The Download Munkey : Finder of Things …

Read about Meritous over at the excellent PlayThisThing blog quite a while back. Unfortunately, I’m not sure whether the guys at PlayThisThing actually recommend it since some of the stuff written there seems pretty ambiguous at times. Maybe my impressions below will help you decide

In Meritous, you are psionic user MERIT adventuring into the Orctus Dome to set things right. You’s armed with only an area attack which conveniently fries the brains of any creature within a certain radius, the lethality and range of the attack being directly proportional to the length of time spent charging your PSI circuit by holding down the Space. Your psionic attack is also a defensive skill as it can also clear most enemy projectiles within the same radius when discharged (after releasing the Space).

Initially you will encounter weak and underpowered beetle-like things but as you progress, more formidable foes start to appear like laser-firing spiders which require quite a significant PSI charge to kill as well as spiky creatures which quickly release a hail of projectiles not alike bullet hell shoot-em ups .

While attacking single enemies is simply a charge-and-release affair, you can choose to tackle groups of monsters in multiple ways such as aggressively zigzagging closer towards the enemies and release a series of short-ranged psionic blasts or evade enemy projectiles or even backing out into a previously cleared room while charging up to the maximum amount required to kill every single moving creature with a single shot

To aid you in your quest, MERIT has three upgradable skills, Reflect Shield which conjures a shield to absorb a certain number of hits before your vitality is affected, Circuit Charge which increases the damage of your attacks and Circuit Refill which reduces the cooldown period after each attack during which you’re dependent on only your shield and reflexes to defend against counterattacks from the remaining enemies. All skills are upgradable with crystals that you collect from fallen foes.

Your playing style therefore depends on your skill levels, the type and number of monsters you’re facing and even the size of the current room since smaller rooms allow for less room to maneuver. The visual cues in this game are fantastic and allow you to quickly access the tactical situation at hand and react accordingly.

• When you charge your PSI bar, monsters are in range are marked with a circle around them and those which will be wounded/killed by that particular amount of charge are marked with an additional cross.
• Rooms are colour coded by their threat level - empty rooms in serene dark or light blue and heavily defended rooms in progresively warmer colours like magenta or in the cases of treasure rooms, ruby red.

The play experience is wonderfully simple to pick up thanks to cues and features like the essential map and an ingenious Crystal Magnet Device which teleports all uncollected crystals directly into the current room. Frees up the time trying to pick up every crystal to explore more rooms

If you’re stuck, there’s always the Online Help which can be accessed by pressing H in-game. Right now, I haven’t even exactly figured out the exact objectives in Meritous since I’m having lots of fun just by exploring the 3000 rooms (currently explored 822 - 27.4%) and killing monsters (current tally - 4143 out of 10723 - 38.6%)

Download and play Meritous.

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