The basic concept of MMR is you controlling a bead of mercury, as you tilt the Wii Remote to try and navigate a series of 130+ labyrinths. There are two basic kinds of labyrinths you’ll be navigating: one is more akin to the aforementioned Marble Madness, with you navigating your mercury across tricky platforms and narrow walkways, trying not to fall to your doom. The other kind of labyrinth is more puzzle-like in nature, with you splitting up your mercury and coloring certain parts certain colors in order to get past colored doors or hit specific switches. The latter kind utilizes a clever color-mixing mechanic that requires you to split your mercury into two or more parts, coloring each separately, then joining them back to make a new color. Many of these color-matching puzzles are very fun to play and some definitely strain the brain. It feels, though, that the vast majority of the puzzles are more of the first kind, which to me aren’t quite as fun. The whole thing still works well, though, and each labyrinth is well-designed.

There are all sorts of things you’ll end up doing in the single-player labyrinths. In addition to the paint shops and colored switches and doors, there can be enemies that try to destroy you, allies that you need to get to help you open switches and such, conveyor belts that send you careening across huge gaps, and more. These items are somewhat slowly introduced to you as you progress through the game’s eight labs. I say somewhat, though, because the pacing of the game’s difficulty curve is a little bit quick. There are eight labs, each with 17 labyrinths in it, for a total of over 130 levels, but they’ll start getting difficult much faster than that. By the third lab, frustration with a difficult task was an all too familiar feeling for me, though not quite enough to keep me from progressing. If you’re dedicated enough, though, you’ll be able to get through the entire game’s puzzle lineup, feeling satisfied with each difficult puzzle you finish, and then maybe you’ll go back for 100% completion. There’s a lot of replay value in this portion of the game.