Far below the surface of the planet is a secret. A place of limitless power. Those that seek to control such a utopia will soon bring an end to themselves.
Seeking an end to the troubles that plague him, PSI user MERIT journeys into the hallowed Orcus Dome in search of answers.
If the game is too difficult for you, you can play in 'Wuss mode' for a far more sombre gaming experience.
Meritous is a cross between a top-view dungeon crawler and a bullet-hell shoot-em-up. In it, you control main character Merit, who travels through an enormous 3000-room labyrinth, the Orcus Dome, in order to find three artifacts called the PSI Keys, and restore them to their proper locations.
Although enemies fire copious amounts of bullets at you, you don't shoot back- instead, you have an attack called a PSI Circuit, which you charge up to unleash a shockwave that hits enemies and nullifies their shots.
As you charge up the PSI Circuit, target reticules appear on nearby enemies, the circle indicating they're in range, and the cross indicating you've charged up enough to damage or kill them.
You can't just use the PSI Circuit as often as you want, though. After releasing it, there's a cooldown time before you can charge up again, and the longer you charge up, the longer you have to wait.
Destroyed enemies leave behind PSI crystals you can use to upgrade three facets of your PSI Circuit- Circuit Charge (charge up faster), Circuit Refill (less cooldown time), and Reflect Shields.
When you have at least one level in Shields, a barrier is projected around Merit, which will deflect one bullet per shield level, before having to regenerate. As you upgrade Shields, the barrier becomes bigger, then shows multiple layers as it gets stronger.
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3DSX Users: Currently, the 3DSX build needs to utilize a large app installed on your 3ds. If you have used any of the similarly large RetroArch emulators or ScummVM 3ds, you have nothing to worry about. The easiest target to use is the Youtube app, so if you have that installed, you're ready to go.
CIA Users: You will first need a DSP dump on your SD card. This is a one-time process and is needed for all homebrew CIAs that use DSP audio. The source code of my port is on my github (https://github.com/nop90/Meritous-3ds). The compiled game (3dsx and CIA format) is released on github (https://github.com/nop90/Meritous-3ds/releases).
Credits: The original source is by Lancer-X/ASCEAI (http://www.asceai.net/meritous/) The 3ds port is based on the code of the dingoo port by 31, that has resized screen to 320x240 This game uses the SDL 1.2 library for 3ds
Changelog
Ver. 1.4-1 (19 Aug 2017) - Other minor tunings
Ver. 1.4 (12 Aug 2017) - Fixed Endings and Credits text wrap - Tuned maps scolling - Compiled with fixed SDL lib that solves random missing sound starting the game (CIA format only)
Ver. 1.3 (29 May 2017) - Fixed dialogues text shown entering in boss rooms
Ver. 1.2c (22 March 2017) - Released another new build using the last version of SDL lib. Solved closing the game fom home menu and some problems of GPU freeze
Ver. 1.2 (22 March 2017) - Released a new build using a fixed version of SDL lib that solves the screen flickering
Ver. 1.1 (05 March 2017) - Using 400x240 resolution instead of 320x240 stretched (thanks to @asiekierka) - Fixed some bugs
Ver. 1.0a (26 February 2017) - Added CIA format
Ver. 1.0 (26 February 2017) - First reelase in 3dsx format
Installation
In the zip there is a folder with the 3dsx, smdh and the xml (for target title selection) files inside, to be used with a homebrew launcher.
The CIA file is to be installed with FBI. To download and install the CIA with FBI you can use the QR code below.
All the resources are included in the executable using romfs.
The game creates a Meritous subfolder inside the 3ds folder if doesn't exist. Here will be stored the gamesave. QR code for FBI
Meritous_v1.4.1.png (Click to enlarge)
Commands
- D-pad: Move - A: Select / use PSI - B: Activate tiles - X: Show artifacts - Y: Show shield meters - L: Open Help - R: Open map - Select: Exit - Start: Pause
Known Bugs
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To Do List