Project Mercury is a retro platformer styled after classic NES games. It has some metroidvania elements as well, but at its core, Project Mercury is about platforming.
The graphics in Project Mercury are fantastic. They’re a good mix of modern and retro. The overall style is old-school and wouldn’t be out of place in an NES game, while the execution is more polished than your standard retro game. Some of the enemy designs are lackluster in terms of creativity, but they all look good from a technical point of view.
Project Mercury also has some solid sound choices that add to the retro feel. The soundtrack is dated, but in a good way. The music isn’t great, but it’s fitting for the genre. The game’s sound effects are also quite retro, even if the quality and variety of sound effects is lacking.
There is a basic story in Project Mercury but it serves as background rather than being a major focus. It isn’t bad, it’s just too generic to suck you into the world of the game.
The worst part of Project Mercury is, unfortunately, the gameplay. Combat is basic, which makes sense for the genre, but the platforming doesn’t pick up enough of the slack. Enemies are placed in annoying spots that don’t feel challenging, just frustrating. Having an enemy bump into you and knock you off a platform can be done in a way that allows the player to feel in control, but in Project Mercury it seems like you were setup for failure by the level design. Because you don’t gain anything from killing enemies and the controls are tough to get a handle of, the best strategy is to just jump over any enemies you encounter and keep running. Some levels don’t allow this, but in general, your best bet is to avoid combat because of how unforgiving it can be. In a way, this level of difficulty makes sense for such a faithful rendition of classic retro games, but it doesn’t translate to enjoyment for me. Some boss fights are interesting, but they begin to get repetitive once you learn their attack patterns.
Project Mercury is far from a bad game, it just has too many issues for me to enjoy playing it. Players looking for a hardcore retro game will probably have more fun with it. Even ignoring the largely subjective issue of difficulty, the game has significant problems with controls and enemy design. For a $1 game, it’s worth a shot if you are a retro gaming fan, but for everyone else, I can’t recommend it.
