Ivy the Kiwi doesn't start out as a Wii/DS game. It was already released for Windows Mobile a year ago, designed by Yuji Naka, co-creator of the Sonic games (imagine that), and is being ported to the two Nintendo consoles on April 22. That's not so far away. The game features a young kiwi chick named Ivy, who hatched after her egg fell from the sky, and couldn't find her mother. The game tracks her journey to find her mother.
The first thing you notice is the game's art style. There's more brown in every stage than on a book page with coffee spilt all over it. In fact it does remind you of a book- a very old book, with children's stories and illustrations in it. The storybook theme is quite charming, although it could be hard to see obstacles when you're navigating through all the brown.
The gameplay is simple. You're given the task to guide Ivy towards a goal-simple enough to understand. You don't control Ivy, she moves by herself, and you draw vines to guide her in the correct direction. It's not like Kirby Canvas Curse, where the path you draw will be exactly the path that Kirby will follow. The vine is straight, and serves only as a guide to Ivy's movements.
Namco Bandai's publishing the game for Wii/DS and this is one of their gameplay trailers. You'll understand the game better once you see it in movement.
Collecting feathers, guiding characters to goals, earning medals for completing within a stipulated time- this isn't the kind of game you'd want to sit down and play for 3 hours straight, it looks like it's better enjoyed in short bursts. And better-looking and sounding on the Wii, obviously. I didn't find a single trailer for the DS version. The speed which the time limit goes down is creepy though.
Let's see if I can't get a DS copy of the game. I'll tell you guys more about it once I do.
