Zack & Wiki was a good surprise to me, since I really didn't know what to expect coming in to E3. Screenshots make it look like a generic platforming or adventure game, which are a dime a dozen. But after playing a good deal of it at Capcom's hotel suite I discovered that the game's primary goal is that of puzzle-solving and discovery.

The goal of a level is to get Zack, the main character, to somehow reach a treasure chest that is located in plain sight of the player. There isn't really much platforming or adventuring to accomplish this, since the levels I've seen at the show were very compact. Instead, you must find a way to “solve" the level by clearing its obstacles by figuring out what to do, where to do it, and in what order to do it in. Eventually you'll get to the treasure chest and the booty inside.

One of the levels I tried my hands at was in a volcanic setting. Right next to the starting point was the treasure chest, but it was behind bars. A nearby bucket had to be filled with enough water to hit the switch underneath it and open the chest. There was a water source across a bridge to the right, but it can only be crossed four times before collapsing. The lower part of the level had levers, fires, gaps, and other obstacles that somehow needed to be cleared to get the water down and around to the elevator so you can bring the water back up to the starting point and complete the level. I had to restart the level the first time I tried it because I realized the purpose of the bridge was for four one-way trips instead of the two round-trips I tried initially. This was only after I had already figured out how to put out the fires blocking the lower path, finding out what I needed to do to plug a gap in another bridge, and realizing what the connection was between a hard hat and the switch that lowered and raised the lava-powered elevator.

While the entirety of a level is a great big puzzle, you'll also come across smaller puzzles. The Wii remote's motion functions come into play during most of these tasks, which usually require you to use an object you've picked up in the level with something else. For instance, you'll need to pick up a bottle in the volcanic level I was talking about earlier to hold the water needed to extinguish the fires and fill up the bucket. When walking up to a fountain and interacting with it, the bottle won't fill up automatically. Instead, you've got to figure out how to use the Wii remote to fill up the bottle. In this case, it's a simple matter of using the pointer function to aim the bottle under the falling stream of water and hold it there until it's full. I also had to figure out the correct action when putting out the fire; in that case, I needed to pour out the bottle's contents by doing a similar movement with the Wii remote. There were a few places where the game prompts you on how to hold the remote, but outside of that it's all up to the player to discover the items' functions.

The game is played exclusively with the Wii remote. To move around the level you point and click where you'd like Zach to move. Clicking on objects will make you interact with them, too. You can also hold the remote vertically, which cues your simian companion Wiki to turn into a bell. Moving the remote around will sound the bell, which dispels ghosts that might block your path, or more importantly, transform creatures into objects (and back again) that are necessary to complete some puzzles in a level. One example is turning a snake into a grabber arm, which is necessary to reach an object too high up for Zach to grab on his own.

The potential complexity of the puzzles in Quest for Barbaros' Treasure should not be underestimated. Apparently, every level will have a chart showing the percentage of game testers that were able to complete the level on their first try without any help. This feature wouldn't be in the game if there weren't some low percentages. And the levels I got to check out were apparently lightweight in difficulty compared to some of the others I've heard people mention. From the looks of it, Zack & Wiki may be a hardcore puzzle-action game that none of us saw coming. The cute look will draw in the casual crowd, but the gameplay could keep the gaming veterans busy for a while.