And Yet It Moves (Wii) Review

And Yet It Moves throws aside any real plotline, much like many of its genre brethren, and instead focuses on providing gamers with a visual style scarcely seen before and top-notch platforming mechanics. The name itself is quite an oddity, though it does make sense when discovering how the game works. Not only do you run and jump around And Yet It Move’s levels, but you must also take control of the world itself, tilting and spinning it to find your way to the goal. Flipping and rotating the screen helps your little pencil-sketch dude traverse the game world; through the mechanic you alter gravity to compensate for his limited jumping ability, enabling him to escape to areas otherwise unavailable. With a twist you can create new paths by changing the ceilings and walls into your floor, or creep/fall through thin gaps with less risk. The creatures and environmental obstacles you meet in this world, such as bats that always move to the roof, or rocks tossed by monkeys, are also affected by this movement, which you can use to your advantage - or cause yourself a disadvantage by inadvertently sending loose boulders hurtling towards you, if you’re not careful.

Moving the world is intuitive, both when using a Classic Controller or the standard motion controller, and actually improves over the original PC game, which only let you tilt at 90 degree intervals; the WiiWare version allows you to flip through a full 360 degree at once, if you so wish. Using the Wii Remote alone, you hold the 1 button to freeze the game, tilt the controller until you reach the angle you desire, then release 1 to return to normal. There are plenty of control methods though, if that doesn’t rock your world: one Remote and Nunchuk configuration has you holding the A button and making key-like rotations to twist the screen, another uses the pointer to determine the spin, each also only moving the world when you have A held down. You can also eschew motion control altogether by using the Remote’s D-pad or the Classic Controller’s shoulder buttons to get your world-swirling fix.

Although the gameplay can be summed up quite easily, Broken Rules have injected a considerable amount of level variation into And Yet It Moves; despite the low number of levels, not a single one feels like a retread of another. These levels are fairly long, but with very frequent checkpoints that signal which way to go if you lose your bearings. Getting lost is almost an impossibility, and the game is very rarely frustrating because of it, despite how easy it is to decimate your character.

And Yet It Moves’ gameplay might be its strongest facet, but it is no slump in the presentation department either. The world in And Yet It Moves is presented with a ripped paper effect, and the features of the world play around with this style, be it with an instant-death black area being where the paper ends, or cut-out enemy creatures. Your main character himself is just a black and white pencil drawing. The style as a whole is visually striking and helps the game to stand out, with a decent amount of environmental differentiation through its three worlds, including forest and cave landscapes.

Like the concept and mechanics, And Yet It Move’s musical features are highly simplistic also. In truth, there isn’t really any music to be heard, just background wildlife noises, and a pleasant humming theme accompanying the menus. A lack of music may sound like laziness, but in this case it helps to calm and ease players, and even helps the world feel more alive; you can hear even the tiniest pin drop in it.

And Yet It Moves is purely a single player endeavour, but offers so much to that player it might as well be two games in one. Aside from the main Journey mode, that will take up a considerable amount of hours with head-scratching puzzles to be tackled with an infinite number of respawns, there are other modes using the same levels that pretty much speak for themselves, such as Speedrun and Time Trials. Also included are the Limited Rotations and Survival modes, which restrict the amount of tilting you can use and your life count respectively. A few of these, and some game-altering ‘Modification’ features that can speed up the game or change the camera, are unlockable via an achievement system, which rewards the player for both basic and more abstract accomplishments through the game. From an initially minimalistic approach and beginning, And Yet It Moves opens up a whole world of content, and makes the end product a incredibly strong contender for your 1000 Wii Points.