Nintendo ain't just for kids anymore. The company
has worked hard to reach out to gamers of all ages—through shots of old
people boxing, hipsters mixing mojitos with Mario, and the strange way grown adults can take Super Smash Bros.
Brawl very, very seriously. But the problem
with mixing your demographics is that the games for kids are no longer cordoned
off. In the case of LostWinds,
indie developer Frontier has made a short, charming platformer that's a little
thin for grown-ups, but excellent for younger players.
LostWinds never
gets better than in the first few minutes, when you start sweeping the cursor
across the screen and watch the leaves rustle at your touch. LostWinds tells the story of a little boy who can
control the wind. You'll use this trick—via the motion sensors on the
Wii-mote—to gust yourself over Andean cliffs and solve Zelda-esque puzzles with pressure plates, levers, and
torches. Yet nothing's as much fun as using a slight breeze to make the village
kids giggle and the old men gripe.