The Merry Fairy News

Dear friend,

It is well known that fairies are one of the most shy and timid magical creatures out there. So it is with great unease that I confess, I have not been still even though I have been hiding from you...


I hesitate showing The Merry Fairy at real life events. To be properly experienced, my enchanted cottage requires a calm and silent surrounding. However, I decided to participate at Kinnekulle Vårrundan, because this event is extra special. During the first weekend of May, all artisans around Fairyland are invited to open the doors to their workshops and many local folk come to experience two days of creativity, ingenuity and lots of great fika. What better way to showcase my little magical cottage?



If you are one of the magical creatures that came to meet me, Hi there! I hoped a handful of people might come, but no more than five or so. And yet as the sun caressed the part of Fairyland that I call the Wizards Meadow, I received visit after visit and filled my heart with delight and inspiration as I met so many creative, curious, ingenious kindred spirits! I hope you will consider contacting me. Right here on Steam is a great place and it helps me a lot, but any other way is great, too. I even fixed the links on my website, www.TheMerryFairy.se, and started to draft a kind of a very fairylike social media activity plan!


Meanwhile in the digital realm, more magic is happening! This Merry Fairy is very happy to partake in Indie Assemble, a global celebration of Indie Games curated with a lot of care and love by Excalibur.



Indie Assemble features over 1,000 indie games from a wide variety of genres, made by over 600 game studios from no less that 63 countries around the world. “The interest shown in Indie Assemble has been astounding” says Giorgio Catania, Founder of Excaliber and curator of the initiative. “I wasn’t expecting such a massive response, but once word spread through the channels frequented by international indie developers, participation requests started pouring in nonstop. And since Excaliber’s mission is to foster the growth of the video game industry, with a particular focus on the indie scene, expanding the reach of the promotion as much as possible was a natural and spontaneous choice. Because, as I have learned from my many years of experience in the field, there is strength in unity.”
Thank you so very much, Giorgio, for organizing this beautiful and very helpful event!


With so much going on socially, it almost feels like Vårrundan and Indie Assemble conspire to save the poor little bugs that found a nice and warm home in my latest build. I can, however, happily report that I did find quite a few of them, and guided them gently outside my cottage, where they belong.
I am planning one last big update for The Merry Fairy Demo, before I focus my full and undivided attention towards the full game. The Demo update's greatest focus is on performance optimisation and bug fixing, but it does carry a bit of shiny new features and content as well.

What, the public demo version is #35?!!!

It's been a while since I gave the public version a try! Meanwhile, besides a lot of optimisation, stuff moved around a little bit in the cottage, fresh content appeared in the guestbook and the Decoration pages gained a bunch of extra buttons.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I still seek magical creatures to help me test the last Demo update. If this is you, please reach out right here on Steam, or on my Discord server.

Thank you for reading this! 🌸🌸🌸

Dear friend,

Some time ago I wrote a press release to announce the release date for The Merry Fairy. But the thought of writing about it here did not cross my mind. I simply made the date available in the store front. For those of you who missed the tiny news, know this:

I plan to launch The Merry Fairy on July 9, 2025. The full game will cost USD/ EUR 9.99.



I am turning 44 years old on July 9, 2025. For most of my life, I did not celebrate my birthday and did my best to think of this date as something unimportant. It was a subconscious (or perhaps semi conscious) attempt to make myself small, to pretend that my existence matters little and to instil in myself some crocked pride and joy in my selflessness, as if my exercise in taking as little space as possible is something noble and worthy of love.

I feel you might recognise the feeling.

But somewhere down the adventurous road of my life, I learned that all life matters. There is nothing noble in putting myself down - in fact, the very opposite is true. If I cannot celebrate my own existence, what trust can I have in my ability to celebrate any life at all?

This flipped a switch in me and about two years ago, I started to create the best birthday gift I can think of, for myself: The Merry Fairy. I knew I'd launch this game on July 9th, I knew I am starved of birthday celebrations so I made myself a promise that I will give myself this gift as fast as I can, and I knew I'd want to price it at 9.99. Coincidentally, number 9 fits well in many more pragmatic ways, though I cannot help myself dreaming that the Universe spawned me with a key to my own heart and self love all along.

So now you know: The Merry Fairy is a very personal gift to myself. It will come on my birthday and it will offer precisely what I desire: a mirror that can show me just how magical I am. A window into my own heart. A fairytale space that is quiet and safe, where I may find my joy by playing and exploring my creativity; where I may cry, allowing my shadows to dissipate into the light of these digital pages, imprinting my wisdom as they melt away; where I may just be, for it is and has always been enough.

