Picture this: you’re running the Information Centre for a city in the Netherlands. You’ve recently been tasked with promoting a large-scale regenerative construction project that would involve completely rebuilding the city’s train station and surrounding areas over the course of 15 years. How would you do it? In Utrecht, circa 2006, the answer was: assign a small group of university students to make an educational game.
That game was The Blob, which tasked players with controlling a smiling blob as it rolled around the city of Utrecht, painting buildings and collecting hidden objects as they learned about the urban rejuvenation project. As an educational tool, the game was designed to be played for just a few minutes, with little more than a single map to paint and a few hidden collectibles to find. Still, there was clearly something appealing about the core concept of transforming a monochrome cityscape into a colourful paradise.
The Blob’s potential was recognised outside of the edugame scene, and it landed Internet Game Of The Year in the 2006 Edge Awards. The game also caught the eye of THQ, at the time looking to expand beyond its reputation for licensed output. Having just added Destroy All Humans and Company Of Heroes to its portfolio, the publisher was eager for a family-friendly series that could capitalise on the opportunity demonstrated by Wii’s success. In Utrecht, it seemed to find the answer it was looking for.
After buying the rights, THQ handed the project to an internal studio, Blue Tongue, based in Melbourne. De Blob couldn’t have travelled much farther from the city where it all began – but the real question was how to turn this experience into a full-price retail game that players would engage with for ten hours, not ten minutes.
Understandably, then, by the time De Blob arrived on Wii two years later, it was with a few changes. Rather than a version of any real-world location, players were dropped into the fictional Chroma City, a gloomy place controlled with an iron fist by Comrade Black and the Inkt Corporation, which has banned colour and turned this once-vibrant place into a monochromatic shell of its former self. So while the task at hand remained largely the same, the player’s motivations were very different – although, in a way, it was still a question of city regeneration.
In the time since that first demo, the release of Super Mario Galaxy in 2007 had flipped the world of 3D platformers in its head. But De Blob’s levels are more reminiscent of Sunshine’s Isle Delfino in their scope – or even collectathon platformers such as Banjo-Kazooie. While Galaxy might have set its sights on the stars, each level is a tightly controlled environment. By contrast, Chroma City is a sprawl, with the play area not only growing as you paint but evolving. A park might gain benches and art installations, for example, while a police station is transformed into a skate shop.
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62454ccb3f268/1648708695803.jpg]
Chroma is also more populous than Utrecht – at least, as that city’s reimagined in that first incarnation of the game. The character of Blob returns, but his newfound taste for revolution sees him joined by the Colour Underground, a gang of rebels fighting Inkt’s anti-colour regime – each, naturally, with their own set of diversions for you. Zip, a speedy blue blur in roller skates and a helmet, will often challenge Blob to race from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Bif, the brawn of the gang in a Rambo-style headband, asks Blob to defeat several enemies within a time limit, while Arty (whose deal you can probably guess) wants Blob to paint buildings a particular colour. These tasks may sound like busywork, but they act more as guidance for you than a strict set of rules. You need to collect enough points to unlock the sewer pipe at the end of each level, but how you get there is entirely your choice.
The constant, of course, is painting. Paintbots are small four-legged automata that, like a tick or an all-you-can-eat buffet attendee, have grown docile after filling their bellies. Roll into one and you’ll smash it open, gaining whichever primary colour it’d gorged on: blues, reds and yellows that can be mixed to create oranges and greens. Once Blob has been coated in paint, there are billboards and airships to be coloured in, providing optional side objectives for completionists, and major landmarks requiring additional paint power.
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62454ccb3f268/1648708742487.jpg]
It’s not just the world that needs colour. Painting a city block in its entirety will release the Graydians, the residents of Chroma who’ve been sapped of their colour and individuality. Apply a layer of paint and they too will be brought to happy, dancing life once more. Enemy ink can turn Blob black, draining him and the world of colour again until you can reach water and return him to his default transparent, liquified state – a blank canvas from which to grow and paint once more.
The heart of De Blob’s appeal is selfexpression, and the impact of your actions on this initially monochromatic world, each new explosion of colour determined by the particular meanderings of your movements. This even seeps into the game’s soundtrack: you can select a ‘mood’ for each level ranging from fearless to euphoric, evolving from this base depending on how much of the level has been painted. What starts as little more than a steady beat or occasional percussion eventually erupts into a crescendo, embellished by blasts of a trumpet or scratches of a DJ desk with every wall you paint. It’s another example of the game taking your actions and feeding them back to you in sensory fashion.
