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GW: Mercury has just recently hit store shelves, what kind of reaction are you expecting out of the average consumer?

AM: I hope that they'll feel that we've designed a game that offers something completely unique, not just on PSP but on any format !  There are so many sequels to sequels these days with games that are just derivative of the latest big hit that it's no mean feat to be able to say as a games developer that you've created something truly different. There again I can understand publishers and funders becoming reluctant to back new genres with game development budgets getting higher, so they chose to back a less risky prospect in the form of a racing game or a fighting game. Its worrying because where are new ideas going to come from?

GW: To be blunt, your development studio, Awesome, isn't a very well known name yet. However, Mercury seems to be a step in the right direction to putting the company on the map. What plans do you have for the future of Awesome, and where do you see the company in 5 years?

AM: We’re well known in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Europe for all the Pool and snooker games as theyve sold quite a few million units over past decade or so, as well as classics like Dropzone, and IK+ the seminal 3 player fighting game.  But obviously, we all hope that Mercury's success will go a long way towards making us a more recognisable name in the USA, but the most important thing for any developer is consistency.  Gamers recognise and respect the names of developers that can deliver addictive, memorable games not just once but again and again.  So that has to be our long-term goal.  As for where we'll be in five years time, I'd like to think we'll be working on PSP2 titles on our luxury floating dev-studio anchored just off the coast of Hawaii. Well, you’ve got to dream, ehh?!

GW: Mercury is what you would call an abstract idea as far as your average game goes, these days. A ball of mercury traversing difficult puzzles is hardly something you see every day in gaming. Where did you come up with the idea?

AM: The original inspiration for Mercury about 5 years ago was those old tilting puzzles where you had to steer tiny ball bearing around the small plastic maze.  In fact there was a mini-game based on those sorts of games in Cueball World in 2001, but then we developed a prototype of a liquid physics system and one thing led to another and here we are with the RnD result on the market...

GW: What's up with those mysterious (yet very beautiful looking) cut scenes when you open a new world?

AM: Well we wanted to give each of Mercury's worlds a distinctive graphical look and the cut-scenes were designed to introduce the player to each new theme as it's unlocked.  We deliberately kept the look of these worlds quite abstract so that the artists could have some fun.  I think the results speak for themselves, we were really happy with them. Off course, you can skip if you want. But the PSP screen is just so good that watching movies on it shows off just what its capable off for DVDs converted to it.

GW: A lot of middle class developers are looking at the PSP as a way to strut their real talent while being able to forgo the big budget battle of the console market. What was the initial reason you chose to develop Mercury for the PSP instead of, say, the PS2?

AM: I’d hadn’t thought about the class system as applied to developers. But I think we’re first class if anything : )    But seriously, it's already clear that for a studio our size to try and compete with the epic, cinematic production values that the huge corporate studios will be shooting for in the next generation is just not going to be possible.  That being the case we want to concentrate on developing games that are successful because of their have Playability and make use of innovative concepts, not just how many hours of cinematic cut-scenes we can churn out!

GW: There are quite a few unlockable stages in Mercury that a lot of gamers don't know about. Why don't you take a second and let everyone know how to unlock the treats you've hidden within the game?

AM: Mercury is designed to be a game that keeps people coming back for more so we've put plenty of un-lockable levels in the game.  Theres one bonus level per world, unlocked by maxing out the normal 12 levels hi-scores. That’s what the high score system is for!

On top of the normal 6 worlds there is a secret hidden 7th world that is only unlocked when all of the previous worlds are completed.  This is actually located under the normal world HUB and you descend down into it. This world contains levels that were created when the designers were told to produce levels that they themselves would find challenging and fun.  Let's just say that these levels aren't for the faint-hearted!!  Not only that but achieving the highest score on every level in any of the original six worlds will unlock a bonus level in that world too.  There's plenty to do beyond the original 72 levels, believe me. IN total theres 7 worlds and 83 levels.

GW: What was the biggest hurtle you had to overcome during the planning or developing of Mercury?

AM: It's always tough developing a game for a completely new platform.  When the hardware itself is developing alongside the game you have to make certain assumptions and hope that the final specification or performance of the hardware will support your game design.  Fortunately the PSP has turned out to be everything we hoped it would be, and more.

GW: Was there anything you wanted to accomplish in Mercury that didn't make the final version? If so, can we expect to see any of it in the sequel?

AM: There were dozens of features that we had planned for the first game that we didn't have time to explore as fully else the game would need another 12 months !  I think that's always the case with a game based on an original concept.  We were also determined that the game would come out at hardware launch and so there were some big features we had to carry over into Mercury 2, and we’re not short of dramatic new ideas.

GW: Multiplayer in Mercury wasn't nearly as addicting as the single player game, offering only a 'ghost race' sort of competition between players. Are you planning on making any improvements to the multiplayer for the next instalment? Co-op missions, perhaps?

AM: Multiplayer (co-op and competitive, and for 2-8 players) is one area that will be dramatically enhanced in the Mercury 2.  We have looked long and hard at how we can best expand the gameplay of the single-player game into the multiplayer arena and some of the new ideas that the designers have been coming up with for multiplayer modes are really exciting.

We’re also looking into the possibility of a level builder (not in M2) with upload/download features via the web, but to make this bullet proof is almost as much work as doing a new game.

One limiting factor is the amount of processing power needed to render up lots of mercury blobs. The PSP is surprisingly powerful, but if we have 8 sets of full sized mercury blobs all interacting with themselves in an 8 way shared game, the processing goes up exponentially and it cant happen on any ‘current’ machine… However, we have various interesting ways around this limitation…

GW: Is there anything else you can tell us about the sequel at all?

AM: Other than there will be a sequel?  There's not really much else I can say at the moment. What I can say is that with the sequel we're looking to build on the success of the first game and to offer the player a whole host of cool new features and improvements.  It isn’t just a whole load of new levels, but whole new game play styles. It will feel bigger with quite a lot of new game styles, without losing sight of the fact that the basic mercury blob is the star of the show.  Also, feedback from mercury players out there commenting on their likes and dislikes is really important to us and we're constantly checking to see what features players of the first game want in the sequel.

GW: What kind of possibilities do you think the PSP offers developers over developing for home consoles?

AM: I think handheld gaming in general allows developers to explore ideas that are more innovative than what you might normally find in games for the home formats.  Games for the PSP have to be based around session based play, the "pick-up and play" factor if you like and I think that makes designers focus more on making the gameplay immediately accessible and fun.   I for one have being play testing PSP Mercury on numerous flights back and forth to the USA, and I just wish I had taken 10 spare machines with me because I would have sold each one every time. Sony have a hit new machine on their hands, and it might even persuade people to not bother so much with all the wires associated with plugging in a conventional console into a TV stuck at home.

GW: After such a solid handheld offering, does Awesome have any plans for the DS in the future?

AM: Not at the moment but if there's one thing I've learned in this industry it's never say never !   Ignition / Awesome also publish Zookeeper on the DS to great success and that has taught us how big the demand is for simple pick up and play games there is on portable formats with some processing grunt inside them.

GW: After Mercury 2, do you have any idea on what Awesome is going to be working on next? Is there anything you'd like to do next?

AM: I’ve always got ideas !  Some of them are fairly big though, like needing 50 man years of development work.  One of the projects is a huge fighting game, and the other is a sort of massive enhancement to one of the very first games I did 20 years ago, but on a galactic scale. Spielberg would be proud of the graphics and Bushnell of the simple gameplay, and it doesn’t need a manual. : )

Watch this space!