Vital Stats

Genre: Puzzle Platformer
Players: 1 and his blob
Online: None

Developer: WayForward
Publisher: Majesco
ESRB Rating: E
Release Date: 10/13/09

Platforms

• Wii

a boy and his blob is the childhood you never knew you wanted. It’s a genuinely idyllic summer of adventure, unconditional love, and meticulous platforming. It’s not often that a game can live up to the nostalgia it evokes, but it helps when a modern developer gives it a complete overhaul.

Remakes are the most cynical way to cash in on your childhood fancies. They’re usually shovelware ports hidden under a thin graphical veneer. The shorter development cycle makes cheaper production, and the nostalgia dulls the sticker shock. It’s Al Capone disguised as a care bear: you might be happy to see him at first, but your wallet will be lighter after the meeting.

That is, unless the developer genuinely has some affection for the title. Old games have flaws, and most need more than a graphical makeover to bring them up to speed with modern design. That’s a boy and his blob in a nutshell. Developer WayForward took an aging house, knocked it down to the foundation, and rebuilt it stronger.

Eat Things
a boy and his blob shares some kinship with The Maw. Both begin in the aftermath of a crash from orbit, where an innocent meets and ultimately shepherds a shapeless eating machine. However, the difference is all in the diet. Where Maw’s omni-hunger puts a sinister edge on his charms, blob’s appetites stray no farther than jellybeans.

I didn’t realize how much I hated
spike pits until I could ignore them.

The flavored candies transform blob according to puns and alliteration: apple jellybeans transform blob into a jack and licorice jellybeans make a blobby ladder. As the boy, you make precision throws to position these tools and navigate your surprisingly dangerous backyard enroute to the stars. Jellybean aiming is a bit touchy and blob’s bouncing pursuit can run afoul of pathfinding, but a limitless supply of jellybeans works around most any problem.

Platforming heroes don’t develop unbreakable legs until about age seven, and the boy can’t be older than four. He also dies at a light touch, which conspires with the sometimes-hyperactive controls to produce repetitive trial-and-error gameplay. However, exploration breaks into discreet stages, and each introduces new jellybeans and obstacles gracefully. Even novices should get a chance to hone their skills before the game bears its teeth and gets down to precision platforming.

Transform and Roll Out
Stagewise progression, limitless jellybeans, and a gradual difficulty curve are all significant departures from the remake’s source material. You could argue that the break makes a boy and his blob more a reimagining than a remake (the original game had more in common with Pitfall! than than this new remake), but the game’s atmosphere clearly recalls its heritage.

Atmosphere in particular recalls the ancestral Trouble on Blobonia. a boy and his blob travels from green wilds to brown caverns and eventually to the alien spires of blob’s homeworld. These familiar environments are punctuated by accents, like the nighttime cityscape visible from the boy’s home, that pay direct homage to the first time a blob ever ate jellybeans to save the world.

Of course, a boy and his blob has unique flourishes as well. The central hub for the first quarter of the game may well be platonic form of a treehouse, to which all other treehouses are mere shadows on the wall. You can populate this three story arboreal penthouse with bearskins, totem poles, and other trophies by collecting fobs from each level. By the time you’re finished decorating, you’ll be the envy of explorers from every childhood storybook.

D’awwwww!

Collecting all the fobs from a level also unlocks a challenge stage that more rigorously tests the skills introduced by the referring stage. This means that collectibles gate literally half the playable content in the game. So, depending on how favorably you receive scavenger hunts for locked content, the fobs either double the game’s length or halve it. Either way, there’s much more to a boy and his blob than the main game, and it builds seamlessly from the skills you learn as you progress.

The graphics have a 2D storybook look that’s wholly appropriate to the game’s childhood themes. They’re not technically impressive for detail or authenticity, but there are a number of simple touches like fireflies and rainfall that keep environments and animations from becoming repetitive.

The composition for the soundtrack is more impressive. It’s makes surprisingly diverse use of the light strings and percussion you’d expect from this sort of game. However, there’s coherence among most of the tracks that just feels like childhood. It’s emotionally consistent without fatiguing any single theme.

Though a boy and his blob is hand-drawn, 2D, a puzzle platformer, and a remake, nothing sums up the game quite like its context-independent hug button. I am not kidding: there is a button dedicated to arm’s-reach affection, and the animators didn’t phone it in. It’s the kind of unconditional hug that you just don’t see after a certain age, and it’s so sweet that you’ll catch yourself hugging blob long after the novelty wears off.

You’ll Spoil Your Dinner
a boy and his blob is a highly experiential game. The mechanics and graphics are competently executed, even if they lack some of the polish that would make them impressive. The game’s real strengths are hard to see on the back of the box. Its expertly-crafted difficulty curve and the emotional depth in music and animation make it a good buy for casual gamers looking to commit to a deeper game. Hardcore gamers may appreciate the change of pace offered by a refreshingly light tone, though genre fans may be bored by the slow difficulty climb.

What It Costs: $39

What It’s Worth:
•To The Hardcore: $35
•To The Genre Fan: $30
•To The Casual: $40