Mercury Hg

At least once in your life, someone would have told you that science can be cool. Chances are this was in a stuffy school room and you didn’t take note. Good job Eiconic Games did listen as they present Mercury Hg. The next in the series that started with Arthur Maclean’s Mercury on the PSP, this 3D puzzler involves maneuvering a blob of mercury through a myriad of obstacles to reach the finish. There are 60 levels, with each containing four goals. These are completing the level, the number of atoms collected, the completion speed, and how much of your starting mercury you manage to get home. This is harder than it sounds, as levels without walls mean any wrong movement can break the surface tension and leave you watching half of your mercury plummet into oblivion.

The main mode of the game is Discovery. Each level is shown as an element on the periodic table, and in order to unlock everything you must “discover” it all (I say all, but two segments have been left locked currently for DLC purposes). Once this is done, you can redo levels in preselected groups with harder, combined goals in Challenge Mode. If that wasn’t challenging enough, you can then redo this again with tougher goals. If that still isn’t enough for you then watch out for the bonus levels. As you complete goals in Discovery you will start to unlock these, which take the same form as the regular level with a different goal. Instead of keeping your mercury intact, the goal is to collect vials to increase your blob up to 100% before ending the level.

One of the most impressive things in Mercury Hg is the mercury itself. It really does act and feel as you would imagine. Whilst you split your mercury, colour it in and put it back together you really do feel like a kid playing around with a chemistry set.

The sense of achievement when you max out a level first time is wonderful. Whilst the game gradually increases in difficulty there is nothing too alarming here for the casual gamer. You only need to finish the level to move on to the next, and you can always go back on separate runs to complete the additional goals. This provides a level of challenge that can be selected by you, rather than forcing it, and therefore provides a much more enjoyable experience to a wider audience.

The whole feel of the game is very serene. The levels gently pulse with the beat of the music (which can be selected by you), the design is minimalistic, and even in timed areas it just doesn’t feel very pressured. This removes any frustrating elements, and draws you in to a point where replays are almost as fun as the first time through.

Whilst generally a neatly made game, there is a problem worth mentioning. Occasionally, levels will grind down to a snail’s pace, making gameplay almost impossible. Although this can be fixed with a simple restart level, it can be a real nuisance if it occurs on the last level of a challenge set. At this time I cannot find any information about a patch, although with DLC on the way you can feel certain there will be one.