Critter Round-Up Hands-On

The game is scheduled for release just a few days from now, but last night's Konami press event marked our first opportunity to check out Epicenter Studios' first WiiWare offering, Critter Round-Up. Described by Konami as a "puzzle/action" game, Critter Round-Up tasks you with building fences to segregate different species of animal as they roam around the playing field and, in some cases, pose a threat to one another. Regardless of how cute they look, all of the animals are deadly as far as you're concerned, and you have to take great care to avoid them as you run around leaving a trail of fences behind you.

Early on you'll be working exclusively with barnyard animals, which have absolutely no interest in eating one another and simply wander around the playing field quite aimlessly until you manage to fence them in. The points you score for segregating an animal or animals are based both on how many of the same species you've managed to trap in the same enclosure and on how much fence you had to use to do it. The speed with which you complete each of the 50 levels is also a consideration.

Critter Round-Up is played using the Wii Remote, held sideways like an old-school controller. You move with the D pad, you use the 1 and 2 buttons to lay fences and to jump, and the "-" button activates any special items that you pick up. Special items in game include vegetables, which are used to attract herbivores; meat, used to attract carnivores; a water gun, to herd animals with; a clock, which lets you play in slow-motion for a time; and a speed boost. The only other control you need to concern yourself with, at least in the Adventure mode, is shaking the Wii Remote, which is used to knock down fences you no longer need.

As you progress through the Adventure mode, which can be played cooperatively by up to four players, challenge comes in the form of new animals. For example, lions and other carnivores will attempt to eat other animals (and players) that get too close to them, birds will lay eggs that hatch and give you extra animals to worry about, and prairie dogs can disappear down holes in the playing field and pop up elsewhere. Skunks will spray you, camels will spit at you, and elephants are just so big that they can be tough to avoid--you get the idea.

Each level is set in one of five environments: a North American barnyard, the Australian outback, a European forest, the African savannah, or the Arctic. For the most part, the animals that you'll encounter fit in with those themes, but toward the end of the game you'll find that the critters are dropped in at random. We didn't get to check out any of the late levels on this occasion, but our understanding is that anything goes, so you could find yourself in the Arctic trying to herd sheep before they get eaten by lions and alligators, for example.

In addition to the Adventure mode, Critter Round-Up boasts a Marathon mode in which one or two players can test their skills on a "nearly infinite" number of levels, and four different minigames for up to four players. Minigames include Snowball Soccer, Chicken Catch, Predator Rampage, and Fence Trap. We had an opportunity to spend some time with the last two. Predator Rampage tasks you with surviving longer than your opponent in a playing field populated by an increasing number of carnivores. You can't build fences, so that button is instead used to kick your opponent to the ground--stunning them in the hope that a nearby animal will go in for the kill. Fence Trap is a lot like competitive versions of Snake or, if you prefer, the light cycles level from the Tron game released back in 1982. You run around the playing field, unable to stop moving or building fences, and the loser is the first one to find himself with nowhere to go.

Critter Round-Up will be available for download next week at a cost of 1,000 Wii points. Expect a full review soon.