De Blob

By: Brien

On: July 18th, 2006

The Blob is a game about painting a city with a rolling, growing ball of paint. It reminds me of (here it comes) Katamari Damacy and to a lesser extent of Mario Sunshine. I can’t believe I just wrote that. You must be sick of inane Katamari comparisons. Every single game with a rolling or growing character, someone’s gotta mention KD.

Right, so now that’s out of the way. I have a lot of good things to say about The Blob. The physics are handled by ODE, graphics by Ogre; both are employed beautifully. Every corner of the game is pretty and sparkling with polish. I really like the pixel shader work as the buildings are repainted. The jiggling paint ball feels right and is intuitively controlled with just the mouse. What else? Oh yes, it’s fun.

My main problem with it is that it weighs in at a prohibitive 97 MB. There’s also only one level and little reward for completing it but they explain themselves:

“The game was a school project for an outside client. The station area of the city of Utrecht in The Netherlands is getting a thorough face-lift, as the station and many buildings around it are being rebuilt. Our task was to make a game that plays in the station area as it will be ten years from now, so that while playing, the audience is informed about what is going to happen. The game was to be played in a centre with information about the changes, but also be downloadable for players at home. This means the main target audience will walk by, play for a few minutes, and then walk on, but it should also be fun for people who download the game.”

I say it’s worth it. So download (97 MB) it. Or go to their project page on gamedev.net to read more, to download the Dutch version, and leave the team feedback.