Meritous

About the game

Meritous drops you into the Orcus Dome, an ancient shrine buried far below the surface of a planet. You are Merit, a user of psychic power who has warped into the dome to find out why it began to behave strangely, and what you meet there is hostile: shadowy creatures drift through room after room, and a handful of guardians wait further in. The dome is generated fresh for every game, around three thousand rooms linked by short corridors, so there is no map to memorise and every run is a different trip.

The only weapon you carry is your PSI circuit. Hold Space and it charges; let go and it unleashes the charge on the creatures around you, which crystallise and break into crystals you can pick up. While you charge, a circle appears over every enemy in range and a cross over the ones the current charge is strong enough to destroy, so you know when to release. The longer you charge, the longer the circuit takes to recover, which makes the fights a matter of timing. Spend the crystals at special tiles on the floor to raise how fast the circuit charges, how fast it refills and how many enemy bullets your shield can absorb. Other tiles record a checkpoint, save the game, pull loose crystals toward you or point to something useful to do next.

The result is a game that feels like a small, very focused dungeon crawler, with a pixel-art look in cool blue tones, chunky sound effects and a slow, steady build in power. Lancer-X made all of it, including the graphics, and the game has been looked after by volunteers since. If it is too harsh for you, there is a separate "Wuss mode" on the title screen with a gentler difficulty.

Playing it here

Click Play, then click once inside the game so it gets the keyboard. The first screen is a short logo; press Space or Enter to skip it. On the title screen, choose New Game (or Continue, once you have a saved game) with Up and Down and press Space. The game saves when you use a save tile (stand on it and press Enter) and keeps the file in this browser. This version runs without music: the original tracks come from third-party sources that cannot be redistributed, so there are only sound effects.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

Wait for the cross. A small charge destroys little. Hold Space until the cross appears over your target, then release; keeping the circuit full all the time is slow to recover from, so it is rarely a good idea.

Keep your three skills balanced. Charge, refill and shield each cost more crystals the higher they go, so raising them evenly is cheaper than maxing one. A shield is a must against the tougher creatures.

Use checkpoints. A checkpoint tile records you when you enter its room, and if you die it brings you back at the cost of some vitality. It also lets you warp between checkpoint tiles for free by pressing Enter.

Read the map. The Tab map shows what you have explored, and the compass tiles point toward what is left to do.

Credits and licence

Meritous was created by Lancer-X/ASCEAI (concept, design, graphics and programming), with sound effects from public-domain sources and fixes and an Android port by Sylvain Beucler. It is released under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later. For this site it is compiled to WebAssembly with a small compatibility layer for its old graphics library, and the music credits were removed because the music is not part of this version; the patch, the layer and the build script are published with the complete source of this build, linked from this page.