The demo for Hudson’s new Wii game, Rooms: The Main Building is sadly too short. I don’t feel I got a great feel for what the full game might hold in terms of the story they’re trying to tell. It did however give me a decent feel for how the game works. You play as Chris who has been transported to Rooms Street, where in order to figure out what’s going on, and how to get home, you have to solve the puzzles of the Rooms mansion. This plays a little like those sliding picture puzzle games, where in order to build the full picture, you have to slide the pieces around. The concept is similar here, where in order to get through a room, you have to slide around the jumbled pieces of the room so that Chris can get out of it. The picture concept is important because you can use the backgrounds of the room pieces to figure out exactly how the room fits together. However, as you piece each room together, you may have to do so no just with the use of sliding pieces around, but with keys or magical artifacts (like telephones that teleport Chris to another room piece, or wardrobes that swap room pieces) that help you reach different room puzzle pieces.

To solve a room puzzle, you don’t have to place everything perfectly, only manage to put the pieces together so that Chris can find his way out of the room. As part of the larger part of the game, you’ll also have to pick up certain items to unlock different areas in the mansion. On the Wii, you use the Wiimote to manage selection of items, negotiation of room piece movement and just about everything else. However, even on a large television I found a lot of this difficult because the game is not very well rendered, and even where it might be detailed, the puzzles don’t take up the entire real estate on my television screen like it could. Honestly, I felt like this might not be best suited for the Wii, and might instead be better for the Nintendo DS, which the game will also be available for soon. This isn’t a huge surprise for those that might already be familiar with the flash version of the game that came out in 2007. The game isn’t a direct port, but the graphics haven’t been expanded much.

The full game promises more than 100 puzzles as you play through the Room mansion, so if you’re a fan of puzzle games, I’d say this game would definitely be worth checking out. Even though I wasn’t completely sold on the game for the Wii, had I had the full game at my fingertips, I 100% positive I would’ve tried to crank through the 100+ puzzles. It’s just the sort of great puzzle game that lends itself to hours of mostly mindless game play, that makes it worth the money.

You’ll be able to find the game the 23rd of this Month.