LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias, the sequel to one of 2008’s more memorable WiiWare games, is coming soon to Nintendo’s digital store, developer Frontier announced today.
Last year’s LostWinds was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak landscape for WiiWare. This was the motion-control-based platformer that actually (well, for the most part) worked. You controlled a little lad named Toku who befriends a “wind spirit” or something, who then sets off on an adventure that finds you using the Wii Remote to make Toku jump, double jump, move rocks, solve puzzles and all that good stuff. The music was pleasant, the graphics were nice. It was a good time.
It was also amazingly brief and ended in the middle of the story. So it’s not much of a surprise to get word from developer Frontier that a sequel is presently in the works, subtitled Winter of the Melodias. Winter being the key word there: the new central gameplay mechanic here is that Toku has gained the ability to magically change the season to winter or summer wherever he goes. Melt frozen lakes to discover treasures, make the air cold so you could whip up snowballs, you know, the kind of stuff anyone would do if they could change the season. I would just leave the world in perpetual winter.
All of the wind powers that were in the first game return here in addition to the new abilities, leaving me to wonder whether you’ll have to unlock them all again. Hopefully you won’t, and hopefully Frontier will have smoothed out some of the rough edges from the first LostWinds (annoying puzzles, confusing level design) that tarnished an otherwise enjoyable experience. There’s no release date for Winter of the Melodias aside from a “coming soon,” but hopefully we’ll get our hands on this before the end of the year.
