Atari's take on the classic block building game was shown off at E3, and although it was an early build there's definitely some potential for it to be more than a cheap one-trick pony.

The rules of Jenga are simple, and the Wii game follows them well. You start with a stack of blocks, and you need to pull out a block and place it on the top of the stack without dropping it or making the tower fall over. The 3D pointer controls of the Wii remote determine how far in, out, up, or down a block you've grabbed with the A Button will travel. To pull a block out from the stack, for instance, you start with the remote close to the screen and then pull it back. The game's physics are pretty good, so if you yank it out too quickly or nudge a block too much to the side the tower will fall down. By pressing the 2 Button on the Wii remote, you can see which blocks have the most and least pressure on them to help determine which block you want to pull out next. There's a certain touch that's required, and although there's no tactile feedback as to when something is about to fall, the visual clues will let you know when you're about to make a fatal mistake. The analog stick and nunchuk buttons adjust the camera pivoted on the stack when pulling a block out, but it was not possible to rotate the camera to a top-down view of the stack when placing a block down in the demo build.

The developers wanted to bring something more than just the basic Jenga experience, so they've added a few options on how the blocks and the environment affect the stack. It's possible to change the material the blocks in the tower are made of, which will change their friction with other blocks. Ice blocks slip out easily. Steel blocks don't. Volcano blocks come out like normal blocks, but you've got to pull them out quickly or you'll drop them because of how hot they are. Different levels will also bring different gravities, like underwater or outer space, which will affect how quickly the blocks in the pile shift around. Also, environmental disturbances will shift the Jenga stack around. In the Medieval level, for instance, catapult hits might knock the tower around and alter the weight distribution, making it a little harder to pull out a block.

There are also some non-Jenga mini games that take advantage of the Wii remote. Each themed level has a challenge mode game. The volcano level on display had an Araknoid-style paddle board that can be positioned around the screen with the Wii remote pointer in an attempt to keep as many lava balls in the air as possible. This particular game was a little hard for me to control because it wasn't always clear where you were pointing the remote when the paddle wasn't moving. However, the rep showing off the game was eager to hear feedback for improvements and kept a notepad handy for just such a suggestion.

It's nice to see developers looking for ways to improve their game, especially for something that's as simple as a Jenga video game. Interestingly, the guy I talked to hadn't heard of EA's own Jenga-style game, the project currently code-named PQRS. It and Jenga will be in direct competition with each other after they both release, so it'll be interesting to see how the two titles stack up. Jenga and Atari have the brand recognition, and EA has Spielberg to promote its game. It'll be fun to see how both games evolve as they near release.