Downloadable Suicide » de blob

Squishy Natural Disaster Week

DoSu Team — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:50:51 +0000

Interview with id’s Marty Stratton on Quake Live’s beta launch

I’m very glad that Quake Live’s launch has gone relatively smoothly. Having a queue system in place from the get-go showed great foresight and probably prevented any major crashing. I’ve also been impressed with the frequent updates id has been giving on their status via Twitter, news posts and interviews like this one.

THQ: de Blob Sells Over 700K

A few months ago I voiced my concern for De Blob’s retail success, despite glowing reviews, due to third party Wii games’ tendency to tank. It looks like De Blob is in the clear!

Analysis: Puzzle Design in the Myst Series

I’m always interested to read about the process of game design, especially when it relates to a game series that I love. The Myst III puzzle discussed within happens to be a favorite of mine.

tags: bearly noteworthy, de blob, myst, quake live, thq, twitter, wii

De Blob Redux

DoSu Team — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:51:18 +0000

Third party Wii titles are a dime a dozen. Many don’t succeed, mostly due to quality, but also in no small part due to underexposure and Nintendo’s failure to properly promote them. A couple recent examples are Zack & Wiki and Boom Blox. Fun, well executed games that just didn’t have very stellar sales. One game I am hoping will not fall by the wayside is the Wii version of De Blob. You may remember this as one of the first cheap games featured here as Downloadable Suicide.

In my original article I mentioned that THQ is bringing it to Wii and DS sometime in 2008. The Wii version dropped a week or two ago and seems to have been met with critical success. It’s currently the 17th highest ranked Wii game on Metacritic with an average score of 82. Worthplaying gave it a 90 and said “It is a rare game that can appeal equally well to both the casual and hardcore crowds, yet de Blob does just that.”. EuroGamer had a grim comment that I hope won’t turn out to be true, “Probably the best and worst thing about de Blob is that it’s got ‘Destined For Cult Status’ written all over it.” GamePlayer felt De Blob worthy of a perfect 10 saying that it is “The first third-party Wii game that would have Mr Miyamoto bowing in awed respect.” Nice.

Reviews aside, the purpose of this post is simply to remind you about De Blob and its roots as a student project on the PC. While the breadth of its gameplay has evolved significantly during its transition to the Wii, its whimsical spirit and aesthetics appear to have stayed intact. Check it out on PC and consider giving it a look if you happen to own a Wii. The DS version looks like it’s going to bake a bit longer before it’s ready for consumption; it’s the version that I’ll be giving a try.

tags: banana games, cheap gaming, de blob, ds, free, nintendo, patch, pc, thq, updates, wii

Cheap Games

PseudoKnight — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 07:05:24 +0000

Cheap Games Database

This is a list of all of the cheap games we’ve featured in the blog. Every game is under $10 — many are even free! Here they are in order of price (low to high):

tags: audiosurf, beyond good & evil, cheap, cheap gaming, de blob, defcon everybody dies, dungeon runners, Eets: Hunger, everyday shooter, execution, free, games, geometry wars, gish, painkiller, pc, phyta, prey, synaesthete, trackmania nations forever, trials 2 second edition, tripline

De Blob! De Blob!

DoSu Team — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 11:39:46 +0000

This game is called De Blob. According to The Wikipedia: “de Blob was originally developed as a free downloadable game for the Windows PC by eight students studying Game Design & Development at the Utrecht School of the Arts and one student studying Game and Media Technology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.”. I’ll take their word for it, and you should too.

In De Blob, you play as an amorphous pile of goo that can’t help but absorb the color of whatever living thing he comes into contact with (you can even mix colors! ) and, conversely, cannot help but transfer his current color to whatever inanimate objects he happens to bump into. This is fortunate news for the world that you have unfortunately crash landed on, because the whole damn thing is gray! Your job is to spruce up the place while also evading the government who are appropriately dressed in black, for points, and of course, the good of… humanity, we’ll say? Running into these government officials will cause you to paint the world black and you’ll be awarded no points. Watch out for them. The game is controlled entirely with mouse movements and left clicks for jumping, right clicks for bringing up your map. Easy peasy.

De Blob is a very small, free download. You can get it from the Banana Games website (translation from Dutch provided by Google!) (DoSu mirror). The retail game being published by THQ is said to be due in Q2 2008. Enjoy!

tags: banana games, cheap gaming, de blob, ds, games, thq, wii