This game sounds stupidly fun.

It's easily my most anticipated Wii game.

Very interesting blog ,thanks noname2200. :D

Even more awesome-filled details!

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/956/956114p1.html

While superficially cutesy and innocent, Little King's Story actually provides Wii owners with an experience that's somewhat uncommon on Wii – a game of considerable depth, scope and production values hiding behind a sugary presentation. The closest comparisons can be drawn to games like Pikmin and Harvest Moon, where elements of troop management and strategy action blend with farming, town planning and general exploration.

Set in a mock-European countryside, you play the eponymous 'Little King' himself – a fresh faced figure of authority who inherits a kingdom in the throes of economic woe. There's no money in the bank, there's almost universal unemployment and residents wander the streets aimlessly, just waiting for something – anything- to happen, or someone to give them some instruction. That's where you, the player, come in. It's time to revitalise your custom kingdom – starting with a fresh name and a focus on pure expansion.

Initially, you're led through the basics of gameplay by your personal advisor, Howser. As he explains, the economy is fundamentally broken, so your first point of business is to gather some layabout adults in the town's centre and start digging for gold – to be converted into 'Bol' – the currency across the land.

Your village grows as you take down monsters and attract new villagers.

The game is played with remote and nunchuk, but is also compatible with the Classic Controller; it eschews motion controls for direct input too, which is a refreshing change to the usual tacked-on nature of many Wii games' controls. Essentially, the game plays a lot like Pikmin – you use the control stick on the nunchuk to guide Little King around the landscape, with the D-pad's left and right points rotating the isometric camera. The king can walk up to anyone and use his royal might to pull them into line behind him – at first, one at a time, and later in formations of up to 50. Then, it's up to you to figure out the best way to use each townsperson to their fullest – soldiers for battling, farmers for harvesting, cooks for cooking and so on. To put them to work you literally face Little King towards a task and launch the townsperson towards it; the game's context-sensitive locations ensure that they'll do the appropriate action on the right spot.

To gather enough money to progress to the next main mission, you need to spend some time foraging, digging and searching through the town, collecting bags of gold that Howser then converts into Bol. It's a simple introduction to the mechanics of commanding and retrieving. However, things began to ramp up in complexity as we jumped to a later save file to sample the wider game. With 7 kingdoms to ultimately conquer, side quests from the various townspeople (provided to you through an in-game email / messaging system), mid and end-level bosses, a full day/night cycle (one hour in-game equals about one minute real time), mini games, a daily news ticker-bar, secret animals, more than 30 classes of characters – clearly, this is a game of shocking complexity.

It's also an experience that ultimately gives back what you put in. At an absolute minimum, we're told there's 20 hours of main storyline to complete – but to sample everything the game has to offer brings the number closer to 80 hours or longer. The minutiae of customising your village is where the meat of the game rests. Like something like Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon, a real putting effort into creating and training up a personalised cast of tailors, chefs, soldiers, blacksmiths, washerwomen and so on means that you have an emotional investment in these characters. You know them by name, by face – and they can be killed – adding to the moralistic pressures to keep them alive.

Visually striking, Little King's Story may look adorable, but don't let that put you off.

You're not punished, for the death of a townsperson – they're either revived or 'replaced' by new wanderers entering your village. As the game progresses and you take down all manner of boss monsters (we took on a demonic bull in a paddock and walked away barely clinging to life), your castle itself – your seat of power – grows in size, complexity and feature set.

Conquering the neighbouring boroughs also yields a oddball benefit; you claim their princesses for your own. Suddenly, the castle keep has a princess' quarter, gradually filled with a harem of poached knaves. Who knew Little King was a polygamist? Who knew there was a Wii game that touted polygamy? The things you learn.

The game deals with town construction in a mostly hands-off way. While seated on your royal throne, you work your way through a menu of town planning options, gradually upgraded and unlocked as your reach extends. Eventually, the other towns you unlock actually come with themes of their own, such as Glamour Town, Gourmet Town and all the trimmings and quirks that you might expect to come with these. The way you command your delegates also improves when you eventually unlock your 'Podium' – a platform to address the community and also customise formations for battle or productivity. If you want to surround yourself with 30 soldiers, 10 chefs and some farmers, you can. If you need to traverse a tricky path between hazards, you can command them to follow your exact path as you walk it.

There are still a few question marks that remain, but from what we've seen so far, Little King's Story has the depth and considered design to really make it stand out from the glut of generic releases on the horizon. The presentation, which we haven't really touched on here, speaks for itself; stylised super-deformed characters, illustrated cutscenes and classical music pulled from sources like Carmen and the great composers. It's a quality production so far and we can't wait to see how all these elements come together.

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Can't wait Can'twait cantwaitcantwaitwaitican'twaitcantcan'tcantwaitwaitcan'tIcantwaiticantwaitwaitcan'tcan'twaitcan'tcant

Polygamy???

I'm SOOOOOOO getting this game

Strange decision regarding the controls. Such context sensitivity is a workaround for the generally limited controls for strategy afforded by regular game-pads, and in spite of the Wii having IR, they decide to go with controls that are typical of a classic controller.

It still looks like it'll be awesome, and I could be wrong, they might have made better controls than I imagine, but it's strange that Pikmin is being upgraded to have IR controls while this is doing something that could have been done on any console.

 http://wii.ign.com/dor/objects/892457/project-o-untitled/videos/LKS08TGS_eng.html  

Now this is funny.

I choose to believe that the delays mean they're polishing the everloving crap out of this game.

damn i need this game. when is the release date?

lol, that was awesome!

 I'm kind of glad they delayed it. I've been eyeing the new Rune Factory personally, and I don't think I could manage two big time investment games like these at once.