B.L.O.B.

Intro

"Biological Launched Obstruction\Barrier" or "B.L.O.B." for short was a platformer that was being developed by GameOverGames Productions using Game Maker Studio back in 2009, but for whatever reason this project never got past the demo phase before it was put on indefinite hiatus. Though, I'll admit I'm not entirely sure why this project got put on said hiatus since it isn't mentioned on the game's summary page and I'm not willing to go digging through GameOverGames's old posts to see if there is something about it on the forums or in a blog for another project at the moment. And I suppose at the end of the day it really doesn't matter why this game was put on indefinite hiatus.

Story

Considering the demo is comprised of just two areas there really isn't that much story content to discuss. In fact, the two areas we do get are meant to serve as a tutorial and explain how to use our new found gun that can shoot non-lethal blobs of green and blue gelatin. This isn't to say we don't get a bit of characterization for the main character as he exchanges barbs with our faceless instructor.



Albeit the amount of lines he gets is pretty limited, and it would be hard for anyone to not make a smart aleck comment about the inclusion of spike traps in a platformer.

Gameplay

Seeing as how the tutorial only contains two maps we only get a few platform sections to deal with. Though, I'd argue this game is more of a puzzle game at times considering you need to combine both types of gelatin in order to get around or over certain obstacles.



In the case of the green blobs they can be stacked on top of each other in order to create a tower. The blue blobs on the other hand can be utilized like a spring and allows us to jump super high. This means we can combine the two to create a tower we can spring off of in order to scale walls. Of course both types of blobs disappear over time. So you have to move quickly if you need to scale a point that is high up. It's also useful that when you jump that the green and blue blobs will fall faster than you do. So you don't have to worry about getting trapped in a blob if you fire while jumping.

Another oddity is that the spike traps don't appear to instantly kill the player at times.



Though, I'll admit being able to jump on and off the spikes is probably a glitch since I know I died instantly in other instances where I touched them.

On a more negative note I think the control scheme for this game needs a bit more work. This is because you fire blobs by holding down the ctrl key, but switch gelatin types by pressing the one and two keys on the keyboard. In my opinion it would have been better to simply allow the player to cycle back and forth between the two with a button or buttons closer to the fire button.

Graphics

On the graphical side of things the game is a bit too overly grey for my liking. Admittedly you can brighten the place up with blue and green blobs, but those only last so long. As for the sprites their okay in my opinion, but I'm not familiar enough with Game Maker Studio to be an effective judge of this area in my opinion.

Sound

On the sound side of things the game is a bit weird in my opinion. For starters the title screen lacks a background track altogether so the title screen is super quiet. On the other hand the sound effects for things like jumping in the base game are a bit too loud in my opinion. Though maybe that's for the best considering the background track once you get into the demo proper sounds like something you'd hear in an elevator.

Conclusion

I think the underlying concept of "B.L.O.B." is pretty solid. And could have only gotten better if the development team behind this demo had included more blob types to work with. Unfortunately this project will probably never get past the demo phase. So we'll never truly know how good this game could have been if it had been completed.