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Why Robin Makes Batman Better We know that THQ’s de Blob has been selling well, sometimes even better than Nintendo’s first party Wii titles. But how well can a non-phoned-in, non-mini-game collection title sell on the Wii? Pretty well.
I played De Blob for a few hours at a THQ press event last year prior to the game’s launch and loved it. When I picked up my Wii last week, this Australian-made platform/painting/rhythm game was always going to be high on the list of games I wanted to delve deeper into. So after polishing off Operation Anchorage yesterday afternoon, I settled in for some funky, blobby-licious action.
IGN noticed that De Blob outsold Wario Land: Shake It by 80,000 copies, and both were released the same day. THQ, asked for comment, said there’s more where that came from.
In its “All New” issue, discussing the cutting edge of trends in American culture, New York Magazine lauds four indie titles for “ushering in a golden age of smart, beautiful, and really weird games.”
With all these game of the year awards being handed out and lists being drawn up, it must be hard for a developer. You’re being publicly judged. So why not turn it around and let the developers do the judging for once?
We recently asked a bunch of Australian game development people to pick their favourites for the year – and if we didn’t ask you, we love to hear from you. First up, it’s Jon Cartwright from THQ Studio Australia…
de Blob began life as a school project from studying Game Design & Development at the Utrecht School of the Arts in The Netherlands, meant to reflect the end result of the rebuilding of a local railway station, but THQ saw much more potential for the quirky PC painting game. They purchased the rights, handed over development to Blue Tongue Entertainment, and now we have De Blob for the Nintendo Wii. The I.N.K.T. Corporation has drained all the colour out of the city of Chroma, enslaving its inhabitants and putting them to work doing its evil, clerical bidding. It’s up to de Blob to be the paintbrush of the people, restoring colour to the city one building at a time. While a very unique and compelling concept at its core, have THQ and Blue Tongue managed to stay true to de Blob’s origins, or has the entertainment value of the original game been completely painted over? Mixing a little red with a little blue, after the jump.
The original de Blob developers are back with their own game studio and a shiny new title coming out on WiiWare in Q4 2008. Ronimo Games, founded by said de Blob creators in Utrecht, the Netherlands, is readying Swords & Soldiers for European and North American release. Swords & Soldiers is a side-scrolling RTS in which three different factions battle against each other in order to obtain the powers of the gods. While I’m not yet sure what type of gameplay to expect from the title’s single player campaign or split-screen multiplayer, I’m definitely liking the animated style they’ve got going for them. Check out the first screens from Swords & Soldiers for yourself below.
My Kotaku Tower compatriots have taken THQ’s upcoming Wii exclusive De Blob for a paint-spattered spin in the past, but after giving it a try today during the publisher’s Spring 08 and holiday preview event, I thought I’d add my own impressions of the single-player mode to the mix.
As we’ve told you in the past, you play as a pretty cute blob. Squishy blobs are in right now – just think of Independent Games Festival buzz-generators World of Goo and Goo!, to name just a couple. In fact, as Crecente reported last year, De Blob is actually the result of a student project from the 2006 Independent Games Festival.
As such, it retains both the simplicity and attractively colourful, offbeat vibe we often associate with promising indies. What are you a blob of? Colour, it looks like, a heroic little splat plunked down in Chroma City, an adorable world that’s had all of the hues sapped out of it by the evil I.N.K.T. Corporation.
It’s super cute and quirky, but how does it play? Details and screens after the jump.
The story of De Blob is fairly simple. A race of evil aliens come to a friendly planet and suck all the colour out of it, leaving it all white and shades of grey. As one of the remaining unaffected blob-like denizens of the planet, it is up to you to restore the world to its full colour capacity. This goal is achieved by rolling your little blob around the world and picking up colour bottles. Once you have picked up a colour, simply touching an object will turn it that colour and give you some points. You can also mix your colours for some different effects. For instance, say you are yellow and want to change to orange. Simply roll over a red bottle and, voila, you are now orange. Rolling over the red bottle again will revert you to red.
