And Yet It Moves (demo)

As they did last year, Nintendo has authorized the release of demos for new Wiiware games. Like last year, I'm looking at these demos as marketing tools not strictly as games. After all, it wouldn't be fair to rate full games on 20 or so minutes of play and they aren't being released for our amusement, but to sell us on the full product. Unlike last year, the demos don't automatically end with a trip to the Wii Shop Channel. Instead, you get to choose to replay the demo, go back to the Wii Menu or go buy the full game. It's a nice customer-friendly change that will not likely alter the sales totals.

And Yet It Moves takes the atmospheric, puzzle-platformer slot that was occupied by NyxQuest last year. The twist¹ this time is that the entire world can be spun 360° around the hero. Other than rotating left and right (and possibly upside down), the game restricts the plater to moving left, right and jumping. In the first level an impassible tunnel becomes a deep well to fall into with a 90° rotation. It's a limited verb set that brings the platform genre to the absolute essentials much like Terry Cavanagh's VVVVVV. In fact, entire levels can be completed with the world rotation mechanic alone if you don't let the little man touch anything before reaching the exit point.

And Yet It Moves showcases a simple art style inspired by paper collage. The main character appears a crudely drawn paper puppet, though he is in fact expertly animated. Background, foreground and platform scenery has been clipped from much larger images of rocks, logs, flowers and so on. To match the minimal art, only occasional ambient sounds and light sound effects are played: there's essentially no music. In contrast to the simple presentation, the gameplay exhibits an intuitive and sophisticated physics system. You can feel the puppet's mass, velocity and acceleration as you fall to limb-shattering doom.

Prior interest: low

It turns out I'd already played the PC demo of this game and while I did enjoy the premise, it didn't work for me. For some reason, my brain wants to press exactly the opposite buttons than the game requires of me to rotate the world. It's a problem that I run into a lot—my Y-axis always needs inverting. I was ok in the first level, which could be managed mostly on foot, but the second level demanded almost constant acrobatic world rotation that my Pooh brain would not perform. I see now that there is an option to swap the meaning of the left and right arrows, but back then I didn't bother to find it. Needless to say, the game was dismissed long before it came out on the Wii.

Odds of purchase: medium

As with the truly excellent World of Goo demo, the Wii controls implemented for AYIM are a revelation. On the PC, rotation must conform to discrete 90° or 180° turns, but the WiiWare version allows a turn to end at any convenient angle. Facilitating the variable turns are four² accurate analog control schemes: NES-style Wiimote, key-twisting Wiimote and Nunchuk, pointer-dragging Wiimote and Nunchuk, and Classic Controller. My favorite control is turning the Wiimote sideways which maps walking to the D-pad and world rotation to tilt controls. It's automatically more intuitive than any button-pressing scheme and puts the title back on my definitely/maybe list. This game is why demos exist.

---

1 - See what I did there?

2 - Well at least I assume they are all accurate and analog. I don't have Classic Controller to test.

NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits (Demo)

NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits (formerly known as Icarian, a far better name) is a straightforward 2D platformer set in post-apocalyptic mythical Greece. You guide Nyx, an angel-like woman in her quest to find and rescue Icarus: a refreshing change of pace. Speaking of which, the pace of the action is appropriately slow to take in the spectacular backdrops Nyx is wondering through.

Prior interest: medium

NyxQuest represents a type of game I'm interested in: puzzle platforming in an atmospheric, well-realized environment. But this particular game has several issues that have kept it from floating to the top of my list. First is the ridiculous name and confusing name change. Even the official soundtrack uses the old name for the title track. Second is the LostWinds series, which seems similar to NyxQuest, has been well-reviewed, and now has two entries. Third, the game disappeared from my radar almost as suddenly as it showed up there. This has not been a well-marketed game.

Odds of purchase: medium

Playing through the demo level, I started to feel like NyxQuest had borrowed heavily from the 2D areas of Super Mario Galaxy. Both share a similar control scheme, beautiful backgrounds, clever yet not punishing puzzles, orchestrated music and 3D models constrained to a plane. It's hard to think of higher praise for a game, but unfortunately the demo came out a few months too late. I'm already playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii which scratches that particular itch for a while. That said, I'll eventually need something to fill that niche in my gaming and when I do, NyxQuest will be waiting.

---

In addition to providing a demo, the NyxQuest developers have a pretty good promotional website that includes an Oracle trivia game, which rewards the time needed to guess the answers correctly with a nice little prize.

Note to the LostWinds publisher: this might be a good time to bug Nintendo about getting a demo out for your series too.