The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox is a visual novel and RPG with a branching narrative. Read on to learn everything we know, our review of the Early Access release, and more.
Everything We Know About The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox
The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox Plot
You are the Morphean Paradox, a hero beginning your journey in the quiet town of Marigold alongside your trusted partner, Lilith. However, you are also an amnesiac, with nothing but your supposed name remaining from your lost memories.
Uncover the secrets of your past, defeat the demon lord, and lead your guild to prosperity. Face hostile factions, bandits, and monsters, and forge your own path through a branching narrative shaped by your choices.
The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox Gameplay
The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox is a visual novel and role-playing game in which players manage their guild members, accept commissions, train, and engage hostile monsters and bandits through a turn-based combat system.
The game is structured around a day-based progression system, requiring players to allocate their time efficiently before major narrative events trigger at set intervals.
Stamina management is also central to gameplay, as nearly every action consumes stamina, and depletion forces the player to rest even if the day has not yet concluded.
The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox Release Date
The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox: The Forest of Silver Shallots released on January 20, 2026 on Steam. Please refer to the table below for the time it released on your region:
| Region | Local Release Time |
|---|---|
| United States (ET) | Sunday, January 18, 2026, 11:30 p.m. |
| United States (PT) | Sunday, January 18, 2026, 8:30 p.m. |
| United Kingdom | Monday, January 19, 2026, 4:30 a.m. |
| Central Europe | Monday, January 19, 2026, 5:30 a.m. |
| New Zealand | Monday, January 19, 2026, 5:30 p.m. |
| Australian East Coast | Monday, January 19, 2026, 2:30 p.m. |
| Australian West Coast | Monday, January 19, 2026, 12:30 p.m. |
| Japan | Monday, January 19, 2026, 1:30 p.m. |
| Philippines | Monday, January 19, 2026, 12:30 p.m. |
| South Africa | Monday, January 19, 2026, 6:30 a.m. |
| Brazil | Monday, January 19, 2026, 1:30 a.m. |
| Universal Time (UTC) | Monday, January 19, 2026, 4:30 a.m. |
The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox Review [Early Access]
Oh so Rough, Oh so Sweet
Anyone who enthusiastically dabbles in modern visual novels likely already knows about The NOexistenceN of you AND me—and if you don’t, you’ve probably been living under a rock. In my not-so-humble opinion, it is one of the best visual novels of 2024, right alongside titles like The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty, albeit for very different reasons.
If I had to describe The NOexistenceN of you AND me in a single phrase, it would be interface-conscious metafiction. That is, it’s a game that deliberately conceals its mechanics within spaces players, familiar or otherwise, are conditioned to ignore.
In a way, you could even think of it as a game where your own experience playing it is part of the text. But even then, it remains remarkably restrained with its mechanics, especially when compared to something like Irisu Syndrome, which still stands as my personal favorite for these types of meta interactions.
Unlike Irisu Syndrome, however, the developers of The NOexistenceN of you AND me decided not to let the story die out after a single installment and instead created the NON series, with its sequel, The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox: The Forest of Silver Shallots, picking up where the original left off.
And, oh boy, is it rough, even as an early access title. But it does show some incredible promise.
A Familiar Setting
The main plot for this game isn’t anything new. Long story short, you play as an amnesiac protagonist trying to defeat the demon lord and bring peace to the realm, all the while attempting to recover your memories along the way.
Your closest partner, Lilith, serves as your second-in-command and main romantic interest. Despite your circumstances, she loyally serves by your side from the start and shoulders all the burdens that your heroism carries with it. At the same time, she’s also heavily implied to be the key to your lost memories, as she’s far too familiar with everything surrounding you for it to feel natural.
This is readily clear when contrasting her with the other characters who also share a past connection with you. Fouco, for example, a familiar face from the previous installment, is the former demon lord who admires your heroism and has joined your cause. Beyond her admiration, however, she’s completely in the dark about anything else concerning you. The same can be said for Sartre, another returning character from the prequel.
That said, there’s barely anything else to go on right now. The game was just released in Early Access, with only one chapter of the main story available, excluding one chapter for each character’s individual storyline. Unfortunately, this makes it impossible to definitively answer the one question that may have been bugging you, or anyone for that matter:
Do you need to play the previous game in order to understand this one?
As of the current story content, though, the answer is a soft “no.” Sure, there are plenty of references to The NOexistenceN of you AND me at the beginning, but after that, most of the plot is understandable even without recalling anything else.
Very Early Access Storytelling
Story aside, let’s talk about the game itself… starting with the narrative.
It’s rough. And by that, I mean the experience swings between very satisfying highs and confusingly disappointing lows. Fortunately, most of those lows are problems that could be fixed fairly easily. The most obvious one? Translation issues.
Considering the game’s release was delayed by half an hour because of this, I’m not surprised they haven’t ironed everything out yet. That is, at the time of this review, The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox has writing that’s either inconsistent, poorly translated, or not translated at all.
You can see this in some NPC names, where a character is introduced with one name and later referred to by another. Pronouns jump around, and punctuation sometimes just disappears. Heck, sometimes even the displayed character and nametag isn’t matched with the correct one delivering the dialogue
The next issue is more straightforward. Untranslated text? That’s an Early Access problem. And there’s a lot of it. Too much, honestly, to fully enjoy an otherwise beautiful game. This is especially noticeable in the character creation section, which, to be fair, is basically useless right now since you wear a full suit of armor the entire time—and because that section only displays a jar of candy...
Anyway, then there are the chronological inconsistencies, too. I’m not sure whether this is intentional or not, though it’s probably not. Some scenarios are accessible even though they only make sense after future events have already happened. The clearest example is the slice-of-life events at your base, many of which assume you’ve already recruited the entire guild even if, in extreme cases, you haven’t hired anyone besides Lilith.
