MACHINE has released a new puzzle game available for WiiWare on January 25, 2010. The game is simple and should hit home to all the Tetris fans (every gamer) with every piece directly taken from Tetris. No more, and no less.

In bittos+ you are given a grid of 100×100 and you can place the pieces where ever you want. Each stage’s difficulty is determined by the size of the square required to make a combo and how fast the blocks will break or lock-up. Let me explain: if the stage’s requirement is squares of 3×3, then you must make these squares with the given pieces. Then every piece on the grid is given a certain amount of time (depending on the difficulty level) before they break or lock-up. If they’re in shapes of 3×3 then they will break and be cleared off the grid (exactly what you want to do in a puzzle game to continue). But if a piece is left lingering too long and not in the the required shape of 3×3, then they will be locked on the grid until a nearby “breaking” occurs to clear them away. If you lock up too much on the grid of 100×100, then you will lose. Hope this all makes sense.

The game has three major modes, including adventure mode, time attack mode and survival mode. Each is pretty self explanatory. The adventure mode could have been a little better in terms of pacing. Each level has 9 stages within. The difficulty is barely getting any higher from stage to stage. Level 1 should be blown through, but because there’s 9 stages it feels like a very boring eternity.

The controls available for bittos+ are the Wii remote pointer, Wii remote turned sideways, and Wii classic controller. The best would be the Wii classic controller. With the pointer, the shapes on the screen don’t change, so they’re still the same size resulting in a plethora of unnecessary grabbing. Something they should have looked towards Dr. Mario for WiiWare was that the pointer option for that game had super-sized pills, because they knew the pointer isn’t as accurate as the D-pad/thumbstick. The Wii remote turned sideways is nice, but it’s missing a button. You can only turn the pieces counter-clockwise. The Wii classic remote is the best, because it features two buttons for clockwise, two buttons for counter-clockwise and even two buttons for placing a piece down. But talk about excess.

The overall presentation of bittos+ is mediocre. The music in the game is good. It is relaxing and mellow, but stays constant throughout the whole game game, in each and every mode. There is absolutely no way of getting around it with no options to change the music, so it gets bland. Backgrounds change, but they aren’t really worth talking about. The menus look as if they were done really quickly and can be a bit confusing. One of the options is a happy face and a flaming-eyed face, with the words “mellow” and “wired” beside each respectively. What is that? Easy and hard mode? Little confusing things like that.

There is some replayability with standard stuff such as awards and high scores in bittos+, but neither make or break the game, especially with no online component. The core puzzle game is interesting and addicting if you let it. It’s a good game, but nothing overly great. Definitely a very casual game and for 800 Nintendo Points could be worth your while.

Game: bittos+ (Wii)

Release Date: 1/25/2010

Developer: Unconditional Studios

Publisher: MACHINE Studios

MSRP: 800 Nintendo Points ($8.00)

Additional Info: A copy of this game was provided to DualShockers, Inc. by the publisher for purposes of this review.