Mercury Mind

by Eric March on May 13, 2009 at 11:15 am

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	App Name:	Mercury Mind
	Developer:	Fredrik Wahrman	Version:	1.1
	Publisher:	Fredrik Wahrman	Size:	344 KB
	Category:	Word Games	Price:	$1.99/Free

When Fredrik dropped me a note about this game, I have to admit that the description sort of puzzled me because I couldn’t quite picture it — but as soon as I saw the screenshots he attached, I knew exactly what this was.  I’ve played this game before, must have been at least a couple of years ago. It was a Flash or Java-based game, and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called, but I became quite addicted to it, because it was such a simple premise, yet so effective and engaging for word game enthusiasts like me.

So, I’d like to say “It’s very much like that Flash/Java-based game named <mumble>” but I can’t, because I can’t remember its name.  So I’ll just say it is like that, but because I can’t give you a link to the original game from which this is based, I’ll just have to try my best to describe it in words and a few screenshots.

Mercury Mind is, for the most part, a word association game.  Fredrik likens it to a crossword as well, but it’s really not much to do with crosswords at all — but I can understand how “crossword” sounds more interesting than “word association.”  (Unless you’re Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor, anyway.)  Trust me though, this game is plenty interesting if you’re into word games.  Let me see if I can describe it here in a few words: The idea here is to solve a tree of associated words by going from branch to branch and entering words that are associated with the branches that connect to it.

lolwut?

Okay, let me start at the beginning.  At the start of a level you are given a single word in its own cell. Branching off of that cell are other cells connected by broken lines, each of which are associated in some way with the root word you started with.  Those cells contain a number of dashes representing each letter in the associated word — and just so you don’t have to count, a number in parentheses indicates the number of letters in the word.  For each word you associate, new branches will form from it that have words associated with that word, some of which may be associated with the previous word, or words associated with the previous word, ultimately creating a web-like network of interconnected, sequentially associated words.

LOLWUT.

Okay, okay, listen.  Take the first level, “Out of the Blue.” You start with the word “Blue.”  Branching off of blue are a number of other cells.  The words that go in each of those cells will be words that are associated with “blue.”  Like, say, water.  Oh, look!  Water is a valid word.  Awesome.  So you enter “water” in the cell that takes a 5 letter word, and lo and behold, it sticks — and now there are new branches extending from “water,” and those new cells will be have words that are associated with water.  Now, as you can see from the first screenshot, the cells above, above and to the left, and below and to the right of the word “water” are also associated with “blue” as indicated by the connecting lines, so those words will have something to do with both blue and water.  So it goes down through the puzzle, each new word opening up new branches of associated words until you reach the terminus and solve all of the words in the puzzle.

It really makes a lot more sense if you play it, though, as it becomes clear very quickly as soon as you dig in.  There are 5 puzzles in total, and each one must be unlocked by achieving a certain score level, and each successive puzzle is a little bigger and a little tougher.

The gameplay is relatively intuitive if not completely ideal; tap on a cell and the keyboard will pop up allowing you to enter a word.  If you get it right, the word will appear.  If not, it won’t.  Unlike the Flash Game Whose Name I Don’t Recall, Mercury Mind allows partial matches, so if you get the first letter or three correct, it will place the correct letters there — but it will only do it for sequentially correct letters, so you won’t get correct letters in the middle of the word unless you’ve gotten the other letters correct from the beginning of the word.  This does make it possible to solve cells through trial and error going through the alphabet, but it’s such a pain in the butt that it’s not likely to be something you’re going to want to do unless you’re really stumped.

My main issue with this text input method is that if you have, say, two cells of the same word length associated with the same root word, you could enter “ice” as a correctly associated word, but it would only work if you enter it in the right cell; even if “ice” is a good associated word, it will be counted wrong if you enter it in the wrong cell, so if you come up with a possible associated word and have two possible places it could go, you have to try it in both cells if one didn’t work.  The other Flash game simply gave you a text box to enter words in, and it would fill in the appropriate cells as you entered correct words.

Fredrik let me know however that you can click a completed word and enter a word you think is associated with it, and if it’s correct it will fill in the appropriate connected cell, which is much easier — I didn’t know about this until this morning, so it would have made my testing a little easier had I known. (Fredrik is working on a tutorial for cases like this.)  There’s also a little bug in this one where, if you enter text in one cell, then tap on another cell, the first cell will remain blank — and any subsequent cells will be blank if you hop to a third or fourth one; only the last one will give back the dashes and word length indicator.  You have to tap the cells and hit enter to get the contents back.  Fredrik is aware of this bug and wil be fixing it.  If you use the tap-on-the-root-word method of entering associated words though, you won’t even notice this bug.

Since a given word association tree can take up more space than there is screen real estate for, you can both scroll around the board by dragging, or you can zoom in and out with the standard pinch gestures, which is a nice touch.  The game will also orient to both portrait and landscape modes, which is also very handy.  The visuals here are totally spartan with no flash or bling of any sort — but this really isn’t the sort of game that needs it.  Even the original Flash game was incredibly minimalist in its approach, and it just didn’t matter because it was all about the gameplay.  There’s no sound either — but again, it’s wholly unnecessary here and would probably be a distraction anyway.

It’s a slightly different approach than its Flash counterpart, but it is the same game at its heart, and it’s quite enjoyable anyway, despite its idiosyncrasies.  I haven’t seen a game like the original Flash game turn up on mobile handsets, and really haven’t seen any clones of it turn up either, so it’s nice to see this genre of game get some recognition on the App Store.  Word game lovers should find this a different yet entertaining game that’s engaging in its simplicity and will keep you playing for a while; each level can take a bit of time to complete, and while there are only 5 puzzles in the game, they should keep you busy for a few hours anyway.  Fredrik is considering adding more puzzles to the game though, which I think would be great — the more, the merrier as far as I’m concerned.  In the mean time, two bucks will get you the full version, but you can grab a free taste test in Mercury Mind Lite so you can get a proper sense of what I’m talking about here and see if it’s the sort of thing you can dig.

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Posted in Games: Word, Paid Apps