To be fair, the result is kind of funny. The experience goes from “yeah, we’re chums” to “let me introduce myself” just a few minutes later. This doesn’t really apply to characters like Fouco, though, since she, like Lilith, already knows you from before the story, or at least the disconnect is far less noticeable.
That said, there’s a real chance all this confusion is deliberate. The prologue shows your party being defeated by the current demon lord, while the opening of the main scenario has you and Lilith dragged off as corpses by body snatchers. Stuff happens, and the two of you are essentially revived and start over in a backwater town.
At first, it feels like everything up to that point follows a clear timeline. This is, again, reinforced by Fouco’s introduction. Unfortunately, several scenes contradict that idea, like Green acting unfamiliar with you later on despite being part of the party in the prologue. So, what’s going on?
Guess we’ll only find out the truth later.
The Fantasy Guildmaster Experience
The core gameplay loop, besides all the visual novel parts, involves managing your guild’s day-to-day activities. These include going out to take commissions, dispatching your allies for quests, training your own character, purchasing supplies, etc. There’s also a cooking minigame, chatting your party members up, investing in everybody’s stats, specializations, and all the usual fixings for a standard RPG experience.
Combat, meanwhile, uses a turn-based system very similar to Darkest Dungeon, where healing is scarce, positioning is important, and the secret to success is knowing what effects make the most impact in a fight.
Unfortunately, though, despite how enjoyable that all sounds, there are a lot of caveats to the whole thing. And once again, most of it can be attributed to its rough, Early Access state.
Released Too Early?
There are a lot of missing things here, which can, again, be attributed to it being in Early Access. For the visual novel side, there are three important features that must be implemented soon (or I’ll cry).
The first one is the text log feature. Basically, it’s a way to go back to previous dialogue just in case you missed any. For a visual novel to not have this is downright criminal, especially considering just how easy it is to skip text in this game. That’s because, for some reason, some dialogues immediately roll over to the next one when you left-click on the mouse—an action that usually just forces the text to display immediately—so it becomes a habit for faster readers.
The next very important yet missing feature is the ability to open the darn menu mid-scenario. Perhaps the developers made this a deliberate design choice in order to prevent save-scumming, but not even being able to at least have the convenience to properly close the game without resorting to keyboard shortcuts just because there’s an event unfolding is pretty insane.
Oh, and there’s no image gallery.
Lastly, there’s the option to automatically scroll through the dialogue. See, the vast majority of the lines in this game are voiced; a somewhat mixed bag, not because of the quality of the voice acting, but because, for some reason, the volume is all over the place. So, of course, there would be people like me who’d enjoy the more cinematic experience of having dialogue roll over automatically so it feels more natural.
Outside the visual novel half, the game’s faults are even more apparent. Buying equipment, for example, is completely broken. That is, even if you pay for it, it doesn’t appear in your inventory. Then there’s the issue with how money is displayed, because for some reason the value shown at your base and outside will sometimes bug out and not match.
There’s also no controller support, by the way—though that one’s much more understandable considering how many icons and buttons there are to interact with.
Visually Flat, Emotionally Intimate
Though I’m not even halfway through all of my complaints, I’ll leave it there for now. The remaining issues are far more minor anyway, like mid-combat dialogue boxes being too small to display all the text and similar annoyances.
That said, is there anything good about the game right now? Well, for one, a lot of effort clearly went into the artwork. Practically every scene, for example, has its own unique, fullscreen illustration, and sometimes even two. Yes, the colors may be flat, but that feels more like a deliberate part of the series’ aesthetic charm than a shortcoming.
In a way, the character designs even remind me of Black Rock Shooter, a franchise I absolutely adore.
The characters in The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox also have very distinct behavioral patterns, making them easy to recognize even without relying on silhouettes or voice acting. Aside from the protagonist, who’s understandably shallow due to their amnesia, of course.
Take Sartre, for example. She’s the sole research-obsessed party member and directly contrasts Lilith, who’s far more concerned with your well-being than anything else, or Fouco, who acts as more of a moral anchor for the group.
And speaking of Lilith, the first main chapter feels primarily designed to heavily imply the protagonist’s dependence on her. Sure, the game gives you the oddly confusing option to travel alone (why would you?), but if you take her along, nearly every scenario reinforces the idea that the two of you were more than just former party members.
Heck, she cuddles you constantly, and you end up holding her hand a lot, too.
It’s handled incredibly well, despite being anything but subtle. That blunt physical intimacy feels deliberate, much like the game’s confusing chronology, almost as if it’s meant to distract the reader. This is especially noticeable since the narrative strongly implies that Lilith holds the key to the protagonist’s lost past.
In a way, that seeds suspicion not just toward Lilith, but toward every other member of your guild as well. And in an episodic game like this, it’s the kind of setup that naturally encourages discussion about lore, motivations, and purpose, much like what The NOexistenceN of you AND me did before it, but with a different set of tools.
The real question now, though, is this: is the game actually worth looking forward to? I’ve gone on at length about its issues, after all, while only briefly touching on what it does right.
Well, yes, it is. I’d even argue it’s good enough to buy right now, despite the state it’s currently in. It’s cheap, the visual design is gorgeous, the mystery surrounding the protagonist and Lilith is very compelling, and if the quality of the prequel is anything to go by, there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic about where this game is headed.
You may also like...
The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox Product Information
|
|
| Title | THE NOEXISTENCEN OF MORPHEAN PARADOX: THE FOREST OF SILVER SHALLOTS |
|---|---|
| Release Date | January 19, 2026 |
| Developer | 0x0Real Studio |
| Publisher | Nino Games |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Visual Novel, RPG, Adventure |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | The NOexistenceN of Morphean Paradox Official Website |
