I was winding down towards the end of Brilliant Indie Treasures and making my way out of the bustling hall when my eye caught a lonely station with no queue there. I was eager to get one last game in before I left for the day, so I plonked myself down and dived into Mineral.
As part of my promise to myself this year, I am trying to play more genres that I don’t usually play, and puzzle games have been up the top of that list because I am genuinely awful at them. Mineral, as a benefit to me, is very simple in premise. We’re a ball and we want to get to the goal at the end of the level. Easy, right? Ha, if only it were. The physics engine is excellent; it adds a level of extra complexity and finesse to an otherwise simple level.
Each level has a global leaderboard to show you how fast people have completed the level, and especially on the earlier ones, I was actually trying to beat the faster times. I found it good practice with the physics, learning little tricks like being able to spin the ball to a stop and take corners tighter to shave seconds off. Of course, the further we go, the more complex the levels get. Some levels give us different power-ups to progress through the levels, like Dawn (the ability to climb marked walls) and Dusk (the ability to float over invisible platforms).
While each level is timed, the only thing that costs you is the better time for the leaderboards on your initial run. The addiction factor for me comes from replaying each level after the fact, now knowing the layout of the level and finding the optimal routes to finish them. I could cut entire minutes off my time, and that to me was satisfying. If you want something to play to unwind a bit between games or to play something nice and calm at the end of a long day, you’ll enjoy Mineral.
Mineral is available now on Steam, Xbox and PlayStation stores.