Art Style: Rotozoa

Today I downloaded the newest game in the Art Style series for WiiWare. I was quickly sold on the idea of Rotozoa by the initial trailer that was released not too long ago with Art Style: light trax and X-Scape. At the price point of on 600 Nintendo Points I felt no remorse for the purchase. It was also nice that Rotozoa is only 62 blocks in size and was a quick download. In a few blinks of an eye I was able to hop into the world of Rotozoa, instantly I was impressed by the title screen music. I even sat there for a minute to enjoy the music and stylish simplicity of the start menu.



As I started playing, I began to get frustrated with unique gameplay; not too unlike Art Style Orbient/Obrbital, but enough to throw me off my game. You control a Rotozoan, a single celled organism with varying numbers of tentacle. Move around with the Wii Remote D-Pad and rotate either clockwise, or counter-clockwise with the 1 and 2 buttons. The goal being, collide your tentacles into smaller, like colored organisms.



At first you only have two tentacles, and gameplay is simple and relatively slow. Given that I would expect Rotozoa to be easy at first, but I was a bit underwhelmed by my own failure to master the beginning levels. As I began to understand how to better play I started to breeze through the stages and unlock new modes.



Once I tried the new modes that I unlocked I realized, much like Art Style: Box Life, the main stages are really just training for the core of the game. In Box Life it was the Factory mode; in Rotozoa, it the Endless and Snake modes. In this section of the game, it starts to take on a more traditional puzzle game flow and thus takes on the more addicting feel of puzzle games like Tetris and Lumines (by the way, where in the world is Lumines for WiiWare or DSiWare).