Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Merlin’s Walls delivers a refreshingly tense puzzle experience by placing you in a series of labyrinthine mazes, each designed to test your spatial reasoning and speed. With only a limited amount of time to locate the exit in each of the sixteen uniquely crafted levels, the game rewards both careful planning and quick reflexes. The core loop of exploring corridors, identifying dead ends, and backtracking under pressure creates a constant feeling of urgency that keeps the adrenaline pumping.

Adding dynamite to your toolkit elevates the gameplay to a new strategic level. You’re able to find and use sticks of dynamite to blast through select walls, opening up hidden passages or shortening your route to the exit. Knowing when and where to deploy your explosives becomes an essential decision—waste your dynamite too early, and you may get locked out of crucial shortcuts; save it too long, and you might run out of time navigating a particularly convoluted section.

The game’s control scheme is straightforward, allowing you to move quickly through the maze and place dynamite with minimal menu navigation. However, mastering the precise timing and positioning for dynamite blasts takes practice, encouraging multiple playthroughs of each maze. Speedrunners will appreciate the depth of skill ceiling available here, while casual players can still enjoy the core challenge by methodically plotting their course.

Graphics

Merlin’s Walls sports a minimalist, top-down visual style that harkens back to classic arcade mazes but benefits from modern clarity and color palettes. Each wall, floor tile, and dynamite spark is clearly defined, ensuring that visual clutter never impedes your problem-solving. The mazes are designed with distinct themes—from mossy stone corridors to sleek metallic tunnels—which break up the monotony and provide subtle visual cues to help you memorize paths.

One of the most talked-about features is the game’s vertical orientation requirement. To play, you must either rotate your TV or monitor 90°, lay on your right side, or rig up a mirror arrangement so that the screen appears correctly oriented. While unconventional, this choice makes full use of the widescreen aspect ratio to display longer hallways and more intricate maze layouts without scaling down critical details.

Despite its simplicity, Merlin’s Walls uses color contrast and lighting effects to great effect. Dynamite fuses glow brightly against darker backgrounds, drawing your eye when you’re racing against the clock. Subtle ambient particle effects—like drifting motes of dust in abandoned corridors—add atmosphere without distracting from the core puzzle mechanics. The overall aesthetic is clean, purposeful, and surprisingly immersive given the abstract nature of the environments.

Story

While Merlin’s Walls is primarily a puzzle game, it weaves a light narrative thread that casts you as an apprentice trapped in the legendary wizard Merlin’s ever-shifting labyrinth. The story is conveyed through brief text interludes between mazes, each hinting at Merlin’s motives and the magical anomalies at play. Though not the game’s main focus, these snippets provide just enough context to imbue your journey with a sense of purpose.

The narrative pacing aligns with your progress through the sixteen mazes. As you advance, you uncover more of Merlin’s enigmatic designs: corridors that rearrange themselves, doors that only open with a well-placed explosion, and magical traps that test your resolve. The lore unfolds gradually, encouraging you to press forward not just for the next puzzle, but to unravel the mystery of why Merlin has placed you here in the first place.

Though there are no voiced characters or cutscenes, the minimal storytelling works in the game’s favor by keeping the emphasis squarely on the puzzles. If you’re seeking an epic saga, Merlin’s Walls may feel light on plot, but for players who enjoy piecing together lore from environmental clues and brief text logs, the game offers a satisfying, if subtle, narrative payoff.

Overall Experience

Merlin’s Walls stands out as a thoughtfully designed puzzle-maze hybrid that balances time pressure with strategic exploration. The unique TV-orientation requirement may initially strike some players as gimmicky, but it ultimately enhances the sense of immersion and makes the mazes feel more expansive. Once you adapt to the vertical setup, the gameplay flows smoothly and feels remarkably fresh.

The challenge curve is well-tuned, with early mazes offering gentle introductions to movement and basic dynamite usage, while later levels demand near-flawless execution and split-second decisions. This balance ensures that both novice puzzlers and seasoned speedrunners will find plenty to love. Multiplayer mode is absent, but the robust single-player campaign and the allure of besting your own completion times deliver solid replay value.

For anyone craving a brain-teasing adventure that marries classic maze exploration with modern design sensibilities, Merlin’s Walls is a compelling choice. Its distinctive presentation, combined with tight gameplay mechanics and a sprinkle of light storytelling, makes it a memorable outing for puzzle enthusiasts and adventurous gamers alike. Just be prepared to shift your screen—and your mindset—to fully appreciate the wizard’s fiendish creations.