Elebits
Review

Elebits (2006) (also known as Eledees) is a light-gun shooting adventure. To play you point at the screen with the Wii Remote and use your gun to move objects around and solve puzzles as well as shooting things. It's an unusual combination of hide-and-seek and shooting what works really well with family groups.

You move through the different areas of the game, from inside the house to out in the street. As you go you capture the the Elebits by shooting them and extracting their energy. This then enables you to access more of the area with your extended power to use lights, appliances and so on.

You also manipulate objects as part of the hunt. This involves lifting up furniture, looking underneath objects and then catching the Elebits as they flee. The Wii Remote is an integral part of this action and is used not only to aim like a light-gun but also turning, pulling, and shaking things in the world: twisting a doorknob, pulling out drawers, turning on a tap or even smashing vases against a wall.

As you progress you discover that you also need to manage the mood of the Elebits, indicated by graphics above their heads. Ensuring they are happy results in more watts when they are collected. This means you need to take care to not be too disruptive with your searching, as well as using cookies to tactically make the Elebits happy before collecting them.

The results is an approachable puzzle game with similarity to Pikmin. Here though, it is more about the novel interactions and poking around the levels than deep strategy. There's a version of the game on the Nintendo DS, Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero that offered a similar challenge but focused on the touch screen.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Elebits 12 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated a year ago.