Geneforge 1 - Mutagen

Geneforge 1 - Mutagen is Spiderweb Software's total remaster of their 2001 cult-classic Geneforge, the first installment of one of the studio's most distinctive series. You play as a Shaper — a wizard whose particular magical specialty is creating life. Tools, traps, armies, beasts: you summon them into existence and they obey, mostly. That's the design contract of Shaper society.

The protagonist is stranded on a forbidden island full of the powerful, lost secrets of the Shapers' own history. Invaders are also on the island, racing you to claim that knowledge. The game's openness is the whole point — you can fight every faction or join any of them, crush enemies with raw magic and custom-bred mutant pets or solve the entire campaign through trickery, diplomacy and stealth without attacking anyone directly. You can defeat the final boss, or switch sides and join him. Multiple radically different endings reflect what you actually did with the freedom you were given.

The scope is unusually generous: over 80 zones to explore, 50+ hours of gameplay, dozens of skills and abilities, a wide pet roster to design and breed, treasures and faction quests dense enough to support multiple full playthroughs. The Mutagen remaster adds new areas, quests, characters and dialogue on top of the original content, redoes the interface and core systems, and reworks the underlying engine to bring the game into the modern era while preserving the open-ended design philosophy that gave the original its devoted following.