LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias Preview

Little Toku's new cyclone power will help him fly high into the air

When in winter, snowballs can be created by quickly drawing a circle. These then fall to earth, pushing down time-based switches – one of the classic platform game puzzles. As before, using the wind to send fire from torches burns down vines that block your way, but ice barriers can be destroyed in the same way. Clearly, the potential is for a much more varied game this time around, with scope for more complex, elaborate puzzles with perhaps more than one solution. Those who criticised the first game for being too easy and short should be pleased by this.

Switching seasons isn't only used to solve puzzles, it can help Toku defeat enemies. New are the blue and red glorbs. Blues can be frozen with a quick left to right and back again flick of the Wii Remote, and then destroyed with a downward gush of wind. Reds are vulnerable to water. The cyclone power can be used to send Toku spiralling up into the air, defeat enemies and drill into rock.

Little Toku isn't immune to the freezing cold that winter brings. Although it was disabled for my hands-on demo, in the final game Toku won't be able to spend too long in the cold. When you first arrive in Summerfalls Village, you'll have to keep Toku next to lit torches, or even red glorbs, treading a fine line between allowing yourself to be attacked by them and standing close enough for them to keep you warm. Luckily, you won't have to battle against the cold for long. Fairly early in the game Toku meets a friendly face, called Smith, who gives him a coat that negates the cold.

If LostWinds' graphics proved what WiiWare games were truly capable of, then Winter of the Melodias will blow you away. It looks as wistful as its predecessor, but with a slightly higher fidelity. And it's full of nice little touches. You'll see Toku's breath in the cold, for example. In winter the screen is draped in falling snow. The 2.5D environments are again eye catching, with plenty going on and superb lighting effects. The art style is perfectly pitched – a kind of cross between Aztec fantasy and the superb Capcom adventure Okami. Some moan that the Wii is a console devoid of graphically impressive titles. They obviously haven't played LostWinds.

The graphics are again beautiful - perhaps the best WiiWare has to offer.

More important than the graphics, however, is the quality of the platforming. My hands-on, while short, proved that Frontier is well aware of this. The little things, like making and missing jumps when you feel you should and the slight delay that occurs when you use the Wii Remote to send Toku flying on gusts of winds, make it such a joy to play. You know you've got a good platformer in your hands when you hardly notice the controls – a bit like a good referee.

In this regard Frontier's taken the smart choice of not messing too much with what made LostWinds so compelling in the first place. Take the short pause, for example. Frontier initially removed it for this sequel, and it proved a popular design decision with fans of the original. But when it discovered that newcomers struggled without it, it soon put the delay back in. Clever decisions like that that will no doubt make LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias the premier WiiWare title when it's finally released.

LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias is due out exclusively on WiiWare in October.