Hi, I'm Merl_. I'm a speedrunner and TASer from the US. I mostly speedrun browser games, and got into TASing though the Eddynardo and Mini series. I installed libTAS in 2023 and started submitting stuff to TASVideos.
This year, I want to focus on making quality TASes over quantity. While I don't think any of the TASes I've made are bad, I really want to push myself to get better at TASing and more proficient at using TAS tools. You can view my To-Do list tab to see what I'll be working on this year.
Also feel free to check out my speedrun.com profile (https://speedrun.com/merl_ ) and youtube channel (https://youtube.com/@merl_ ) to see my RTA stuff.
Froggo
This is a PICO8 side-scroller that has some interesting movement tech which makes for a very enjoyable TAS. The game is clearly inspired by Kirby and Yoshi games. You play as a frog, and you can stick out your tongue to eat enemies and pick up items in the levels. By picking up and spitting out items at precise times, it's possible to land on top of the items while they're moving forwards, giving the frog a small boost. You can do this dozens of times in order to save time in each level. It's fun to watch but very hard to optimize. The TAS was almost finished at one point, but I had to go back and redo some early levels due to new discoveries.
Rolly
This is a PICO8 game which honestly isn't that much fun to play or speedrun, but it has a lot of potential for TAS. The movement in this game is very weird; Rolly has very slow acceleration and base movement speed, but he has the ability to do dives and hops using the x button. These both act as a sort of double jump, but once you start a dive or hop, you lose all control over Rolly until you hit the ground or a wall. Dives give you a lot of speed and a little height, while hops give you a lot of height but almost no speed. Controlling Rolly in an RTA setting is clunky and difficult, but the TAS is fast-paced and precise. I'm almost finished with this TAS, I just need to redo one of the levels and add a death warp, and then change the order that the levels are played in.
Lint
I already made a TAS of this game last year, but it wasn't optimized at all. I'll submit this game to TASVideos when I'm satisfied with the quality. Lint is a Flash game which isn't very interesting at a first glance, but it has some really neat speed tech. You're able to go over the speed cap by pressing left + right at specific times, and you can use the extra speed to do some skips you wouldn't normally be able to do. The reason I didn't optimize this game before is that I had no way of knowing what my exact speed was, so a lot of the speed glitches I did in the TAS were slow. Once I learn how to use RAM search/watch I'll return to this game.
Fireboy and Watergirl
This is a Flash game I played a lot as a kid, and I think would be really fun to TAS. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in Ruffle yet. I'll update this section when it does.
.S
This is a really obscure game jam game that I learned to speedrun in 2022. I found a lot of glitches when playing it and decided to try making a TAS of the game. .S is a puzzle-platformer based off of the arcade game "Snake". You eat food scattered throughout the level which causes your tail to grow, except touching your tail doesn't kill you. Instead, you can stand on your tail like a platform. The theme of the game jam was "running out of space", so the levels get more and more claustrophobic as the game goes on, and you have to carefully plan a path you can take to avoid getting stuck or trapped by your own tail. Finding the optimal route to collect all the food and make it back to the goal is a fun challenge, especially when wall clips, glitched double jumps, and cutscene skips are involved.
Home Sheep Home
This is a classic Flash game I've wanted to see a TAS of for a while. The way the game works is that there are three sheep in the level, and you can select which one you want to control by using the 1, 2, and 3 keys. The sheep all have different sizes and weights, and you have to use each sheep's specific strengths to your advantage to solve puzzles. Even though you can only control one sheep at a time, it will still probably be a difficult game to optimize. If anyone reading this likes Flash TASes and wants to help out with optimizing this game, feel free to message me about it.
Me And My Launcher
I already made a glitchless TAS for this game, and I was planning to make the glitched TAS right after that got published. However, it turned out to be such a difficult project that I gave up. The reason this game is so hard to optimize with glitches is because this game's main glitch allows you to create multiple instances of the game that overlap each other, and micromanaging dozens of copies of the game is not easy to do. I don't want to come back to this project until I have a thorough plan made, otherwise this will take forever.
Nanoman
This is a Megaman clone made in PICO8 that has a neat zip glitch. rythin already made a TAS of it, but she didn't fully optimize it due to it being "RNG hell". I want to improve it and submit it to TASVideos.
Celeste - Break the Targets
BTT is a Celeste Classic mod that combines the gameplay of Celeste Classic with the gameplay of Melee's "Break the Targets" gamemode. There are 13 levels in the mod, and each one can be played as either Maddy or Lani. Your goal is to find and break all of the targets in a level, and you can accomplish this by using each character's unique moveset. I think a TAS of this mod would be really fun to make and watch.
U-Turn
This is a really interesting pico8 game and a great exercise in RNG manipulation. You can't beat it, so this would be a maximum score TAS. The way the game works is you start on an island, and your goal is to run to the far end of the island and collect a flag, which increases your score by one point. Then, you turn around, run to the other end of the island, get the flag, and repeat. The reason this is difficult is that every time you collect a flag, a "flaw" is added to the island at random. For example, collecting a flag may spawn enemies, alter the level to become more dangerous, or change the environment in some way, like by causing the tide to rise. The flaw you get is entirely random, which is why RNG manipulation is so important. One flaw that needs to be avoided at all costs is the "island extension", which increases the length of the island, making it take longer to run back and forth across it. Most of the RNG manipulation is trying to avoid this.
Amidst The Sky
I've always wanted to make a TAS of this game due to it having an absurdly precise glitch that allows the player to teleport by walking off a ledge with a really precise speed and position. The ability to teleport would not only allow for insane sequence breaks, but it would also greatly speed up general movement and make for an insane viewing experience. This is the TAS I'm currently working on, and it's about 1/3rd finished right now.
I first started TASing using MagneticDuck's instant coffee tool to TAS a lot of web games. Most of my old TASes can't be submitted to TASVideos. Below is a list of all the TASes I've created and collaborated on that aren't published on this site:
Mini Bubbles
Mini Push
Mini Blocks
Emerald and Amber
Gum Adventures DX
Mini Stilts
Time Witch
Mini Dash
Linquest
Mini Sticky
Mini Coins
Greedy Mimic
Sticky Sorcerer
One Trick Mage
Froggy Knight
This section is coming soon. I have a lot to write and I don't feel like writing it right now.
Exotic TAS of 2023: [5728] PICO8 Cyclo 8 by Merl_, rythin & hiii in 01:35.87
I made a commentated video about this TAS: https://youtu.be/IjMZlpzxIVw