E3 06: Elebits First Look

LOS ANGELES--For as far back as anyone can remember, the Elebits have been living among human beings, working in harmony with humanity and basically having a grand old time. So what happens when the Elebits--who also happen to be the planet's sole power source--decide to stop working, plunging the world into a global energy crisis? That's the intriguing premise of Konami's debut on the Nintendo Wii: Elebits. We got a peek at the game tonight during Konami's E3 press conference.

First of all, what are Elebits? Well, if the game is to be believed, they're squat little multicolored creatures that look more than a bit like overweight Pikmin, with a small patch of fur on their little tummies. As mentioned before, in the game's universe, it's Elebits, not fossil fuels, that are the world's most precious energy resource. For reasons that are mysterious in the game, the Elebits go on a strike of sorts. It's your job as the player to find the Elebits in an elaborate game of hide-and-seek in order to locate the little Elebits and put them back to work.

During the press conference, the Elebits producer said there were three overarching goals for creating the game. The first is to give the player the feeling of being in the world of Elebits, and manipulating objects within that world. From there, the second goal was to be able to lift and move the various objects in the world in order to uncover the hidden Elebits, thus the hide-and-seek mechanics referred to earlier. We didn't actually get to see the game mechanics working--instead, all that was shown was a bunch of cute Elebits roaming in various pedestrian settings, such as the kitchen of your typical suburban home. Perhaps in the actual game, you'll be moving the kitchen table, or peeking in cookie jars in order to uncover the creatures themselves. The third goal of Elebits, producers told us, was to create new characters, preferably cute ones. As you can probably tell from the screenshots, mission accomplished there.

Beyond the cuteness of its characters and a general understanding of its plot, we don't know a lot about Elebits, particularly about how you will use the Wii controller to interact with the environments. We hope to see more of the game running on the floor of E3, and we'll certainly have more to say about this Nintendo Wii exclusive in the coming months.