Elebits was one of those games during the initial period of the Wii that really didn’t catch my attention.  It looked interesting enough to purchase once I looked at some early footage, and to be honest, I spent countless hours destroying the house trying to find these critters to upgrade my gun to destroy the house even more.  With the recent announcement of Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero for the DS, I’ve been patiently waiting to see how this series will translate to the handheld.

When I was able to grab the demo (this title wasn’t available to the general media), I was already placed in what looked like an open grass field with a few trees and rocks surrounding the environment.  The main character can either be controlled with the D pad or the stylus, I prefer the stylus due to extended hours playing Phantom hourglass, and there is a giant white Elebit that follows you as you traverse through out the playing field.  A convenient map is placed on the top screen, and shows your positioning, as well as various landmarks similar to the The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past map screen.

The playing concept is fairly straightforward.  You run around trying to find Elebits to upgrade your gun’s wattage, by tapping rocks and trees with your stylus and waiting for them to jump out.  The way you actually collect these Elebits is a little different.  You have to tap each individual Elebit with your stylus, and then you tap your white Elebit once you have tapped each one, and he zooms around the screen and gets them.  It can get a little tricky if there is a large group of them on the screen, because once you tap one of them, your white Elebit begins to electrify on the screen, and you have a timer bar at the bottom.  If you exceed this time, you will have to start over again.

Puzzles in this game are pretty simple.  The player needs to collect Elebits to increase gun wattage, use new gun wattage to move things to advance in the stage, to get more Elebits.

The last encounter I had before the end of the demo was with another large Elebit that had fire breath.  Once I solved the puzzle to set him free, I was able to control him.  You can switch off between the different sidekick Elebits, depending on their abilities.  With this new fire breathing Elebit, I was able to burn down bushes to further advance my adventure until the end of my demo.

Honestly, if you are looking for something with a unique physics engine and plenty of challenging stages searching for these critters, this title isn’t going to work for you.  Essentially this title is for those that are looking for more of an explorer title with some minor item collecting and pretty trivial puzzle solving.

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