The backstory to Elebits is that for over 10,000 years, humanity has lived in peaceful coexistance with a race of small creatures, the titular elebits. These creatures provide all of the energy needed to power humans' devices--there are no generators, batteries, or power plants, only elebits. With the exception of this obvious difference, history seems to have progressed along the same lines in the game as in the real world, and the game's levels look just like our own modern houses and environments. At one point, for no immediately apparent reasons, the elebits simply stop producing energy, which leaves humanity in a bit of trouble. The player's role is to restore power by collecting as many elebits as possible throughout the game's different locations. Presumably, after doing so, there is some way to get the little guys to start working again, though one wonders if the living situation would end up being as peaceful as it ostensibly was before.

Elebits is controlled with both halves of the Wii controller, the remote and the "Nunchuk" attachment. As with first person shooters on the system and somewhat similarly to PC first person shooters, the player uses the analog stick on the Nunchuk to move around and the pointer function of the remote to steer, aim, and shoot. To catch elebits and interact with the world, the player uses a multipurpose beam weapon that can grab and manipulate (read: throw) in-game objects. Elebits, which are added to the player's collection as soon as they are zapped with the gravity gun, are hidden behind and inside objects and furniture, serving as an incentive to completely ransack the surroundings. There are two basic types of elebits, those that confer watts and those that confer experience points, and these are further divided into different wattage and XP values. Collecting a certain amount of wattage is necessary to complete each level. In order to find enough elebits to obtain the necessary wattage, you'll also need to level up your gravity gun so you can manipulate heavier things. Each object in the game has a certain weight, and when you start out, your gun won't have enough strength to pick up anything beyond relatively small things such as jars, books, food, and so on. By finding and acquiring XP elebits, your gun will level up and allow you to progress to heavier things like furniture. Though the demo level consisted of only a kitchen and an outside yard area, a Konami representative demonstrating the game noted that later on the gun can become powerful enough to toss houses around.

Controlling the game with the Wii remote is quite intuitive, as the manipulation of in-game objects maps essentially directly to the movement of the player's hand. The player directly controls an aiming reticle on the screen, and only subtle wrist motions are necessary to cover the screen area. I was able to play sitting down in a chair, resting both parts of the controller on my lap. Since the Wii remote tracks movement in all directions, objects can be moved in and out along the Z axis in addition to horizontally and vertically along the X/Y plane. For example, pushing a door open requires the player to actually push forward with the remote. Having spent many, many years interacting with games using two dimensional control, it felt somewhat odd to make use of that third dimension; I actually had to fight against my gaming conditioning to a certain extent. Some objects, such as faucets or doorknobs, must be manipulated by twisting the controller either clockwise or counterclockwise. This, too, while not particularly difficult, falls outside the realm of most traditional video game control. Since the control method is such a basic part of the game (and other games for Wii), I suspect players will overcome that particular mental roadblock with more hands on experience. Still, I am curious to see how a first time gamer would respond, without such well-ingrained expectations.

Collecting docile elebits is one of the main events early in the game, but the Konami rep explained that as the player reaches new environments, the creatures become more aggressive and more difficult to wrangle. Mission objectives also become more varied; for example, a stealth-oriented level might challenge the player to be as quiet and subtle as possible when uncovering dlebits. Unfortunately, Konami did not have any of these later levels on display. Elebits' world is also scattered with more unique object interactions that go beyond ravaging formerly organized rooms. Performing actions like microwaving a container of popcorn, roasting a turkey in the oven, and shooting a basketball through a hoop will reward the player with explosions of elebits to be zapped up. That rapid fire elebit-zapping that occurs when a bevy of the little guys appears is one of the most straightforwardly fun aspects of the game.

Multiplayer will be included via what appears to be some sort of same-screen competitive mode, though that was not available for previewing. No online plans are set in stone, though Konami stated that the team is currently evaluating potential online options, including use of the system's always-on WiiConnect24 service.

Elebits' "collect progressively bigger things" gameplay structure gives the game something of a similarity to Namco's Katamari Damacy (PS2), even though the fundamentals of the games are quite different. As with that game, the odd premise serves mainly to simply provide a backdrop for an oddly enjoyable core gameplay mechanic--in this case, zapping little guys and recklessly throwing stuff around. Also like Katamari Damacy, the technical fidelity of the game's visuals seems to be of secondary importance for the dev team compared to ensuring a level of interactivity with the world that is as high as possible. Visually, it's not on the same level as some of the other Wii exclusive titles. Though Elebits has a nice clean look to it overall, it is somewhat dragged down by noticeable aliasing. That said, it was much improved from its first public showing at E3, with better lighting and other effects. Konami may be mainly working on nailing down the control mechanisms, which were also improved from E3, and then tightening up the graphics on level 3 in the runup to launch. It's also worth noting that the game runs in progressive scan and in widescreen, a nice perk for those who own widescreen HDTVs despite Wii's lack of HD resolutions.

All in all, Elebits seems to be an ideal game for the early parts of the Wii's life cycle. It makes no bones about what it is attempting to do, which is to attack head on the possibilities for interactions using the Wii controller. While there is undoubtedly some sort of story progression and resolution, the game really revolves around the fundamentally satisfying act of interacting with a well-stocked world in a novel and intuitive way. To drive that point home, the game even has a "sandbox" mode that allows players to just keep on playing in a given level after the necessary wattage level has been reached, continually powering up the gravity gun and gaining more lifting power. Assuming Konami has packed in enough varied environments, goals, and types of interactions to keep the gameplay mechanics enjoyable for a whole game's worth, Elebits should turn out to be good fun.

Konami's Elebits is expected to ship for Wii in late 2006.