What's the game about? When Sonic the Hedgehog creator Yuji Naka left Sega to start independent developer Prope, many wondered what kind of game the new company would make. In the past few weeks, a teaser website went online for the company's first game, Let's Tap, which is described as "the first game even penguins can play."

It turns out that the game involves setting the Wii Remote face down on a small cardboard box, and you play by tapping the box -- this shakes the remote subtly and registers movement in the game. So, yeah, the penguin thing kind of makes sense, and it seems like the cardboard box will come with the game (but I can't confirm this). Let's Tap is scheduled to ship in Japan in December, and it seems to be a multiplayer-focused party game.

What's new for Tokyo Game Show? Prope had two different types of demo stations for show visitors to check out. One was a "visualizer" that showed different scenes that attendees could change by tapping; they could create ripples in an ocean scene or make fireworks explode over a city.

The other was more of a traditional game, which featured holographic-looking characters (think Metal Gear VR Missions) trying to make their way, from left to right, across an obstacle course. This starts out simply, with you needing to tap lightly to jog and tap harder to jump or hurdle over small barriers. But after the first stage, the game brings in other challenges, such as tapping in rhythm to blow up a balloon that will shoot you to the next part of the obstacle course, or jumping at the right time to hit a jump pad that will move you through the stage quicker. At TGS, this mode only featured one A.I.-controlled character for players to race against, but there were lanes on the screen for four characters, so it seems like Let's Tap could be a four-player game.

What's our take? The graphics in the main game mode are very simplistic, and there's a lot we don't know about the game -- most specifically, if there'll be other game modes and how complicated the game's stages get as the game progresses. But it's interesting to see a game with such a unique control system, and it does seem to work pretty well. When I tapped lightly, I moved my character forward, and when I tapped harder, he jumped, with very little error.

Notably, Let's Tap's audience in the U.S. (if it comes here -- we don't know anything about a possible U.S. release yet) isn't going to be people who know who Naka is, since this seems like a casual game designed to attract the much-discussed "mainstream" Wii market. Still, it's certainly interesting to see a game like this from someone who's had so much success on the hardcore side of development, and I had fun when playing, even though the TGS demo only lasted about 3 minutes.

I love it