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Fluidity is a new WiiWare release from Curve Studios and Nintendo. It has sort of a similar look to PixelJunk Shooter on PS3 – both games feature water elements in a flat 2D world – but the gameplay is totally different. Taking place inside a giant comic book, Fluidity has you tilting the environment (think LocoRoco on PSP, or those few GBA games that had a tilt sensor) to facilitate the flow of fluid. Naturally, you use a horizontal Wii Remote for motion control.

The premise is that this magical book has been infected by some inky invader (man, ink gets a bad rap all over gaming, doesn’t it? de Blob, Epic Mickey…) and you must manipulate a puddle of water through a series of puzzle mazes to build up the power to defeat the evil. The initial goal is to find coveted Rainbow Drops hidden in the levels, but you also need to locate jigsaw pieces to unlock new boards.

In the first half-hour, I made it through a very wordy tutorial and located about four Rainbow Drops in the first area. The tilting doesn’t seem to angle as far as you would think; you can’t flip the entire level upside-down, for instance. This gave me a small disconnect when the screen moved as far as it was willing to go, but I was still tilting the Remote like a mother.

The starting gameplay screen has four levels, three of which are locked. If the opener is indicative of the rest of the set, then each level will contain a dozen (or more) actual challenges of Drops and Puzzle pieces. As you collect Drops, the level automatically unlocks doors, granting you access to more rooms inside the same level. As soon as you find a Drop, the game makes you exit the level, so you can’t plow through it trying to find all the Drops in one go.

Aside from not being able to kill-tilt the thing, I have found the gravity-based gameplay very natural and easygoing. You want to try to keep your puddle together, because water separated from the main body will evaporate… and too much evaporation ends in a level failure. Sump pumps will shunt your puddle around, waterwheels will purposefully bite your puddle into chunks, and fiery enemies will need to be doused. One early challenge requires you to put out a series of miniature forest fires. Another has you floating a gear to the proper location to repair a broken machine.

Along the way, you unlock new powers for your puddle. In the tutorial, you learn to jump by jerking the Remote (blah, I’d rather it be a button press). Sometime inside the first board, you get the ability to gather the water together into a compact ball shape by holding down the 1 button. If you hold 1 for too long, the ball will explode. Both functions – ball and explosion – are required to navigate certain puzzles.

Fluidity is really nice. I already see it as a unique WiiWare must-have, leagues above the cashgrab dreck we see on the service. Yes, Fluidity is a bit on the pricy side at 1200 points, but the good news is that it has a demo so you can test it out before you give Nintendo your credit card info yet again.