It’s hard to pinpoint when I became middle-aged, but I’m pretty sure it was the moment I watched and enjoyed The Detectorists. On the surface, it’s a fairly twee tale about a pair of friends who love the bond their love of metal detecting gives them, but look deeper and you’ll find a treasure trove of human emotion and life. I’m hoping that’s what Morgan: Metal Detective will offer. The Steam Next Fest demo, available now, is a little short, but there’s promise here.
Morgan: Metal DetectiveDeveloper: Studio MorganPublisher: Studio MorganRelease: 2024Download the demo on: Steam
I won’t lie. Morgan: Metal Detective wasn’t what I jumped into the Steam Next Fest listings to find. I was looking for a racing game of some sort, ideally with a proper arcade slant. Who wouldn’t want to discover the next Ridge Racer first thing on a Monday morning? Well, I didn’t find that, but I did stumble across this. The demo is brief in the extreme, clocking in at no more than 15 minutes, and the pace is as far from breakneck as you could go without completely standing still. But there’s a flicker of something here to fill that cosy escapism itch you might need scratching now and again.
Morgan: Metal Detective Trailer Watch on YouTube
In it, titular heroine Morgan takes a boat to the island her late grandfather lived on. Her mother gives her his old metal detector, and that starts a quaint adventure to help the islanders find lost items and discover more about said granddad. So far, with one piece of detecting completed, Morgan’s more of a solo flyer than Andy and Lance in the aforementioned BBC show (watch it on iPlayer, it’s great, I promise), but this gives her the opportunity to listen to tapes her granddad recorded, which is as lovely as it sounds, as well as collections of music.