Mercury / Archer Maclean's Mercury

Forget controlling a character — here you control the whole world. Archer Maclean's Mercury is an inventive physics puzzle in which you don't tilt a hero but the playing surface itself, letting a silvery drop of mercury flow across it. It's one of those concepts that sound simple until you sink your teeth into them.

The principle stems from the classic fairground game with a ball in a maze, but Mercury goes much further. Your drop can split into smaller parts, merge back together, change color by passing through colored gates, and every obstacle poses different demands. You must deliver a precisely measured amount of mercury to the goal, avoid falling off the edge, and solve puzzles that combine precision, timing, and a little chemical thinking.

Thanks to this mechanic, the game offers a pleasant difficulty progression. At first you just carefully tilt the surface, later you juggle several separated drops at once, mix colors to meet objectives, and battle both the clock and your own impatience. The name Archer Maclean in the title refers to an experienced British developer whose roots reach all the way back to the home-computer era.

On the PSP, Mercury fit perfectly into the philosophy of short but clever time-killing games. It suits a few levels on the bus just as well as a longer, focused session where you try to reach the hundred-percent solution of every map. Visually it's a clean, glossy presentation that captures the bet on mercury as the main star perfectly.

It's a title that reminds you how original handheld puzzle games could be — and how well the PSP served precisely this kind of creative idea.

Why play: An original physics puzzle where you tilt the entire surface and guide a splitting drop of mercury — a clever little game ideal for both short and longer sessions.