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Video Game - A Boy and His Blob: A Heartwarming Puzzler


Photo by Megata Sanshiro

What do you get when you combine a puzzle, a family-friendly videogame, a 2d platformer, evil bosses, beautiful and detailed art, and a heartwarming friendship? A Boy and His Blob.

Similarly to Stardew Valley, playing A Boy and His Blob makes you feel good. In addition, you will also most certainly feel awestruck by the design, beauty, and creativity put into the game.

 Overview

A Boy and His Blob was developed by WayForward Technologies, and is published by Majesco Entertainment. It is a remake of the 1989 video game, A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia, released on the NES.

In A Boy and His Blob, the player plays as a boy who joins the “Blob”, on a quest. Blob’s home planet, Blobolonia, was taken over by an evil king. Blob fled the planet seeking help, and crash landed on Earth, where he met the boy. The two decided to work together, to save Blobolonia.

The game consists of four worlds, each with 10 regular levels, 10 challenge levels, and one boss (in the 10th level). You can unlock each challenge level by finding three treasure chests in its corresponding normal level.

The Boy feeds the Blob (an NPC) jellybeans, to make him turn into useful objects, in order to solve puzzles! Each level has its own set of jellybeans that you can use, and they can turn the blob into anything from a trampoline (for getting up high), to an anvil (perfect for dropping on enemies’s heads), to a floatable, rideable, bouncy ball (wheeeee!).

Each level consists of multiple puzzles, each of which are solved by feeding beans to Blob and using what he turns into. If the player searches enough, they may even find the three hidden treasure chests needed to unlock the corresponding challenge level.

Each level is also filled with the evil king’s evil minions, as well as many other dangers to the Boy. If he touches any of those, then he will die and respawn at the nearest respawn point (which are quite frequently placed). However in challenge levels, there are no respawn points and if the Boy dies, you have to restart the level from the beginning.

Finally, while you are in each world, you have a base (which ranges from a treehouse to what appears to be an abandoned factory). From here you can access levels and switch worlds. Additionally, after you unlock and/or complete a challenge level, a piece of artwork, a statue, drawings from the game’s development, etc. appear somewhere in the base.

Photo by Steam

My Review

My rating of A Boy and His Blob is 91/100. It is a wonderful game and I highly recommend it to you.
The puzzle aspect of the game is really well designed. The puzzles themselves are streamlined into each level, are fun to play through, and the way to get through them isn’t always that obvious and will require thinking outside-the-box. I also like that as the player you have infinite lives, as when playing the game you will die A LOT!

Another great feature of the game is the storytelling. A Boy and His Blob has no words during the gameplay, written or spoken, yet somehow it still conveys a well developed, detailed storyline.

Furthermore, there are also many little details in the game that are incredibly well implemented and thought-of, that will blow your mind and leave you awestruck when you see them. While I don’t want to spoil any of them for you, I will give you a hint for one of them; There are other blobs besides Blob, right?

The art in the game is also beautifully made. It is detailed, looks incredible, and really adds to the mood of the game. If you ever play A Boy and His Blob, I recommend that once in a while you take a few moments to absorb the game's spectacular artwork.

Finally, the game will make you feel good. The friendship between the Boy and the Blob is heartwarming, and the celebratory expression on the Boy’s face whenever you finish a level just can’t not make you smile.

Although, one bad thing about the game is that it is SUPER HARD. This makes the game somewhat frustrating and tiring at times. You will easily die many times per level, and some of the puzzles that you have to solve are quite stupefying. However, the challenge and boss levels make the rest of the game seem like a piece of cake, as you respawn from the beginning in challenge levels, meaning you have to do everything all over again, and the bosses are exceptionally hard. Good thing you have infinite lives...

Final Thoughts

A Boy and His Blob is an excellent game, and I highly recommend it to you, no matter what type of video games you like. It was originally released on the Wii in 2009, and in 2016, a high-definition version was released on the Xbox One, PlayStation 3, 4, and Vita, Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, Steam, and on the Android and IOS stores.

Thanks for reading this post. If you have any questions or comments about A Boy and His Blob, please comment below. Additionally, please click here for a poll on what the topic of my blog post for the week of 10/28 - 11/3 will be (the poll will close on 10/26).

Photo by Nintendo

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