The Merry Fairy

[b]The Merry Fairy[/b] is a lovely little fairy cottage simulator/idler with cozy scrapbooking and zero challenge or obstacles. As an urbanite fueled by stress and inflammation, I picked it up at a friend's insistence… and then set it aside because what does "inner peace" even mean? Fast-forward two months or so, and with everything happening in my life and the world, I've been emotionally messy. Constantly spiraling. Long story short, I finally queued up [b]The Merry Fairy[/b]. Four days later, I feel… centered? [strike]And like maybe there's a reason why every psych prof and therapist I've ever talked to recommends journaling?[/strike] This isn't a substitute for therapy, and it's not really a game. It [i]is[/i] a space to breathe. To gaze out the window at nature and ambient weather (which must be selected before "starting your day"). To collect stickers by clicking through [i][b][u]everything[/u][/b][/i] at the titular Fairy's desk. To soak up soothing harp and Celtic radio. To enjoy the world's most subtle and inobtrusive pomodoro timer. To jot down your thoughts, create art using intuitive tools and all the bits you've collected, and just… be. It's also a very personal experience. The dev, "Laura Fae," freely shares her artwork, voice, and philosophies while you settle into this fantastical world inspired by the gorgeous wilderness of Kinnekulle in Sweden. All artwork is lovingly hand-crafted with ink, aquarelle (a type of watercolor I'd never heard of), Illustrator, old-fashioned camera, and any other medium a forest fairy can play with. She was kind enough to chat with me a bit, and shared that her inspiration was a combination of creating a safe space and encouraging journaling as a means of self-expression, even when words are failing you. In my opinion, she more than succeeded on both counts. [b]The Merry Fairy[/b] still receives regular updates, so I know it will be just as wonderful the next time I have a crisis; however, the soundtrack is a little too relaxing for my average workday, and I'm still not sure what journaling is or if I'm doing it right. I don't recommend this if you're looking to explore the wilds, or if your favorite part of [i][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2303350/Sticky_Business/?curator_clanid=45365863]Sticky Business[/url][/i] was time/space management. I [i]do[/i] heartily recommend this if you feel overwhelmed in general, or want some extra chamomile with your chamomile tea, or enjoy zero-stakes creativity. This is basically the glamping spacation we all secretly long for. [i]Treefrog ribbited at me to buy this, so check out their [url=https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199834503393/recommended/2364180/]review[/url]. The lovely Amjara summarizes settings and offers pro tips [url=https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198018894642/recommended/2364180/]in her review[/url]. BohoLibra talks about the game's performance on handheld and the dev's charity donations [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/BohoLibra/recommended/2364180/]here[/url].[/i] [quote][b]Follow [u][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45365863/]Eekz Today[/url][/u] for more crafting, life sim, management, strategy, and story-rich recommendations.[/b][/quote] [quote][b]Check out [u][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]IndieGems[/url][/u] for more detailed reviews and the best of indie gaming, or subscribe on [url=https://www.youtube.com/@IndieGems2]YouTube[/url]![/b][/quote]

🌿✨ The Merry Fairy ✨🌿 The Merry Fairy had been sitting on my wishlist for a while, so finding it at such a good price felt super nice. The moment you open the game, it already wraps you up in warmth and cozyyyy! The main menu alone sets the mood! it feels like a gentle “welcome to the fairy garden” before you even start the game completly. You get to choose the weather right away based on your mood, and my absolute favorite is the slow, peaceful rain. It instantly make me feel calm. You are welcomed into a tiny cottage style cabin, and I completely fell in love with it. Its cozy in that quiet, comforting way! You can turn the radio on or off, change the music whenever you like, and the songs just fit the whole theme perfectly! One of the best features is the little scrapbook ofc! You can decorate it with stickers you find all around the cabin (even in the settings and credits menus which is such a fun surprise) There are flowers, cute quotes, and other many tiny details to collect. But what makes it perefect for me specially, is that you can also write your own text, choose the font, and change the colors. You can turn it into a cozy decoration, a to-do list, a journal, or even a little diary just for yourself. And! every day you receive a gentle, supportive letter. it is a small little detail, but it adds so much warmth and sweetness to the game. Overall, The Merry Fairy is not demanding at all, its gentle, calm, comforting, and perfect for me in any shape of form, since i love the aesthetic and making lists, quotes and decorate everything (specially with stickers) Its the kind of game you return to when you want to slow down for a little while. 🌧️🕯️🍄

