And Yet It Moves

As fiendish as the game can appear at times, there's always comfort to be sought from failure. It's a game where the tightness of the level design dictates that it's generally your fault if you screw things up. Even if it isn't true, you always have the sense that you'll do better next time. This steely determination sets in early on, and the forward momentum carries you through all three chapters (plus an epilogue) across the three hours that it'll take you to barrel through.

Even when the Journey is over, there are the other play modes to draw you back for more. Survival tasks you with solving each level with a maximum number of lives, while Time Trial forces you to reach each checkpoint within a strict time limit. Elsewhere you'll unlock Limited Rotations, where you only get to manipulate the environment a specific number of times. As with everything else, harsh doesn't even cover it. But the more familiar you become with each level and the unique demands of the control system, the more you'll embrace the fearsome challenge.

Interestingly, the various control options have a surprisingly distinct effect on the game's playability. By default, the game suggests you play with the Wii Remote held sideways, with d-pad for left/right movement, 1 to stop the action to allow you to tilt, and 2 to jump.

It seems simple enough, but actually, the other options that employ the nunchuk seem to offer greater precision. With the nunchuk used for movement, and the remote pointed at the screen, you can either rotate the world as if you were turning a key, or by pointing and dragging - both are superbly intuitive, and it's strange that the game doesn't make more effort to flag them up. Regardless of the option you choose, though, it's a game that's a natural fit for the Wii.

It's remarkable to find a game of such effortless brilliance showing up in such an unheralded fashion. Similar to Limbo's rather low-key arrival on Xbox Live Arcade last month, games like And Yet It Moves add weight to the growing feeling that the indie scene has never been such a vibrant and exciting place to explore. It also inspires a mute sense of frustration that mediocre boxed games in done-to-death genres get all the marketing dollars, but that's another story. The public gets what the public wants, apparently.

The fact that games hell-bent on breaking all the rules appear to be showing up on an increasingly regular basis across multiple download channels is genuinely heart-warming. If, for whatever reason, you missed out on its PC release last year, or have held off buying a WiiWare title, now is definitely the time to make amends. At this price, there's no excuse not to reward Broken Rules for its fine efforts. And if you're still not convinced, just watch the game in action.