3000 Rooms. 10723 Monsters. One PSI-gifted fellow to beat the crap out of them. Meritous (via Download Monkey) is an excellent fast paced dungeon crawler in which the player takes the role of the PSI-gifted Merit whose task is to investigate the ancient underground shrine Orcus Dome.
The player’s only defense against the monster hordes is his PSI power which attacks the minds of the monsters directly. The PSI power can be charged with the space bar. The longer the player presses the space bar the stronger and far reaching the PSI attack will be.
Movement is done with the arrow keys and enter is used to confirm dialogs or purchase upgrades in the home base. The key element of mastering the game is to dodge bullets as long as you can while charging your PSI power in the meantime.
Once released it will not only attack the monsters in reach but will also have the effect that the bullets will vanish. After that the character needs a short rest before he can charge his PSI Power anew to attack the monsters that have not died already from the first blast.
The rest between charges is defined by the strength of a charge. If you charge it for a long time the rest will also be longer until you can charge the power again. This in combination with the fact that you can charge the power before moving into a room with monsters creates some very interesting strategic decisions.
Every eliminated monster leaves so called PSI crystals behind that the player can pickup to improve three PSI abilities.
Circuit Charge increases the power of the attacks, Circuit Refill the time before the power can be charged anew and Reflect Shield which acts as a shield that has to be penetrated before the player can be hit by the monsters.
The upgrades become more powerful but do cost more PSI crystals as well.
Talking about monsters. Several different kinds of monsters exist in the game. You will encounter weak ones in the beginning that do not shot many bullets. This will change over time with monsters that can take several massive hits and fire insane amounts of bullets in your direction. They even follow you in adjacent rooms.
Monsters that are in reach and will be hit by your PSI Attack are marked with a circle which makes it easier for the player to release the attack in the right moment.
The progress can be recorded in the home base but also in several rooms throughout the game. You will also find rooms that function as a temporary home base so that you do not have to start over in the initial base in case you die.
Some rooms use a different color scheme than the rest. These are usually heavily defended or treasure rooms. You will be up for a fight there.
Meritous is a wonderful game. It’s small, easy to play and keeps the player entertained for a long time.
Ha… seems that you haven’t been playing for to long
I think my current status is ~800 rooms cleared and ~3500 enemies down. Haven’t been playing a lot of Meritious these few weeks, since there’s tons of great indie games being recommended all over the web recently.
Well how long did it take you to get that far, the game is huge
I must have taken around 20 hours - trying to get a better grasp of the game mechanics before writing about it. I think I added another 100+ rooms + 500 enemies to the score while trying to find a big treasure room for a screenshot.