Elebits takes place in an alternate universe where humans and Elebits (creatures made of “bits” of “electricity”) have lived in peace for over 10,000 years. The Elebits also just happen to be the planet’s only source of power, running everything from kettles and irons, to light bulbs and heaters. One day though they vanish and leave the world in darkness and chaos (sounds a bit like the New York black out a few years ago) which leaves you the inevitable task of finding the strange creatures and restoring power to the planet once more.
Just another day at PALGN HQ.
You start the game in your character’s house armed with a manipulation ray gun, which is used to pick up objects, open doors and interact with the general environment. Like most Wii games, the Wii remote acts as a pointer for the ray gun while the nunchuck controls the movement of your character. When holding onto objects, you will have complete control over them allowing you to move them sideways, upwards, downwards or throw them across the room. This is where the game’s charm truly lies as you’ll not only be moving small appliances around, you also be shifting cars and relocating homes. The game’s physics engine allows you to do things that aren’t even needed to complete the game such as stack objects on top of each other to build towers. But don’t get too carried away, your primary objective while doing this is to find and collect hiding Elebits you come across and what’s more is you’ll be under a time limit to do it all in.
It’s not just a simple task of moving objects though. Occasionally, you’ll be required to use different tactics to catch the Elebits. Some Elebits will need to be snuck up on in order to catch while others will need to be brought out of hiding by making loud noises. There’s also a variety of Elebits to catch, with some being evil and actually harming you. As you catch them, appliances in the house will start to operate. A microwave, for example, will open revealing more Elebits and allow you to cook food, which may attract even more of the little critters. Not only will household appliances start working, your ray gun will also become more powerful allowing you to move bigger objects (you can’t expect to be chucking cars into swimming pools right away). There will also be small puzzles to solve such as when two drawers are open and an Elebit can clearly be seen hiding in the bottom drawer. To get to it, you’ll need to close the top draw.
Multiplayer has been confirmed to support up to four people and will have you play simultaneously with friends to see who can collect the most Elebits under a certain time limit. Screenshots (below) have suggested that multiplayer will be played on a full screen however, we're unsure how players move around the area. Notably screenshots display only three players. Perhapes one player controls where the others go.
The multiplayer mode in all its rainbow coloured glory.
In an essence, Elebits is close to a virtual hand. Sure, other games like Metroid and Red Steel follow similar traits with the Wii controller being used as a pointer, but the major difference in Elebits is you can push, pull, open and move items with freedom whereas in the other games, you’re more limited due to the nature of the plot. We’re not saying this is a bad thing, every Wii game will use the controller differently to meet the game’s design, Elebits feels a little more unique though, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.
Elebits was originally scheduled to be a Wii launch title for the US however, Konami delayed it a few weeks ago giving an early December release date. While it would be nice to see it in PAL regions before this year’s end, at the moment it’s looking like we can expect Konami’s first Wii title sometime next year. We’ll be anticipating its release until then.
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