If January and February are any indication, I think 2011 is going to be another fantastic year for downloadable games. Last month Drinkbox Studios released their first ever title for the Playstation Network, Tales from Space: About a Blob, and I have a feeling that this is going to be one of the most overlooked and underrated games of the year (although maybe that’s not entirely fair since the reviews I’ve read have been mostly great). What may appear on the surface to be a cute, colourful and somewhat simple indie game quickly proves itself to be a clever and challenging puzzle-platformer with a quirky ’50s / ’60s sci-fi theme.
Taking a cue from the Katamari series, you play as a tiny blob who crash lands from outer space and finds himself stranded in a scientist’s lab. Fortunately, you have the ability to absorb objects around you and either grow in size or spit them back out again, allowing you to navigate from one area to the next. As you continue to grow (and gain more abilities including electricity and magnetism), you soon find yourself becoming a threat to everything on the planet. By the time you reach later levels, you’ll be chowing down on everything from cows and humans to airplanes and skyscrapers.
Although it might sound like About a Blob simply mashes up and remixes elements from plenty of existing games, its use of physics is actually pretty unique and innovative. The blob bounces, stretches and deforms when he comes into contact with the world around him, and controls exactly as if you were moving around a big pile of Jello. As he gets bigger, his speed and jump height also increase significantly, making it even more fun to wreak havoc toward the end of the game.
The 2D art style is cartoony and exaggerated, and merges well with the game’s wacky sense of humour, which incidentally, includes plenty of internet jokes (ie. Sneezing Panda tissues and a billboard for a TV show called 2 Grills, One Cop). The Flash-animated cut scenes in between levels are also well-executed, I only wish they had a little bit more of a story to tell. Although I would have liked to see them take the campy sci-fi angle a bit further (see: Destroy All Humans), I can’t really fault them for keeping things accessible and focusing on gameplay first and foremost.
About a Blob has a drop-in / drop-out local co-op mode, which always earns bonus points from me. You can work together with a friend to solve some of the game’s puzzles, but there is also a competitive element to it as you can generally harass each other and race to collect the most stuff in each level. In the end, my only major complaint is that the music gets quite repetitive since there are only three or four different songs used in the entire game.
Tales from Space: About a Blob may not have that attention-grabbing wow factor that gets everyone talking, but it is a very polished side-scrolling platformer that is easy to pick up and hard to put down. With at least 5 or 6 hours worth of gameplay and plenty of challenges to keep you going back for more, the game is definitely worth the $15. Download the demo on the Playstation Network and give it a go right now!
