LostWinds

LostWinds and its sequel, LostWinds - Winter of the Melodias, are two old WiiWare games, which were made by Frontier Development and got released in 2008 and 2009 respectively. I have played them both on the Nintendo Wii, back when they were fairly new, and I was convinced that I wrote a review somewhere at that time, but I couldn't find anything... So, I decided to play through them again and finally share my thoughts for real.

For this I have used the Steam versions, where they are basically for free during a sale. However, it's noticeable how those are mere dumps of the WiiWare games, after the Nintendo Wii Shop Channel found its end. There are no options in the games whatsoever, where you have to edit some of the game files to change the language, resolution, and controls. It's not difficult to do, but it's somewhat inconvenient. At least it looks prettier on the PC, where the art style has aged really well and already profits from an increased resolution.

Anyway, LostWinds is another "Metroidvania", if you can call it that. But after playing Hollow Knight this feels like soothing for your soul, because it's essentially the entire opposite. It's very short and easy, where you can beat this in one evening, and very relaxed, where the focus is more on puzzling than on combat.

The core gimmick of the game is that you can control the wind via a pointer. This is done with the Wii Remote or your mouse, where you can draw paths for the wind. The game's main character, Toku, can only walk and pick things up, where you have to assist him with the wind wherever you can, as the wind spirit "Enril". At first you can only make him do small hops with the wind, but gradually you will unlock new abilities, where at the end you can just fly anywhere you want.

It can be a bit fiddly, though. Especially using the vortex ability is frustrating at times, because first you have to flip objects into the air and then draw a circle around them, but often they just fall down before you can pull this off. I never really got the hang of it to perform this reliably and dealing with objects handles like a handicapped version of the wizard from the Trine games.

Combat is also entirely done via the wind and can be equally awkward later on. There are only four different enemies in the game and the basic "glorbs" are simply enough to defeat by pushing them against walls or the ground via the wind. It's fun and simple. The ones with leafs around them need you to repeat this process several times. However, later enemies need you to get a bit more creative or even use the vortex, where this can be a problem, especially since Toku is a sitting duck.

You get four hearts and enemies don't instantly do damage, so there is a bit of reaction time to get them off Toku. You can eat fruits to heal up, where Toku takes a bite and then crushes the fruit for some reason, which is funny.

The game is very atmospheric with calm music and lots of background interactions with the wind. It's enjoyable to sweep over everything and just see what happens. Sadly, this isn't connected to any real secrets, like there were in Donkey Kong Country Returns with the blowing. Here it's just for your amusement, which seems like a missed opportunity, because there is a lot of stuff that could have been done with the mechanic. And sometimes you even expect it to do something special, like reveal an item, but it never does.

There are 24 "hidden" idols in the game to collect, though, with one in each of the sections, which are connected in several ways. Collecting them has no purpose whatsoever other than getting a sense of completion out of it, which is another missed opportunity here. It's really just there as an "incentive" to explore every nook.

On your journey you will really only go through two different areas: the villages and hills above the ground, as well as an underground cave system. And here things can start to look a bit similar and repetitive.

Overall the game is very linear and even likes to block off paths you're not supposed to take, like Metroid: Other M. Only that it feels even less natural here. At the end there are two things to look for at once, where you have a choice where to go next, but it doesn't really matter. It then all ends after the first and only boss, where the whole game feels more like a demo. It even ends with an advertisement for the sequel...

This will all sound very critical, where it's not a big recommendation. I had fond memories of playing LostWinds originally, however, where it felt like THE title for WiiWare, which was all about small downloadable games on the Wii. It even made me obsess with getting multiple WiiWare Zelda games at the time, which never happened, probably because Nintendo wanted the platform to be for smaller developers and not give them even more competition than what they already had with the Virtual Console.

The Wii's system memory was very limited and Frontier had achieved a lot with something that was just around 33MB (the PC version takes 405MB for some reason, where maybe the textures got increased in size). The mechanic of drawing the wind in a platforming game was also quite innovative at the time and it's very much a charming game. For the small price (until November 29th you can get both games for 2.99€ on Steam) there isn't much you can do wrong here. So, if you're looking for a small and relaxed Metroidvania for in between, then LostWinds may be worth a shot.

The sequel is also more interesting with its season mechanic, but we will look at this game in a separate post, coming soon.