Game: The Merlies
Genre: Adventure, Indie
System:Â Steam (Windows)
Developers | Publishers: Darjeeling, Blue Ramen, ARTE France |ARTE France, GCORES PUBLISHING
Steam Deck: Verified
Controller Support:Â Yes
Price: US $TBC | UK £TBC | EU € TBC
Release Date: September 29th, 2026
A review code was provided; many thanks to Big Games Machine.
The Merlies is a 2026 platformer adventure game developed by Darjeeling, Blue Ramen, and ARTE France and released by ARTE France and GCORES PUBLISHING.
The Premise of The Merlies
In The Merlies, we play as a flock of tiny birds trying to find a new home in a cute post-apocalyptic world, filled with the remains of a long-forgotten civilization. As we explore, we find more Merlies to join our flock and collect strange artifacts for our nest.
Gameplay
A huge storm has hit the Merlies’ home, a community of tiny birds. It has destroyed their home and scattered them all over the place. Your job is to find all the Merlies and help them find a new, secure home. To do that, we get to explore a colorful 2D universe, full of secrets and hidden passages. Some of the birds we find will join us on our travels, while others will go straight to our Nest.
The Merlies is a game rooted in exploration – there is no violence in this game and no sneaking around. Still, there are obstacles to overcome- every thorn, every rock, and every tree will be something we will need to find a way around. The numerous passages and paths turn the world of the Merlies into a true labyrinth, and it’s easy to lose a Merlie if we are not careful.
While exploring, we will encounter the remains of a long-gone civilization. We will find a lot of scraps and junk, which our Merlies will treasure and use for their village. The scraps are varied, from broken rulers to rusty music boxes and everything in between. The chosen items also have a whimsical quality, not only because of their simplicity and obvious connection to the human race, but also because of the obvious size difference between everyday objects and our tiny little Merlies.
The Merlies have an element of platformer puzzle games. Our Merlies each have special abilities, and there’s an obvious advantage to having more of them. We can stack, divide, and rearrange them as we want. We can stack several Merlies on top of each other, have the lower Merlies launch the top one to reach a higher place, and then help the others up. We can also split the group into smaller ones and command them to do different tasks almost simultaneously.
While exploring, we find a lot of junk to build and develop the nest. Developing the Nest is the next big goal of the game. The items we secure during our travels will meet the requirements to unlock specific buildings. Once again, The Merlies can be a very poetic game – we will get a workshop, but also a place to launch lanterns so that other Merlies can find us as well.
While the game supports a gamepad, I used my keyboard, and everything worked perfectly. The game is very responsive, and the controls are mostly intuitive. I really liked the sounds the birds make, the chirping to collect them all in one place. The game’s narrator is fully voiced, while the Merlies communicate with chirps and subtitles. I think this works well within the story, and I liked it better than having the Merlies voice-acted as well.
The World of The Merlies
The Merlies is a game based on an idea by Cosmografik, creator of Type: Rider and Vandals. Visually, it was inspired by graphic novels and children’s books. In a way, it reminded me strongly of the two Planet of Lana games, but without the added stress of something hunting me throughout the game. I really liked the laid-back gameplay and the Merlies themselves, of course.
There’s something charming about tiny birds (with hats) climbing electric cables and fallen billboards, chirping at each other, or jumping on mushrooms. The game also carries a recycling message, repurposing everyday objects and making homes out of old shoes, lamps, and so on. The game sits firmly in the Solarpunk genre: we have a post-apocalyptic world, but everything is bright and calming, and nature itself is recovering.
Some Other Things
The Merlies has the usual audio and video settings. The game also has Steam achievements but no trading cards yet.
Conclusion
Normally I don’t like platformer puzzles, but I loved this one. I normally struggle with the platforming part, but this time the developers have made even the dreaded double jump quite doable, even for people not fond of platformers. The lack of timers and enemies, the calm visuals and soundtrack, and the very cute tiny birds make The Merlies one of the very best games to add to your backlog this Fall.
 Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up: 
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