Archer Maclean's Mercury is a 2005 puzzle-platform video game developed by British company Awesome Studios and published by Ignition Entertainment for the PlayStation Portable.

The game was conceived when Archer Maclean used a previous minigame from Jimmy White's Cueball World and added a liquid metal physics.

It was originally designed to have motion controls by using a tilt sensor peripheral for the PSP, but this version was never released due to technical constraints.

The first, titled Mercury Meltdown, was released for PSP, then revised and ported onto PlayStation 2 and Wii.

[4] Mercury was developed by Awesome Studios with Archer Maclean as the lead designer for the game.

The game was conceived when Maclean used the labyrinth minigame from Jimmy White's Cueball World and implemented a "liquid metal physics" prototype engine.

[6] The game was originally advertised to be released with a tilt sensor peripheral to use motion controls, but it could not be implemented due to cost and technical issues.

"[15] GameSpy, however, gave a lukewarm response to the level design, stating the best ones are clever and addicting but the worst ones make the player jump through too many hoops.

PALGN made noted the difficulty of the game can scale to "ridiculous levels" but defended it by assuring that it doesn't feel impossible.

"[15] Edge, however, praised the difficulty, stating, "Mercury exhibits a perfect hierarchy of challenge and reward, the two remaining poised throughout and ultimately growing to the point where they touch and become one.

The pain becomes the pleasure because, in spite of the extraordinary degree of trial and error, there's never a moment that feels broken or exploitative.

[30][31] A second sequel, titled Mercury Hg, was developed by Eiconic Games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

[32] Eiconic chose to go back to the core elements of the original and added a style in which the developers described as "clean and stylish".

The game also features ghost racing, the ability to share replays, and Sixaxis tilt controls for the PlayStation 3 version.

[35] The second DLC titled "Rare Earth Elements" was released on November 29, 2011, and contains the same amount of content as the previous.