thought it was a good enough game that people who don't use itch or who like storing their games in their steam library would be willing to pay a few dollars for it. I for one appreciate the effort they put into the port and implementing controller support, as people had been asking me for those.
You don't need to get the Steam port if it's not valuable to you, that's perfectly fine. The thought of me giving my work out for free being called scummy by someone who benefited from it and then publicly badmouthed me is pretty funny though.
Not only this, but it costs money ($100) to ship to steam
Hi! Publisher here.
I'd like to offer a different perspective. The creator of the game, Mosu, didn't charge when they released the game on itch, despite the game's success and popularity.
Now, we agree in hindsight that the game should have remained free on itch. The Steam port, however, required money because it needed to have access to Steam's input API for controller support, creating Steam achievements, Steam trading cards, and more. We handled that for Mosu, and do not expect any money from them for this, not to mention languages.
We felt it was fair to charge $4 to $5 for the game on Steam because, as a publisher, we feel that Mosu deserves financial compensation for their game, but beyond that, it is potential revenue that they can put into their next game because, in my opinion, Mosu is a generational developer and their work should not only be creatively supported, but financially.
It comes off as completely unfair to me that Mosu is getting pushback for agreeing to release their game on Steam for under $5 while there are companies out there charging double, usually triple, the price for skins and lottery cosmetics.
P.S. We're likely going to be discounting the game to like, $2 soon.
It's a shame to read negative reviews on Steam, to be honest - it feels like today's people aren't interested in games of this kind and just find them boring (and they complain about the price even more, although in my opinion it's a good option to support the developer in this way). I hope this doesn't stop you and you will create a bunch of other good, soulful games.
Thank you for the encouragement! Yeah, I'm aware that the games I make tend to be pretty weird. Those who get them really like them, but once outside that niche my artistic decisions can come off as baffling.
Steam has a more mainstream audience than itch, so it makes sense that there's going to be more baffled people. I don't really care though, those people aren't who I make games for. They're for you.
I just wanna say, this game is a really cool game with a unique concept, but the people complaining about the newly added price tag have a point.
You shouldve either kept this game free forever or added more content to the game, then made it a paid experience. Its not a good look if your trying to charge people for a experience that was offered for free at some stage.
Or just made the game be paid from the start.
Honestly, I agree. When the publisher initially suggested adding a price, I was vehemently against it, mainly for reasons of accessibility and not invalidating the many people who have recommended it as a free game.
Right before the Steam release I was asked to reconsider changing it temporarily at least. I appreciate the trust and effort Monster Theatre has put into the Steam release of Mortholme, so I decided I should trust them in turn and help the launch. Evidently it hasn't been taken well, which I figured might be the case.
It'd be nice if I could've had better business plans from the start, but I just make games. No studio, no clue if people value what I make. Got to play it by the ear; this one was certainly a dissonant note.
Kudos to you man. I respect that you have taken the time to reply to all of the negative feedback that people have been dishing out. It really shows that your open to suggestions and that means your an honest guy. Goodluck with gamedev, its hard
Locking previously freely available content behind a $6 paywall is abhorrent. If you didn't add enough content to the steam release to justify the price tag when it was already available for pay what you want here, then you should've either not done a paid steam release, or you should have spent more time to add stuff worthy of the price tag.
I hope you enjoy whatever additional money you get from this, because at least personally I'm refunding my steam purchase directly due to this decision
You really sound like an entitled little brat.
Entitled because he doesn't wish to spend his hard-earned money on something he already played before?
You sound like a snobby rich kid.
I'm not sure if I'd call it abhorrent--most people charge for their work, after all--but admittedly changing the pay what you want system wasn't what I'd have preferred, either. For accessibility reasons, mainly; the idea of people getting emotionally attached to my stuff being free was more of a surprise.
Money isn't a big decider for me, really. What I got excited by was people in the industry thinking my work was good enough to be advertised as a proper game and sold on Steam. Working with a publisher is a big step for my dream of working as a solo game dev.
I'm not proud of relenting to the publisher's request to increase the itch price for at least the Steam launch to help them succeed. I did end up doing so though, and you can certainly call me spineless for that.
Is the Mac version 32-bit or 64-bit?
Perils of Apple ending support for 32-bit in Catalina and later, makes it hard to tell what games on itch are viable with my computer.
Tried checking the steam version but that appears to be Windows only atm.
64-bit, it should say so in the download instructions but I don't think itch displays those well. I feel your pain; some of my old 32-bit games have become unplayable on newer machines
wonderful, thanks
Hi, can you tell us if this site:
thedarkqueenofmortholme.me
is yours? It's not mentioned anywhere here.
It is not mine. I don't know who put it up.
I'd recommend reporting it to the domain registrar, especially if you have the tradsemark registered. Whoever put it up may be trying to spread malware.
"The Steam port includes controller support and achievements."
OK, the itchy version obviously doesn't have achievements - but don't tell me it doesn't support controllers? (I'm particularly interested in the Linux version.)
It does not, sadly. I never thought to code controller support, it was added in by the publisher.
Thanks - that's too bad; I really dislike playing platformers with keyboard/mouse (FPSs are a different matter).
And the Steam version is Windows-only and might or might not work with Linux/Proton. Sigh. Perhaps I'll give it a try.
You might be fine tbh; it's much less of a proper platformer than a narrative experience
you can use antimicrox to map gamepad to keys ;)
Looks interesting - thanks for the tip! :-)
They should kiss 😭💕
I LOVED THIS GAME the ending was so profound it will defenitely be eternal for me as the mark left in the heroe! 10000/10
Beat the hero again and again, verbally destroyed him as well as physically, until he does not return.
The reward for success...
...is a bad end?
This game is for me, is what outer wilds is for it's fans, an experience that can never be relived... I unless I get a concussion lol.
I come every once in a while here to remember it.
Thanks Mosu.
Thanks for playing. <3
A cool little game
I hope some new content will be added into the Steam release
mage & demon queen vibe
Incredible !!! GG
Muy original y divertido, me gustó la historia y ambos finales, nunca me había puesto en el lugar de un final boss. Yo saqué el de que el héroe al final se aburre de intentar derrotarme y abandona xD
Os dejo mi Gameplay. Muchas gracias!
https://youtu.be/IClGdAxYaHc?si=XfHavMT7wZC6WQ5J
Good story. 2 Complaints
1: The Hero reacts too quickly and doesn't make mistakes (with the obvious scripted exceptions.) It doesn't really feel like you're a Dark Souls boss, but rather just that the computer is a cheating bastard.
2: I want the enemies to lovers storyline.
I really feel like the more negative comments on this page really miss the point of the game. Sluggish movement, limited moveset, the hero getting items that counter you perfectly. That's the point: you aren't supposed to be the protagonist
since this s going on steam i hope we can mod it i want my enemies to lovers romance