Morpheus - Information

The Intelligence has manifested fifty Aither (universes), by creating two equal and opposite areas of space. These areas (or phases) are joined only by the central neucleus, which maintains the Aither by ferrying a charge from the negative phase through to the positive side. This charge is then distributed around a number of orbitals which stabilise the Aither.

The Intelligence is growing stronger and is able to create a larger Aither each time. It is also learning to protect the Aither by creating roaming Morphai. There are many different types of Morphai, and they will quickly learn how to defend themselves.

If the Intelligence isn't stopped, the Aithers may grow so large that they will expand infinitely...

The player's ultimate aim was to destroy the Morpheus itself, on the fiftieth (and final) Aither. The player had to fly their ship into either of the phases for the Aither and collapse as many of the charge orbitals as they could. The nucleus fought to maintain the Aither's balance during the attack.

The player gained points as they collapsed the charge orbitals. These points were later converted to Guineas (money) which had to be spent on upgrading their ship's systems, weapons, etc.

As the game progressed, the Morphai became immune to older weapons, so new ones had to be developed. The ship's systems would eventually struggle to cope with the attacks of the Morphai, and so new ships had to be designed.

Timeslices were a measure of time spent in the Aither. One timeslice was equivalent to about two minutes of gameplay. New technological developments for the ship ceased after timeslice fifty (100 minutes of gameplay) and none were available to buy after timeslice sixty. It was therefore imperative that the Intelligence was beaten before the player reached that stage of the game!

Morpheus was designed and coded by Andrew Braybrook. Steve Turner wrote the sound effects and music, and John Cumming contributed some additional graphics.

Morpheus was published in early 1988 for the Commodore 64 on disk and cassette. The disk version allowed the player to save their high-scores, thus allowing them to continue from the highest level (Aither) they had reached the last time the highscore was saved.