Art of Balance (Wii U)

Game Info

After making an appearance on both Nintendo’s Wii and 3DS, Shin’en Multimedia has brought to Wii U owners  the definitive version of it’s charming puzzle game Art of Balance.  With all features of the previous iterations still intact, Shin’en has manged to squeeze even more game play modes into this fun, yet relaxing eShop title.

The objective is an easy one.  Simply stack all the given blocks on a structure protruding from the water’s of a zen type water bowl.  Doing this is actually a whole lot more difficult then it sounds.  The structures that you will have to stack the blocks on will be rigid, sometimes floating or even rounded.  Even when you get the blocks stacked, you still have to get them to remain on the structure for 3 seconds without touching the water.  Then Art of Balance gets even more devious and adds in glass blocks that break via times, pressure or other various methods but the evil difficult is what makes this game so good.

You can use various control methods to place the blocks.  You can use the thumbsticks on the GamePad, the touchscreen on the GamePad or even the Wii Remote.  The Wii Remote feels the most natural to me when you are playing on screen, but when you go off-screen mode, nothing beats the stylus. Grabbing the blocks with the stylus, you can then tap the L or R to rotate the blocks and then remove the stylus from the touchscreen to drop the block.

The main chunk of Art of Balance takes place in Arcade mode, which will feel familiar if you have played the previous versions of the title.  This mode features over 200 puzzles and also allows for jump in/jump out co-op, which works but feels clunky at the same time.  Another returning mode is Endurance mode.  In this mode, you have 3 “lives” until it’s game over.  You will earn points by successfully completing an endless amount of puzzles and will get bonuses for speed completions.  This also has an online leaderboard and co-op as well to make things a little more interesting.  In a competitive online mode called Swift Stackers, you can battle in teams to complete the puzzles before the other teams.  It’s nice seeing indies take advantage of the online features that Nintendo offers.  The last mode, Tower Tumble, is similar to Jenga but in reverse.  Instead of pulling blocks you place blocks down and the one who makes the tower crash loses, giving the other players a point.

Graphically, I couldn’t see how they could make this game any better looking.  The Zen bowl has a sense of photo-realism and the physics of the water look phenomenal as the blocks come crashing down.  The soundtrack has a nice relaxing theme to it, that probably helps extend the lives of your controllers by soothing your anger from the ramped up difficulty of the later levels.

The Recommendation

For an fan of the puzzle genre, this is about as good as it gets.  Even if you already own Art of Balance, I feel like there is enough new stuff here to warrant a double or triple dip into the game.  Shin’en knows how to get the most of of Nintendo’s systems and it shows here.  With tight controls, amazing graphics and a great challenge, Art of Balance should be part of everyone’s Wii U library.