Elebits

Eledees are tiny creatures that come in various colours and are the source of power in the game's world. One day, a lightening strike cuts the power, and the Eledee experts go to investigate, leaving their small boy called Kai home alone. He takes his parent's capture gun and rounds up as many Eledees as he can find.

The game plays like a cross between a first person shooter and hide-and-seek. You move around with the control stick, and aim with the remote, C and Z stretch and crouch, and A or B shoots. Shooting expels a ray from the gun which captures Eledees and can lift objects.

To clear a stage, you need to acquire enough Watts which is the game's scoring system. Initially, your gun can only lift very light objects, but capturing Eledees from electrical devices increases the guns power. To get the Eledees out of the electrical devices, you need to capture enough normal Eledees to activate them. Therefore, when you start out, you capture the Eledees that are out in the open, then try finding others under small objects like vases. Once you have enough to power an object like a TV, you will be notified, and then you should go find this object. Once you activate it (such as pressing the button on the TV, putting a chicken in the oven, then turning it on), the Eledees will come out, and once collected, you will be notified that your gun can lift heavier objects. You repeat the pattern until you clear the stage.

Some stages prevent you from ransacking the place by giving you a limit on how many items you are allowed to smash (items like vases and plates can be broken), or a limit is placed on the noise. Additionally, black Eledees turn up when you are really messy which launch themselves at you but they don't pose too much of a threat if you keep moving.

Some levels also have objects like toy tanks and turrets which fire at you and Kai can only take 5 hits before he fails the level. You are also under a time limit, and if you complete the stage early, you can carry on to rack up your score. If you 'fail' after the Watt limit has been reached, the level ends early but you can move on to the next.

There are many power ups to add a bit more strategy such as Cookies which attract nearby Eledees, Electromagnetic Ball to stun them, Radar to locate them, Capture Gun Power to lift heavier objects for limited time, Homing Laser to capture Eledees quickly, Noise Canceller to allow you to wreak havoc in the levels, Shield to protect you from damage and Vacuum to capture Eledees rapidly and cause destruction in the process.

There are 29 levels including a few boss stages, first starting in Kai's house, then moving on the streets, and finally ending in an amusement park.

The physics are very floaty and each object seems to have the same feel to them regardless of the mass, and the amount of sound they register seems a bit random too. I launched a large object high in the air, and when it hit the ground, no sound was registered, but it rolled and hit a curb and registered a fairly high noise. Luckily there are only a few levels which have a noise restriction so you are usually fairly free to cause a huge mess which is very fun but it does get a bit silly when you are throwing houses around!

The graphics are very basic but it works well enough. There are some frame-rate issues when you are launching many objects up in the air. It's surprisingly fun hunting the Eledees and causing lots of destruction in the process, although the game is fairly shallow and repetitive. It is also very short, being only 4 hours long but you don't really want it to last much longer.