I have crushed my own children; I no idea what any of this is.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/impressions/26666
Deep inside Nintendo's 3D booth space lurks what must be in contention for the strangest game of E3 2011. Picture Lives!, a 3DS download title, is a game that is so confoundedly odd that it is more than a little uncomfortable.
Picture Lives! starts out with the player building a creature from bits of construction paper-like creature parts (such as body pieces, legs, eyes, etc.), all of which can be resized, duplicated, stretched, rotated, and colored at the heart's content. The creature creation interface looks very similar to the Mii creation interface present in both the 3DS and Wii, however the creatures it builds are by default more strange than anything that could every be built in a Mii.
For the sake of this demo I built a six legged monster with deeply bowed legs and two unevenly sized eyes.
Once in game the character about a 2D world that is divided into platforms and populated by equally bizarre creatures and littered with food items. It can be launched by dragging a dot on the touch screen and releasing it. Pulling at an angle will send the creature flying off in the opposite direction. Simple walking can also be managed by tapping the edges of the screen, but this is far less satisfying than seeing the horrible creature flung haphazardly at platforms.
The game seems to be mostly about doing random things in the world until the "day" expires and its time to "go home." Among the things I encountered in the demo was an eating challenge in which I had to eat seven red tomatoes, a treasure chest key (a PR rep assured me that the chest must be near), sudden and unexpected egg laying by my creature (and a prompt from a PR rep to "catch" the eggs), and deification by my now gorged monster. At the end of the day I was told to crack open the eggs I had just laid in order to get "bonus points."
This game is weird.
This game might be a little too weird when it comes out for me, but creating monsters and launching them about does have some simple charm that may appeal to some people when this game is released on the 3DS eShop.
At 3:35... did you poop?
