The Merlies

Metroidvania Platformer & Village builder (indie)

The Merlies is a game developed by Darjeeling, to be published by Arte Interactive on PC and Switch. My mission lasted a little over 2 years, from January 2024 to February 2026.

Role: Game Writer / Narrative Designer

As a Writer and Narrative Designer, I was tasked with:

Designing and documenting Quests (golden path & side quests.)
Developing each character’s and each different tribe’s specificities in connexion to the game themes and story.
Collaborating with Game Design and Level Design to create unique recruitment settings for each recruitable character, in connexion with their characterization and gameplay roles.
Developing and iterating on the game world building to convey recent and ancient history through environmental storytelling.
Writing all the dialogue (main characters + NPC)
Writing most of the player-facing terms (names of collectibles, buildings, ingredients, display names for characters…) and the associated fluff text.
Writing and polishing cutscenes voice-over, collaborating with Art on storyboarding and composition.
Iterating on the story narrative beats.
Creating and maintaining design documentation and lore bible.
Setting specific vocabulary guidelines to help the players embrace the tiny character’s point of view on a big, vast world.
Playtesting numerous build iterations and working with Integration and Animation to polish the staging of each narrative movement.
Iterating on the dialog system in cooperation with Dev and maintaining documentation.

I deeply admire the dedication Florence put into finding the whimsical tone the game needed to shine. As a lead, I knew I could always count on them to be efficient and driven, and that they would always communicate their needs and their ideas while sensitive to the project’s constraints. As a teammate, I greatly relied on their feedback and their passion to guide my own work. The Merlies wouldn’t be the same without Florence.
—Raquel de Miranda, Lead Narrative Designer

Florence was autonomous with their tasks and a real pleasant colleague with a vision. My work as a lead mostly consisted of saving them time so they could focus on writing. I couldn’t have written like Florence. Every team should have a poet like them for game writing.
—Léonard Bertos, Lead Narrative Designer

Flo works with great passion and rigor, and it was a real pleasure to collaborate with them on Les Merlies. All their assignments were completed quickly and efficiently. They always manage to be creative while staying within the project scope, listen carefully to feedback and are open for discussion to ensure the best possible outcome. I highly recommend them.
—Thomas Sandmeier, Lead Game Designer