Of course, there’s no reason to have all these methods of travel if you can’t use them, and that’s where the challenges come in. Whenever you’re in a challenge level like Banjo Land, various points on your mini-map will be highlighted with jiggie icons. Heading to one of these locales will start a challenge that you must pass successfully if you want to win the coveted piece. The objective we tackled concerned George the Ice Cube, who had slid away from his wife and ended up in a hot desert. Because George is so big and can’t be moved by hand, Banjo was given the option to choose one of three already created vehicles to scoop up the rogue frozen block and get him back home.

We first tried tackling the challenge with the “beginner” vehicle, a cart with a large, shallow bowl on top where we could sit George down and push him back up the mountain. However, physics got the better of us, and every time we tried to stop or change direction George would invariably slide out and fall back down the mountain. Strangely enough, the Microsoft rep mentioned that almost no one had been able to complete the objective with that vehicle, and we’d actually have an easier time with the “advanced” contraption. In this case, we powered up a helicopter which used a sticky ball to grab onto George and haul him up the mountain. After a few tense moments of trying to perfect our command of altitude control as George swung wildly about, we got him back to his beloved wife, free to continue his chilly life.

Nuts and Bolts is shaping up to be the sort of game that will appeal to anyone who likes problem-solving and figuring out their own way to do things. The game is sure to shape up a bit like Spore’s Creature Creator in that it’ll likely take you a few failed attempts before you really make something good, but once you do, you’ll take greater pride in knowing that it was solely the result of your skills and abilities that you managed to figure it out. Now, instead of taking the vehicles developers have designed for you to achieve a goal, it’s all up to you to make it happen. If you’ve ever wished for a game that gives you unparalleled freedom while retaining some sense of overarching structure, this is it.