The Merlies

The Merlies is a clever concept and looks amazing. It is beautiful, joyful and whimsical and I will keep on playing as long as a bug doesn't make it completely impossible to proceed. And this is the problem... The game is full of bugs. The achievements won't work or half of them work. There are bugs that make the controller (or keyboard) input to not register and a complete pc reboot is needed. The grappling mechanic feels very off and sometimes doesn't work. In general the platforming feels a little clunky. The game at it's current state feels like early access and needs some serious optimizations and QoL improvements. I would avoid for now.

I love exploring the world as the Merlies! Basically, the idea is that your squad of tiny birds are exploring a metroidvania platforming world. And I do mean tiny: You'll find everyday objects much bigger than you, and you can repurpose them as buildings. You can rescue your fellow birds (Merlies). Each of them has their own specialty to add to your team. Most of them will return to home base where you can go make use of their specialty there, but four especially Merlies will have abilities that help you traverse the platforming obstacles and make you more agile. There is NO FIGHTING! The only way to get hurt is by touching thorns or polluted water. This is a GOOD thing, it allows this game to focus on what it does best instead of working in a combat system where it's not needed. There are many categories of collectables, and many ways to use them back at home base. I got 100% in under 11 hours. The map and fast travels are well-done useful tools for checking where one hasn't yet ventured, or collected stuff.

Lovely little platforming game with nice vibes, some tricky platforming puzzles, hidden treasures and a cute base building element. Thoroughly enjoyed it!

This game is such a delight!

I had a wonderful time with the game. It was fun, charming and genuinely relaxing. Thank you for creating such a lovely experience!

Always on a look out for metroidvanias without combat. This really scratches that itch. The core mechanic of controlling an individual unit of the group while the rest of them chaotically rubber-band behind you is a fresh take when so many games use the routine unlocks (double jump, dash, wall climb). Here, your birds can barely jump a foot off the ground, but they can hurl each other quite far into the air. Some times you need to split up the group, or juggle between the abilities of the different Merlies. When you split up the group you have to manually gather then back up, kind of pikmin style. On paper it sounds like it could be pretty clunky but overall the controls are actually pretty brisk and movement is fast. Other than lighting the balloons to unlock critical paths, the town building stuff is almost entirely for vibes. I think that you'll probably have a good idea by steam's 2-hour refund window if the games going to gel with you. That said, it does fill-out quite nicely later in the game in that classic metroidvania style.