Lost Winds

[Locit]

So this Lost Winds game on Wii Ware. It's pretty good! It's about three or four hours long, and pretty much worth the $10 they're asking. It a bit like Klonoa meets Okami in a light metroidvania-style game, and its Wiimore implementation is spot-on.

Not convinced? Here is a video. Here is another.

Play. Enjoy. Discuss!

[Xyton]

It looks pretty interesting. So your character just runs forward and you act as the wind to make stuff happen, it looks like? Is that correct?

I suppose the point is kinda moot for me at the moment -- my Wii only has fifty-something blocks left. :s

[G.Silver]

You control him with the numchuck, and make him jump or get blown about by using the wiimote. I'm having some mixed feelings about the motion control, although it is well-implimented, the effect of your motion always seems to be in a straight line, even though you can make these attractive curves, so the character being blown around feels a bit like a gimped Rocket Knight. That doesn't really hurt the game, but it doesn't match my unrealistic expectation. It's a beautiful game though, the way the "wind" effects so much of the background is pretty amazing.

Dock from Gamiko worked on the characters (and probably other things) on this game, which must explain why "whilst" is used at every opportunitu. Hey GHZ Brits, do you really use "whilst" instead of "while" every time?

[Locit]

On that note, Silv, there's a power up you eventually get that lets you direct him exactly where you want, curves and all.

[Green Gibbon!]

Visuals are great, but it looks really frustrating. Are there any other games like this on the US side? The Japanese store is incredibly lame right now unless you're in for another retarded version of Dr. Mario or freaking solitaire with fairies.

Is Gamiko still active?

[G.Silver]

Sort of, in that the same people are still posting there. I go there every now and then and never see anything that interests me anymore. I blame the game industry.

[Yami CJMErl]

Speaking of WiiWare, "Defend your Castle" is addictingly awesome. I must've sunk a good couple of hours into that game without realizing it.

[gr4yJ4Y]

(I'm going to try my hardest to get off topic here.)

I saw that WiiWare was launched and it made me want to play a new game for cheep, so instead of downloading one of the ones offered I went and rented Kororinpa. Kororinpa is pretty good (plays similar to Monkey Ball), but I'm already about half-way through it after only 2 hours, so maybe I really didn't make a better decision than downloading Lost Winds.

Has anyone played FF:CC: My Life as a King? Is it worth anything close to $15?

[G.Silver]

I've been really keen on My Life as King, except I'm not certain it's the game I'm thinking of! I read an interview where the creator almost likened it to Pikmin, except when you herd all your warriors together to slay some giant beast, they leave mourning family behind in the village. I didn't realize it was also Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, so now that two and two (and two) have been put together I'm not even sure if it's the right game. Am I thinking of the right one?

[SDHawk]

I've been really keen on My Life as King, except I'm not certain it's the game I'm thinking of! I read an interview where the creator almost likened it to Pikmin, except when you herd all your warriors together to slay some giant beast, they leave mourning family behind in the village. I didn't realize it was also Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, so now that two and two (and two) have been put together I'm not even sure if it's the right game. Am I thinking of the right one?

You're probably thinking of the ridiculously similar in concept and name, King Story.

[G.Silver]

That was it.

I just finished the game, and I'm actually finding myself on the "this was too short" side of things. The time to completion was certainly in the area of 3 hours (especially if you include my knack for getting stuck on incredibly obvious things), and in terms of time spent, that's really not so bad. But when you figure in that all that time is spent in a relatively small area doing fetch quests, it seems a lot shorter, just because my expectation is that eventually I ought to move into some new areas. And sure, there are new areas, each little section of the game is gorgeously sculpted to look distinctive with unique background set pieces, but it's those same canyon walls everywhere, and even if the caves are different (they certainly are) they are all still CAVES. Then when they say it's time to move on to someplace new, the game ends and it's all To Be Continued time! The resulting feeling is pretty unsatisfying!

On one hand I can see what's happening here, we're basically getting a big, sprawling game that's split apart into many little bits and paying for it in installments, and if I take the time to imagine the big picture, the big picture is pretty cool. But as it is, it feels pretty incomplete. Adding just one area that was considerably different from red rocks and the caves below them, would have made a huge difference for me.

[Esrever]

Well, I really liked it! I wonder though, how much of the shortness and lack of environmental variety was a necessity in order to keep the file size low. Perhaps it should only have cost eight dollars, but I understand that it's Nintendo that sets the prices and not the developer.

Still, a really solid, holistic experience, with neat mechanics and a really slick style.

[G.Silver]

I liked it too, but I'm always saying things like "60 minutes is a great length for a game!" and yet here I am on the "this was too short" side of the fence, and that's interesting to me.

For me personally I'll take cruder graphics and more of them, but LostWinds' charm owes so much to graphical-richness, it's not like it's a trade you can make for something like this. I'm sure the file size was a factor in their design decision, but when they settled on "LostWinds" I am pretty sure they also settled on fitting it all into one environment like that from the get-go.

But even when you climb the waterfall, by that point you've got the cape and can get up there pretty effortlessly. That would have been a good moment for a climactic sense of progression and accomplishing something, but it really felt to me like just any other area, it didn't feel like I'd really got very high.