From WayForward Technologies—the company that made the imaginative if somewhat frustrating horror puzzler Lit for Nintendo’s WiiWare service—comes A Boy and His Blob, a side-scrolling platformer for the Wii based on the similarly titled A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia, which was originally released for the Nintendo Entertainment System about 20 years ago.
A fan of its predecessor, I’d been looking forward to this game since first reading about it earlier this year and learning that WayForward’s intention was to up the game’s accessibility and cuteness factor.
And, make no mistake, that’s exactly what they’ve done.
A Boy and His Blob features a pair of protagonists that are all but impossible not to like. After hearing a meteor crash in the forest, a young boy leaves his treehouse in search of the impact site. He ends up finding a white creature who is amorphous in his natural state but can take the form of more than a dozen helpful shapes—a ladder, a parachute, or a shield, to name just a few—when fed different kinds of jelly beans.
The two become fast friends, with the boy—whose few short lines are voiced superbly by an authentic young lad—continually calling upon his alien ally to aid him, hugging it when things go well, and gently scolding it to make it remain still.
What’s more, the game is plenty of fun play.
Players have to put the blob to use in imaginative ways to solve puzzles and navigate the environment. You might turn it into an anvil and drop it on a large, evil, black alien blob moving below you so that you can safely hitch a ride on its back, or transform it into a small ball that enemy blobs will eat, then convert it back into its larger natural form, consequently exploding your foe.
Helpful signs are scattered throughout each level that provide hints as to which form the blob should take in a given situation, but they’re usually unnecessary. We typically have access to only a handful of jelly bean types at any given moment, and clever thinking (or a quick bit of trial and error) is enough to overcome most obstacles.
The game’s briskly paced levels usually take no longer than five or ten minutes to complete. If you manage to find all three treasure chests in a given level you’ll be awarded an artifact that provides access to a quick navigational challenge, the completion of which results in access to bonuses, such as concept art.
Clearly, what we’ve been given is good, creative, family friendly fun. Sadly, there’s just not enough of it. Clocking in at well under ten hours and offering little in the way of replay value, it simply doesn’t warrant its $50 price tag. This is a game with simple enough design and artistic style that it could have easily have been an $8 or $10 WiiWare release—much like LostWinds, another artsy 2D platformer which, though considerably shorter, feels about on par with A Boy and His Blob in terms of depth and creativity.
I hate to slam a game based on its length alone, so I won’t. A Boy and His Blob is terrific fun and worth checking out. I simply recommend players wait a few months for it to be either reduced in price or come available on the previously-played shelves of your local game shop.
