LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias - Preview - Part 3 - Nintendo

We’re asked not to divulge the reason why Summerfalls Village’s climate changed so drastically, but it doesn’t take long to discover that another elemental spirit had some part to play in that. Toku and Enril soon encounter Sonté, Spirit of Seasons, albeit in a guise unexpected of someone of her stature. Sonté bestows the pair with the power to instantly switch seasons when they spot one of her totems. The effect is marvellous – even in its unfinished state – as the blue-ish hues of winter recede to reveal lush greens and vivid browns of the locale in its summer state.

Waterfalls run through the scenery and bushes dance in the wind as we see Toku take a dive deep into a pond where before there was only ice. “The changing of the season opens up new possibilities for exploration,” says Burgess as he guides Toku through an underground lake with a graceful arch of the Wii Remote.

The attention to detail is striking: we see a school of fish carefully approach the floating Toku, then quickly disappear as he makes his way back to the surface before he runs out of oxygen. Equally, our little hero himself has been granted a fresh set of animations that have a cute way of displaying his relative helplessness – he slips around a little on ice and performs a quick roll when he grabs onto a ledge now. The guy’s certainly trying, but his movement – guided by the Nunchuk’s Control Stick – is still no match for the wonderful powers of wind controlled by the Wii Remote.

The first of Enril’s newly rediscovered powers is Cyclone, which allows the player to create just what it says on the box by a firm shake of the remote while the A and B Buttons are pressed. Burgess makes a small cyclone appear that a quick gust of wind easily sends towards an unsuspecting, new kind of Glorb. “Like Enril’s other powers, such as Gust and Vortex, the Cyclone power allows you to aid your progress in a variety of ways. You can use Cyclone to suck the water out of a shallow pond, creating this cloud of rain that you can guide elsewhere, to make things grow or to extinguish a flaming Glorb, for example. Later on in the game you’ll even be able to dig into soil by simply creating a cyclone that works as a drill.”

We’re shown several smaller puzzles where the new power is employed to alter the environment and clear a path for Toku, one step at a time. A switch submersed in a shallow pond is flipped by using Cyclone to suck the water out of the pond and then in winter dropping a snowball onto it. In the absence of a Jumbrella, Cyclone also proves a fine tool to take Toku to higher ground, while even adding new ways to deal with a particularly pesky breed of Glorb that preys on unwary trespassers and snaps out of the ground as they approach.

Powers transported from the previous title have been given new possibilities as well. The Vortex move, still executed by drawing a quick circle with the Wii Remote while the A Button is pressed, allows Enril to gather snowflakes into snowballs, which can – naturally – be employed in a variety of ways.