Manairons

My first reaction to Manairons was genuine curiosity, not for the genre, but for the source material. The manairons are real figures from Catalan and Pyrenean legend, tiny magical beings somewhere between pixies and house spirits, and JanduSoft and co-developer 3Cat have built an entire 3D action platformer around them with obvious affection. You play as Nai, a small creature freed after centuries locked inside the canut, a mysterious magical artifact now in the hands of Llorenc, a humourless landowner who has forced the village of Vilamont into an industrial grind. The setup has more personality than most games twice its budget, and the Catalan language option, rare for any game at this scale, gives it a cultural authenticity that is genuinely striking. The core mechanical hook is Nai's flute, which doubles as a weapon and a puzzle tool. You learn five songs across the game that let you direct other manairons, unlock hidden routes, put enemies to sleep, or knock them out. Combat is non-lethal by design: the enemies are fellow manairons who have been coerced, not villains, and subduing them rather than destroying them fits the story's theme of liberation over conquest. The game introduces mechanics gradually without a formal tutorial, jump and crouch first, then vault and climb, then dodge and block as enemy types escalate. Each zone wraps up with a boss encounter that tests what you have learned. A landing-circle indicator helps with precision jumping, a small quality-of-life touch that matters more than it sounds when you are navigating rooftops and factory scaffolding at the size of a thimble. That sense of scale is where Manairons does something genuinely well. Oversized environments make mundane objects feel monumental, a kitchen section where you dart between pots and cleavers, a henhouse where a giant metal rooster is the first boss, a village full of furniture-sized hazards including mouse traps that snap with exaggerated menace. Collectible vinyl records double as a music player, which is a charming touch, and the inventory tracks both items and the songs you have recorded. The folkloric setting is thick with warmth and the art direction stays consistent throughout. Where Manairons struggles is in the feel of basic controls. The camera is the biggest offender: it resists vertical movement, which hurts significantly in a game built around climbing and height-based exploration. The climbing mechanic itself can be imprecise, and combat targeting has a tendency to miss or misalign, especially against enemies that hover above Nai's default swing arc. Some players reported occasional input-buffering delays on flute attacks, and the lock-on system does not always behave predictably. A day-one patch addressed frame-rate drops and audio stuttering, but the underlying three Cs, combat, character control, and camera, still feel underpolished compared to the visual and narrative quality surrounding them. Steam user reception sits very positively overall (around 95% positive from early reviews), suggesting most players find the charm outweighs the rough edges, but more critical outlets have noted the gap between what the game wants to be and what it currently delivers in your hands. For players who enjoy cozy platformers, Catalan folklore, or family-friendly action-adventures in the vein of Little Nightmares-lite aesthetics with gentler difficulty, Manairons offers a compact, heartfelt package. Completionists get collectibles gated behind smart secondary puzzles, and melody-unlocking adds mild backtracking incentive. Come in expecting rough-around-the-edges indie work rather than a polished mid-tier release, and there is real pleasure here in a setting that no other game currently occupies.

Alex · Scout Team

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