In Wik: The Fable of Souls you play the character of Wik, a ginger frog-like tongue slinging, bug eating acrobatic creature. The Story of Wik has never been told, in truth, it needs a skilled hand to unfold. Your interest and curiosity we intend to pique, with a fantastic fable that is utterly unique.

The popular PC version of Wik and The Fable of Souls has come out trumps with some impressive awards. Reflexive Entertainment last year proudly announced that the PC incarnation of Wik and The Fable of Souls won three awards at the 2005 Independent Games Festival in San Francisco. Wik Also won the 2005 Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Award for downloadable game of the year! The following is all of the Awards that the PC version of Wik and The Fable of Souls has won in 2005; Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Downloadable Game of the Year, IGF Downloadable Game of the Year (Seumas McNally Award), IGF Innovation in Visual Arts, IGF Innovation in Game Design.

Now with all those awards under its spiky orange hair, let's just hope that the Xbox 360 Live Arcade version can live up to the hype and more importantly is it worth your hard earned MS points?

Gameplay

This is in no way your typical arcade shoot 'em up or side scrolling adventure; this is something different, this is Wik. In Wik's single player escapades there are three modes of play; story mode, challenge mode and bonus levels - In which there are over 100 levels to play through!

In each of the single player modes you take control of Wik as you either have to try to feed your companion Slotham with the required amount of grubs all before he walks out of view, also you can often collect jewels and coins that appear for extra points; if your fast enough to feed your companion and collect them at the same time. Things get increasingly difficult as you progress; not only do you have to feed your companion before he gets away, but you have birds to worry about that fly in and steal the grubs that you need to feed Slotham with; not to forget the scorpions as well. One sting from one of those pesky critters and you’re dead and have to restart the level again. The above applies to both Story mode and Challenge mode; though playing through Challenge mode is a lot more, well... Challenging. The Bonus Levels mode is a variety of different tasks, including performing basic loops as you latch onto obstacles with your long elasticized tongue, or simply avoiding death by keeping out of a fire pit, and more obstacles. In doing some specific challenges you can on occasion unlock an Achievement.

Graphics

This is where the game slightly falls short, the graphics are best described as bland. It's not all bad though, as Wik's cunning and sometimes challenging game play and cheeky sound make up for this. It is mainly the backgrounds that are bland and appear washed out, everything else is brought forward and looks slightly more colorful as to stand out from the bland back drops. Every so often a power up will appear on the screen and when one of these appears it slows down time (apart from Wik) and has some really nice visual effects, with what can best be described as exploding clusters or fireworks appearing on different points of the level.

Sound

The soundtrack in Wik is superb and complements the game very well. It is an unusual soundtrack to say the least, but then the game is unusual; but I like to think of it more as unique, in its own special way. The sound effects are pretty basic; you hear every slurp as you suck up some grubs for your companion, and you can hear your ginger haired friend hopping and swinging around convincingly. Also, the above power up mentioned in the Graphics section appears to have a rather funky short-soundtrack of its own; for the limited time that the power up is active for, a faster beat will play instead of the typical soundtrack.

Longevity

There is plenty to keep you busy in Wik: The Fable of Souls; with three different single player modes to swing through, which all combine to more than 100 levels of play! There is a local multiplayer mode as well, with a total of three players; which is sure to lead to a lot of fun and hair pulling moments. The Achievements in the game help to add to the replay value, which encourages you to continue playing through to perform certain maneuvers or having a total of 500 grubs in Wik's mouth throughout the course of game. Once you get through the game, if you've still not had enough of Wik, then you can always try to get ahead of your buddies by completing it faster than any of your friends and cementing your very own legacy on the Wik leader boards!

Overall

Wik: The Fable of Souls, is a very unique game; there is currently nothing else like it on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The option for online multiplayer would have surely added more replay value to the game, but to give credit where it’s due, this is my favorites Xbox Live Arcade game at the moment.

Is it worth your precious MS points though? Well yes, I think it is worth the MS points. It's not a cheap one by any means, it costs 800 MS points. So as always you can download a FREE trial of the game from the Xbox Live Arcade before you splash out. You may not instantly like it, however I recommend you give it at least ten minutes of your time, as I'm sure you will like it, once you understand how it plays.