5 minutes playing The Blob and one can see why it turned to be a big mainstream project: it's bursting with innovation.
The Bad: Tricky camera; level design issues lead to occasional glitches.
Right after finishing a big urban revitalization project the Utrecht city prefecture (Netherlands) started to wonder about how they could provide the citizens a glimpse at the future of the city; and since they were talking about future, why not to create an interactive virtual city? Why not to make a game where you can play around to see how this or that place will look after the makeover? This was the setup behind The Blob, a student's project planned to be a free game available for any passerby visiting an information centre in the 'real' Utrecht to try.
But it's easy to notice that the team behind the project was made of gamers, not marketers: the game is full of innovative gameplay concepts, goals to achieve and secrets to uncover and it was surprising for me to see how well developed it already was at this stage--to the point people at THQ (who bought the idea to make de Blob for the Wii) didn't have that much to upgrade aside aesthetics/overall presentation and expanding the environments.
In The Blob you control a jellying, spherical alien who fell on Earth and has the power to absorb the colored people walking the streets. After doing that you'll be drenched in that person's color and able to start a huge mess by painting the buildings, cars, trees, etc (while avoiding INKT agents who want to capture you for the government). The more you absorb people the bigger you get and you can also mix colors to make a new one (if you're blue and run into a red person you'll become purple, for instance).
Under the aforementioned premise you can play the game as that casual passerby and simply wander about to explore the city or you can act hardcore and look for every landmark (important buildings) and hidden coin scattered all over the huge area. You won't get much of a reward for doing that but painting those landmarks--which need some specific color and amount of paint to get done--will give you a nice panoramic view of the place being revived together with a good satisfaction feeling.
Exploring the city is the main feature here and that alone feels great for sure; but the camera can get tricky and annoying at times. [note: the game was developed to be controlled only with a trackball and there was no room left for camera controls] Aside that there are a few moments when you can get stuck between trees or walls (and thus forcibly restarting the game) due to some level design issues, so the game isn't free of shortcomings.
As a student's project The Blob is surprisingly well developed and the amount of new ideas flourishing here is remarkable. It even makes de Blob (the big version) feels worse because one could easily point some needed improvements for a blockbuster wannabe after playing this (like checkpoints for huge areas and improving the camera/jumping controls)--and those weren't implemented by THQ.
In the end the game is plain fun and fresh and it's well worth a try--being free and all it won't hurt your budget anyway. ;)
- Reviewed for The Autonomous Regime Union