Curiously enough, though certainly not unexpected, the more I pour my soul into The Merry Fairy, the more the magic of The Merry Fairy finds its way into my regular, every day life.



The fact that this gift I am building for myself can be shared with you is, perhaps, my most favourite feature. Welcome into my world, my friend!


Since I will launch The Merry Fairy on July 9th, I will take part in the June edition of Steam Next Fest. These kind of events are notorious for launching demos, but my demo has been out and about for a while, and I have been updating it on a fairly regular basis. I am preparing one last demo update which I plan to launch for Steam Next Fest. This update will contain:

• A much improved Decorations page in the journal, where you can sort the stickers you have gathered based on size and category
  
• The Decoration page will also contain a Clear All button, just in case you'd like to start over (I often do)
  
• A new page in the Guestbook, with brand new decorative and contemplative content
  
• A handful of visual improvements in the game scene
  
• A bunch of bug fixes
  
• A massive effort to improve the overall performance of the demo
  

I seek help!

If you find yourself having a few minutes to spare, I'd love some extra hands to test all these new features and fixes before I launch the latest demo version publicly. I can be reached via Steam (I prepared a topic on the forum so that you can easily express your interest) or Discord (I made a server for The Merry Fairy right here).

Dear friend,

Tomorrow, March 5th, at 12 PM PT (noon)/ 8 PM GMT, IGN will host the Dames4Games Spring 2025 Showcase on their Twitch and YouTube channels. The event selected 25 games that will be introduced by the Dames4Games teams and awesome women streamers, and it is with great joy that I can tell you: The Merry Fairy is one of those games! ✩♬₊˚.🎧⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Sometimes during the IGN stream, two minutes will be dedicated to playing a developer spotlight that I have prepared, which will look like this:



I have not allowed my heart to get too excited about this event - I just did the best I could with this spotlight, dealing with the frustration of old hardware. While making these preparations, what I encountered was a super awesome community, an insanely talented and efficient Dames4Games team 𓆩♡𓆪, and awesome fellow indiedevs who are making precisely the games I want to play! And I made new friends! Which is why I want to kindly ask you to consider wishlisting...


The Abbess Garden is another one of the 25 games in the Dames4Games Showcase. As the title suggests, it is a gardening game, which is probably my most favourite genre. But what makes this game extra special to me is that it is set in 1643, in an abandoned abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs, in the heart of France 💚🏕️🌿🌲🌳☘️



Besides an accurate gardening design where you learn to nurture and tend to the plants based on their unique needs and preferences, The Abbess Garden also promises a "historical plot with spies, court drama and queer romance" which makes it extra shiny to me!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3411970/The_Abbess_Garden/

I hope you'll watch the IGN stream tomorrow!

Dear friend,

I am fortunate to participate in a series of Steam events such as the Women's Day Sale and the Dames 4 Games Showcase so I am doing a lot of live streams. Here are some of the journal spreads I have been creating live (well, at least the ones I like the most!):









The last one is unfinished and I forgot about it when resetting progress so it's gone for good. But it truly captures the spirit of my cat, Skuggan!

If you have a spare moment, I would really appreciate your feedback about The Merry Fairy Demo and I would be over the moon if you kept me company while I stream. I would appreciate it extra much if you told me about any bugs you might have noticed when playing.

Thank you! (づ๑•ᴗ•๑)づ♡

Dear friend,

We live in uncertain times. I do my best to find solace by hugging Kindness, Wisdom and Friendship, my old beech friends by the edge of my beloved forest. But sometimes the worry cannot be helped. And it is right to embrace fear these days, when the winter still lets the icy darkness linger, and when the darkness of our times threatens to conquer all of us.

"If everything around you seems dark, look again. You may be the light" said Rumi, a 13th century poet whose wise and loving words echo in my heart with such strength, that it feels he is still alive, visiting me in Fairyland right now.

I thought you might need the gentle wisdom of his words, too.

So I made a new build, featuring some of my most favourite Rumi quotes, though I can assure you, many more will follow. They are accompanied by a few decorations I have been craving for quite some time now:

• three types of lace (be weary, one is kinda buggy and I do not yet know why)
  
• stars and the moon
  
• more backgrounds, especially darker ones, so its easier to design darker, moodier journal spreads
  

Build 35 also includes a few bug fixes, most notably the necessary lighting fix which has been dulled down for a few good builds now.

I leave you with a few pictures of my frozen Fairyland: