Dewy's Adventure Hands-On

When we got our first look at Dewy's Adventure earlier this year, we were intrigued by the funky brand of inspired weirdness Konami's Elebits team will be serving up next. Konami popped by recently with a work-in-progress version of the game to let us get some hands-on time in. The sampling of levels we tried showed a promising game that, like Elebits, appears to have an off-kilter charm.

The version of the game we played offered a quick cinematic refresher on Dewy's backstory. You basically take one world in trouble, a magical water drop conjured by a tree, and a big dose of enemies, then mix in some puzzles, and voilá. The story is simple, but it's not like you need an epic Tolkien-esque setup for an action puzzler starring a happy water ball.

Your goal in the game is simple: You'll maneuver Dewy through each level, rescuing trapped mushrooms and defeating enemies along the way. The levels feature fiendishly simple designs and seemingly innocuous puzzles that appear to be easy to navigate. However, as you get deeper in, you'll find you need to be smart about how you move, and more importantly, how you use Dewy's powers. Being a magical water drop, Dewy is able to use his powers to alter his physical form between one of three states: solid, liquid, and gas. Each form has unique uses and effects on the world around him. Your default water form is what you'll use to get around, tilting the Wii Remote and using the 2 button to jump. You can also perform a soppy ground slam that is perfect for triggering some switches.

When faced with enemies and bodies of water, you can switch to Dewy's ice form, which lets you perform a three-part attack that wipes out most individual enemies and also freezes water so you can slide over it. Dewy's gas form heats things up and turns the droplet into a happy little cloud that just floats in a set area. You can move the shadow he casts in cloud form to cover enemies and fire off a massive lightning attack that's great for mobs of foes. The side benefit is that it effectively Tasers some foes, leaving them vulnerable to an ice attack. Cloud form also lets you trigger hidden platforms and hit specific switches.

The levels we tried appeared simple but offered nooks and crannies to explore, with hidden areas featuring items or clusters of trapped mushroom people to rescue. Defeating enemies yielded life-extending items, and exploring yielded keys to open up gates as well as other odds and ends to collect. We especially like how the levels required more than just simple left-to-right exploration. We hit several sections where we needed to trigger platforms to let us move up and down the level, which kept us on out toes.

The visuals in Dewy's Adventure definitely lean toward the cute side of things. Dewy and his various forms are pretty adorable; heck, even the enemies we saw were pretty cute. It was almost a shame to stomp them out of existence...almost. We do still appreciate a good cute smack down, and it seems as though Dewy's Adventure will provide ample opportunity for that. The levels are brightly colored and fanciful, offering detailed areas to explore that feature different themes.

The audio we heard sticks to the cute vibe and serves up the right kind of accompaniment to an adventure starring an adorable ball of water. The music was mellow and bouncy, with sound cues for timed segments or moving objects. Dewy and his mushroom friends are a chirpy bunch. Other sound effects, such as those from enemies and attacks, are all in the same vein and work.

Based on what we played, Dewy's Adventure seems like it should be an accessible game with appeal along the same lines as Elebits. We enjoyed our limited time with the work-in-progress version and were left anxious to try more. The game may seem basic at first brush, but there looks to be some cool brain-busting bits of depth to be discovered, too. The game's art style may skew young, but its gameplay appears to have some teeth to it, which we dig. Dewy's Adventure is expected to ship later this year for the Wii. Look for more on the game in the coming months.