Mervils: A VR Adventure is a charming little game. When we first previewed it on the HTC Vive, it reminded us of a slightly more open-ended, admittedly less polished, version of Lucky’s Tale [Review: 9/10]. At its core, Mervils is a platformer with adventure, action, and RPG elements sprinkled on top.
It’s already out for Vive and Rift, but now developer VitruviusVR has announced it’s coming to PlayStation VR as well on February 21st, 2017.
This is an indie game through and through. Mechanically it’s similar in concept to the excellent, but painfully short, Robot Rescue game from Sony’s free Playroom VR compilation, but you won’t get the same production values here. Many textures feel flat, character designs are a bit bland, and some of the controls are a little floaty. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a serviceable option for a genre that’s criminally underrepresented in the VR space right now.
After playing great entries like Lucky’s Tale and Robot Rescue, 3D platformers clearly have potential in the immersive space and it’s encouraging to see fledgling studios like this embracing the medium by adapting a beloved genre for VR headsets.
With over six hours of content spread across five unique worlds with several items to retrieve and upgrade over the course of the adventure, it should scratch a very specific itch for fans of old-school 3D platformer collectathon games. If you have fond memories of playing Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Jak & Daxter, Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet & Clank, and other similar adventures, then this should be right up your alley as long as you don’t go in expecting a AAA-quality masterpiece.
Mervils: A VR Adventure is currently slated for release on PS4 specifically for PlayStation VR through PSN on February 21st, 2017. VitruviusVR is aiming for a price point of $19.99 — the same as on Steam — but Sony has not yet confirmed that price as of the time of this publication.
