A hero made from wool thread moving at a gentle pace around a world created with pastel-coloured quilt patches.

You could be forgiven for thinking Nintendo's latest Wii platformer is a game solely for little children.

But while it is perfect for the nippers, Epic Yarn is likely to keep players of all ages engrossed for many hours.

In level design it's as imaginative and cunning, and in gameplay as intuitive and varied, as anything in the Super Mario games.

Despite being a little easy it stands among the greatest of platform games, with a surprising depth, and its two-player mode is a more satisfying than Mario or Donkey Kong Country.

David Knights