While there are a fair number of Metroidvania-style titles on the system, each having a varying balance between combat and exploration, I’ll admit that I believe The Merlies is the first I’ve encountered that has forgone combat completely. No doubt influenced by the cozy gaming bug that has been going around for the past few years, from the design of its pretty adorable bird-like characters to the pretty whimsical nature of the items they’ll be working to discover, collect, and make use of, it leans pretty heavily into more light-hearted theming.

Having had their home destroyed in a big storm, you and your friends have been dispersed in all directions. Determined to find and reunite them all, you’ll set out and begin exploring. Initially you’ll simply be finding a few friends to help out, but very soon you’ll have enough of you that you can begin recovering equipment that you can then use for your new collective home. As you accumulate more friends, and more materials for new facilities, some will stay behind to build up your new community, while others will help continue to explore.

All of this is quite nice and charming, but I just wish mechanically it all worked a bit more smoothly. While you’re at least not in a fight for your life, so the controls feeling a little loose and imprecise at times isn’t a huge deal, given the simplicity of the overall experience it’s also hard not to get stuck on areas that could have used more polish. My most common aggravation was with trying to get my pack to work together, with it being a little clunky sometimes getting everyone stacked onto each other to get to higher spots. But even some tasks that seem like they should be quite simple, like having your pack claim some new relic they find, feels needlessly complicated, which isn’t helped by the controls being a little dodgy as well. I really appreciate this being a more laid back experience, which feels pretty fresh, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t walk away from it wishing it could have been a little better executed.