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LostWinds

by Steven Rodriguez - April 15, 2008, 3:00 am EDT
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Respect the power of the wind.

I've been looking forward to LostWinds since the moment it was announced. The fact that the game tells me I'll be able to put the power of the wind in my hand intrigues me on many levels. (The wind is kind of my thing.) Once Nintendo put out the WiiWare games, on day two of the media summit, LostWinds was the first game I jumped at. I got to the game station so quickly, in fact, that the Frontier rep demoing the game wasn't even around.

That didn't stop me from diving head-first into the demo available. Using my wind-smarts I quickly gathered that the main character, a boy named Toku, couldn't jump on his own. Instead, he has to rely on the wind spirit named Enril to help him out. Enril is just the fancy name for the Wii Remote pointer cursor, which directs a stream of wind wherever you streak it across the screen. There's no need to press a button to get a wind gust going. All you need to do is quickly make a line on the screen to make Mother Nature do her thing.

Initially, I was frustrated that there was no way for Toku to jump without help. Even after I came to grips with how the wind system worked, and was able to get Toku airborne by shooting a gust of wind up from underneath him, I still wasn't landing larger jump with 100% accuracy. Once I got a handle on it I was doing pretty well with scaling large gaps and going up tall steps, though still not all the time. By this time, someone came over to the demo station to explain how the game works. After expressing his surprise at how far I got on my own (boo-yah!), he skipped ahead to a point further in the game and showed me some more advanced moves and puzzles.


By collecting wind spirits scattered about the game you can upgrade Enril's power and abilities. The most practical application of the power boosts, I was shown, was the ability to use multiple wind gusts to propel Toku around. This can be used to get him up higher and over farther, which makes it act like a double or triple jump. It also makes it easier to get up smaller ledges, since if you miss a jump with the first gust you can recover with the second. Toku can't survive large falls, so to save him you need to waggle the pointer cursor under him and use the wind to slow his descent. Most enemies can be taken out by literally blowing them off the screen.

Still, just seeing those actions didn't make the game look like anything more than a straight platformer. Later on in the demonstration I finally got to try out some of the game's puzzle elements. One area had two pressure switches on a high ledge and one boulder on the ground below. The first thing to do was to use wind power to blow the rock up to the top ledge, a task that felt somewhat clunky. Once the boulder was on one of the switches, a door to the left opened which led to a room with another boulder behind a door. To open the exit, I had to navigate Toku to a handle above it, which was too heavy to lift on his own. It took at good upward wind thrust to pull the switch and open the door, enabling me to move the boulder back to the pressure switches and move on to the next area.

Further along, I got to see how the wind generated with the pointer cursor affects the environment and how to manipulate it to serve your purposes. Moving the wind cursor around the screen will cause background elements to react to the gusts. Leaves on tress rustle around and windmills rotate when the cursor passes over them. The wind can also pick up water and fire. If a planted seed is near a water source, blowing some water onto it will make it sprout into a launcher for Toku. The launchers allow him to reach higher places. Fire will cause the plant to return to its seed form. The hot stuff is also handy to burn down wooden gates blocking the way.

I got to see a combination of the above, where Toku had to get a seed, plant it in the right spot, water it, get launched up into the air near a lit torch, blow the fire toward an unlit torch to light that, use the newly lit torch to burn a door down, move the seed to a new area on the other side of the door and replant it, and then water it again to get shot up to the next area. I was told that this area was still fairly early on in the game, so there may be puzzles with a lot more complexity than this.


Gameplay trailer showing off some of the wind's uses

One other ability that might lead to this increased complexity is the jetstream. With this move, gusted objects will follow the path of what you draw on the screen with the remote pointer. This can be used to arc fire from one torch to another if there's an object in the way, or better yet, guide Toku up and around twisty passages. In the game trailer (seen above), there's a sequence where Toku has a helicopter plant and gets swept down, around, and up a passageway after the pointer cursor made a path to do so.

From what I played of LostWinds, I think it will make a solid WiiWare game. The concept is interesting, and based on what I saw it looks like the puzzles will be pretty good. The only concern I have is that it may be frustrating to do certain tasks in the game if you can't get the wind gusts to go wherever you want, but that could be something that could be taken care of with a lot of Wii Remote practice.

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Genre Adventure
Developer Frontier Developments Ltd.
Players1 - 2

Worldwide Releases

na: LostWinds
Release May 12, 2008
PublisherFrontier Developments Ltd.
RatingEveryone
jpn: LostWinds
Release Dec 24, 2008
PublisherSquare Enix
RatingAll Ages
eu: LostWinds
Release May 20, 2008
PublisherFrontier Developments Ltd.
Rating7+
aus: LostWinds
Release May 20, 2008
PublisherFrontier Developments Ltd.
RatingGeneral
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