This is a lovely nature and magical themed... I'm not sure what to call it really. An environment for scrapbooking and contemplation? If you're considering this mainly as a straightforward productivity tool then you'd probably be disappointed. It has a few such traits, like lists and the offer of a gentle and supportive companion every 30 minutes. But Spirit City and others are a lot better if you're looking for easy access and structure. I also don't think a full-featured productivity tool would fit so well into The Merry Fairy's whimsical little world. Personally, I'm mostly here for the old-fashioned cottage aesthetics, having a calming place to escape to, and because I found playing around with the decorations in the demo surprisingly inspiring. There honestly doesn't seem to be that much yet. You can choose between 5 (?) kinds of weather each time you enter. You can examine a couple of things on the only screen we'll get besides the welcome outside - a good old wooden desk inside the cottage. You get kind letters and visits with life advice and Fairyland lore. You can gather decorations all over the place and rearrange them in your scrapbook with some basic editing. There are several books with very promising titles, but only a few pages filled out. There are abundant typos, but I've started to see them as part of the charm and the personal atmosphere (: If the Fairy's track record with the demo is any indication then we can look forward to responsiveness to feedback and plenty of updates. This feels like the beginning of a journey you can go on together with the dev, err, Fairy. Not a journey into enchanted woods (however tempting the ones around the cottage may look) but you know, into yourself and all that. * * * If you like chill and story-driven games, check out my curator [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35872486]Peaceful Adventures and Stories[/url]. You're also welcome to join the [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/chilladventures]group[/url].

The Merry Fairy had been sitting on my wishlist for a little while. Last night, I saw the dev had posted an update, and as I was reading through the delightful recent list of additions (such a marvelous writing style!), I got to the end of the update, where they mentioned donating all of their October profits ($150) to The Jane Goodall Foundation, in honor of Dr. Goodall’s recent passing. This really touched my soul, and I immediately purchased The Merry Fairy to support such kind devs. They’re really just the sweetest, most genuine; full of positive energy and beautiful magic. :) I am mostly a handheld gamer, so I wasn’t sure if The Merry Fairy would work on my Legion Go (which is running SteamOS, and controls almost exactly the same way as my Steam Deck). I’m happy to report that The Merry Fairy runs beautifully on a handheld! Now, the default control scheme is keyboard and mouse, so you will need to rely mostly upon trackpads. The Legion has a singular micro trackpad (presumably intended for use in a pinch). So, navigating everything with that tiny trackpad does result in … a tiny cramp. :D But, I expect that the larger dual Steam Deck trackpads would make the experience comfier, so good news for Deckers. :) I have found that some things are actually accessible via the left joystick (such as navigating decorations to clip within the books), which does help. I haven’t journaled much yet, but from what I’ve tried out, it’s doable with the default layout. Also, I recommend that—if you’re on a handheld—you switch to Windowed Mode and the 1920 x 1080 resolution. Otherwise, part of the screen image is cut off on either end. The artwork is too pretty to miss even a bit of it! Okay, all of that out of the way: THIS GAME IS MAGIC!!! I’d think of this as a self-care application. The artwork and ambiance are a warm hug, just lovely. I actually do live in a cabin in the woods (within a wildlife sanctuary) in real life, and I have never before seen a “game” so perfectly capture the essence of my own nature-centric lifestyle of solitude and peace. The radio may be my favorite part of The Merry Fairy (so far), with a variety of GORGEOUS music to complement the different weather options; the Celtic station (Chalmeris) is my fave! The game vibe isn’t preachy. All of the ideas and reminders are gentle, encouraging, and sprinkled here and there with educational moments rooted in actual philosophy (I used to be a philosophy professor). Everything feels genuine and thoughtful, like the devs truly care about ME. About YOU. It’s a safe space to be yourself. It’s just such a project stuffed to the brim with love, joy, and magical moments. If you’re into (or considering getting into) journaling or scrapbooking, this is a beautiful way to get started. Or you can use the journal for task lists … or “Quest Lists” as the dev magically phrased it! It’s all approachable, nothing overwhelming. The available accoutrements are thoughtfully designed, with pretty earth and watercolor inspirations to clip and use within your journal. Finding and clipping things to put into your journal//scrapbook is clearly intended to be a meditative experience in itself. The Merry Fairy doesn’t provide you a catalogue of “stickers.” Rather, you are meant to seek out and mindfully select the decorations from within the other books in the game. Anything you see within the books, you can clip and collect for your scrapbooking. I didn’t expect this, but I like it. It’s an exercise in intentionality, I think, and slows one down to thoughtfully peruse and discover. This is a dev and a game who deserves support if I have ever seen one. 10/10 experience all-around.