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62454ccb3f268/1648708695768.jpg]
The presence of a time limit might seem to run counter to this philosophy of freedom, but chances are, you won’t ever have to...
That game was The Blob, which tasked players with controlling a smiling blob as it rolled around the city of Utrecht, painting buildings and collecting hidden objects as they learned about the urban rejuvenation project. As an educational tool, the game was designed to be played for just a few minutes, with little more than a single map to paint and a few hidden collectibles to find. Still, there was clearly something appealing about the core concept of transforming a monochrome cityscape into a colourful paradise.
The Blob’s potential was recognised outside of the edugame scene, and it landed Internet Game Of The Year in the 2006 Edge Awards. The game also caught the eye of THQ, at the time looking to expand beyond its reputation for licensed output. Having just added Destroy All Humans and Company Of Heroes to its portfolio, the publisher was eager for a family-friendly series that could capitalise on the opportunity demonstrated by Wii’s success. In Utrecht, it seemed to find the answer it was looking for.
After buying the rights, THQ handed the project to an internal studio, Blue Tongue, based in Melbourne. De Blob couldn’t have travelled much farther from the city where it all began – but the real question was how to turn this experience into a full-price retail game that players would engage with for ten hours, not ten minutes.
Understandably, then, by the time De Blob arrived on Wii two years later, it was with a few changes. Rather than a version of any real-world location, players were dropped into the fictional Chroma City, a gloomy place controlled with an iron fist by Comrade Black and the Inkt Corporation, which has banned colour and turned this once-vibrant place into a monochromatic shell of its former self. So while the task at hand remained largely the same, the player’s motivations were very different – although, in a way, it was still a question of city regeneration.
In the time since that first demo, the release of Super Mario Galaxy in 2007 had flipped the world of 3D platformers in its head. But De Blob’s levels are more reminiscent of Sunshine’s Isle Delfino in their scope – or even collectathon platformers such as Banjo-Kazooie. While Galaxy might have set its sights on the stars, each level is a tightly controlled environment. By contrast, Chroma City is a sprawl, with the play area not only growing as you paint but evolving. A park might gain benches and art installations, for example, while a police station is transformed into a skate shop.
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62454ccb3f268/1648708695803.jpg]
Chroma is also more populous than Utrecht – at least, as that city’s reimagined in that first incarnation of the game. The character of Blob returns, but his newfound taste for revolution sees him joined by the Colour Underground, a gang of rebels fighting Inkt’s anti-colour regime – each, naturally, with their own set of diversions for you. Zip, a speedy blue blur in roller skates and a helmet, will often challenge Blob to race from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Bif, the brawn of the gang in a Rambo-style headband, asks Blob to defeat several enemies within a time limit, while Arty (whose deal you can probably guess) wants Blob to paint buildings a particular colour. These tasks may sound like busywork, but they act more as guidance for you than a strict set of rules. You need to collect enough points to unlock the sewer pipe at the end of each level, but how you get there is entirely your choice.
The constant, of course, is painting. Paintbots are small four-legged automata that, like a tick or an all-you-can-eat buffet attendee, have grown docile after filling their bellies. Roll into one and you’ll smash it open, gaining whichever primary colour it’d gorged on: blues, reds and yellows that can be mixed to create oranges and greens. Once Blob has been coated in paint, there are billboards and airships to be coloured in, providing optional side objectives for completionists, and major landmarks requiring additional paint power.
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62454ccb3f268/1648708742487.jpg]
It’s not just the world that needs colour. Painting a city block in its entirety will release the Graydians, the residents of Chroma who’ve been sapped of their colour and individuality. Apply a layer of paint and they too will be brought to happy, dancing life once more. Enemy ink can turn Blob black, draining him and the world of colour again until you can reach water and return him to his default transparent, liquified state – a blank canvas from which to grow and paint once more.
The heart of De Blob’s appeal is selfexpression, and the impact of your actions on this initially monochromatic world, each new explosion of colour determined by the particular meanderings of your movements. This even seeps into the game’s soundtrack: you can select a ‘mood’ for each level ranging from fearless to euphoric, evolving from this base depending on how much of the level has been painted. What starts as little more than a steady beat or occasional percussion eventually erupts into a crescendo, embellished by blasts of a trumpet or scratches of a DJ desk with every wall you paint. It’s another example of the game taking your actions and feeding them back to you in sensory fashion.
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62454ccb3f268/1648708695768.jpg]
The presence of a time limit might seem to run counter to this philosophy of freedom, but chances are, you won’t ever have to...
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Edge Uk (Digital) - 1 Issue, May 2022