Tengami (Hands-On) (Wii U) Preview

With no word of Broken Sword 5 coming to Wii U for the moment, Nintendo fans may be wondering where the next point-and-click adventure is going to come from. Well, it may be rather an unorthodox entry into the genre, but the pop-up book styled Tengami looks to fill the hole in the genre nicely.

One point that needs to be remembered is that this is not a text heavy adventure, focusing more on exploring the beautifully hand crafted pop-up book world laid out before the player's eyes. Moving around the ancient Japanese-style settings is purposefully slow-paced to ensure the ambience is truly appreciated, something that is not only driven by the gorgeous art direction, but heightened by David Wise's almost hypnotic soundtrack (a far cry from his previous upbeat work on the original Donkey Kong Country titles, as well as upcoming Wii U sequel, Tropical Freeze). Composing a score so different from previous games and still coming up with something that delivers on every level goes to show Wise's impressive skills and wide range.

Moving around is done by simply touching the stylus on the desired part of the Wii U's GamePad screen and waiting for the traditionally dressed male Japanese lead to meander over. Solving the mystery and cracking the plethora of puzzles along the way are not going to be simple endeavours. Nyamyam wants gamers to tackle the ancient dark fairy tale properly, rather than rushing through to the end as quickly as possible, and rightfully so as it looks like a lot of care and energy has been poured into Tengami over the past few years.

Inspired by traditional Japanese arts and crafts, Tengami has an abundance of atmosphere and is full of wonder and mystery. There are plenty of hotspots on-screen that when tapped flip, fold, slide and pull parts of the world around, helping to solve puzzles, discover secrets, and sometimes just basically figure out how to move from area of the screen to the next. Everything was extremely intuitive and thoroughly engrossing, yet as stated earlier, it is the sort of game that lives or dies depending on the setting it is played in.

One aspect not included in the demo tried was that of a hints system, and thankfully this is indeed something that is being included as there were points where it could become to taxing for certain players, having to resort to trial and error flipping and rotating of scenery.