I did NOT think I’d end up enjoying or even buy and play a scrapbooking game, but here we are haha. My wife basically dragged me into playing The Merry Fairy with her / next to her.. and at first I thought it would just be flowers everywhere and “not really my thing.” But I was genuinely surprised by how relaxing and creative this is. The music is especially great! also the game doesn’t force you into one style. You can make nature stuff, flowers? or completely random stuff if you want. Even memes, hahah. I started making history-themed scrapbook pages and ended up spending way too much time trying to make a mongolian styled page look perfect. And my wife was even proud of me 😎 So yeah guys… turns out scrapbooking isn’t just flowers and glitter. Apparently it’s also for dudes making medieval war layouts at 1 AM

The setting was really cute. I was so excited for it and in the introduction it tells you this is a place of peace and there's nothing you need to do but that's a lie. I was hoping to jump right into decorating and writing but there were no stickers etc. I had to click on things and go hunt for them. There's limited color options for font and you can't edit something once it's been typed. The set up was sooo cute I'm really sad about how stressful the experience turned out to be :(

I've been searching everywhere for something like this. For years, I have spent a ton of money on subscriptions to online journals trying to find the right one for me where I would want to continue writing in it. None of them truly worked. I enjoy writing with paper and pen but slowly started finding that enjoyable due to how slow I am at writing traditionally. I found that typing was the best way to get my thoughts out quickly without my hands being bothered. However, word documents were daunting and you can only do so much with Canva. There is just too much going on. When I found Merry Fairy I was hooked for easily almost 2 hrs. Pros: == - Some of the best music I've every heard for a productivity space - Music - though there isn't too much there is enough and its catchy it's not slow lo-fi - There is a 30 min productivity timer - There is so much you can do in terms of decorating and there is freedom to create and place decor freely in the journal - I love clicking around and finding hidden elements everywhere to use in my journal - There is a letter it seems everyday that you log into the game with words of wisdom and food for thought to help w/ journaling. == Cons (they aren't too bothersome but some might want to take everything into consideration): == - The lack of music options - The lack of fonts, I wish there were more options in general especially "handwritten" fonts - The timer is every 30 minutes it would've been nice to have lower timing options as well - It's really weird actually but when you save all 10 pages it saves as an HTML web page with all your entries that you can scroll through. I honestly would've preferred JPEG, PNG, PDF, or .doc its strange that HTML was what was chosen when saving the entries. The cons aren't a HUGE deal breaker for me as I love the application in general, however, they are minor things that I felt I needed to point out. OVERALL though! I love this application I've been looking for something like this for a long time where I just pay once and everything is included. Thank you for creating something like this for a writer like myself this is a dream, between the distraction free and gorgeously illustrated environment, to the freedom of creativity this is AMAZING!

The Merry Fairy doesn't demand anything from you. Just be there. You can look at that amazing cabin. You can get the weather adjusted to your mood. You can listen to super chill music made by real [strike]hum[/strike]... magical creatures. You can talk to a cheeky cat and other friends. You can poke around the nostalgic desk. You can collect nice things. You can create something new with them. You can write down the thoughts you get while hanging out in the fairy cabin. All for the price of a couple of physical scrapbooking supplies that wouldn't include a lovely view and soundscape. [i]More cozy and combat-free recommendations? > [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45583336/]Treefrog wants to chill[/url] < [/i]

Tiny cozy fairy dream! <3 The Merry Fairy feels like stepping into a warm little magical cottage where everything is peaceful and pretty! I loved decorating, journaling, and just changing the music to match the mood it’s sooo relaxing There’s not really much gameplay, but that’s kind of the charm! It’s just you, your creativity, and cozy vibes

Nice environment for journaling, scrapbooking, or just taking a break. The graphics are lovely and the music is calming. Great if you’re looking for something quiet and creative.