You are an alien from a far away world. One day your spaceship crashed into a meteor and you have to land on a planet called the earth. Now you are lost in a grey world. You are scared and haunted by the police. You are hungry...
...YOU ARE THE BLOB!!!
"The Blob" is a fun game in which you have to absorb coloured NPCs and use the paint to change the whole grey city into something more colour- and beautiful. Here is what the developer wrote about it:
"For the past four months I have worked together with eight other Dutch students on a game called The Blob. The game was a school project for an outside client. The station area of the city of Utrecht in The Netherlands is getting a thorough face-lift, as the station and many buildings around it are being rebuilt. Our task was to make a game that plays in the station area as it will be ten years from now, so that while playing, the audience is informed about what is going to happen. The game was to be played in a centre with information about the changes, but also be downloadable for players at home. This means the main target audience will walk by, play for a few minutes, and then walk on, but it should also be fun for people who download the game.
The resulting game is The Blob. It is a 3D game in which the player controls a ball of paint rolling through the city. The ball can absorb coloured NPC's to become larger and change its colour. With the paint, the player can then proceed to paint the entire city. Almost everything is paintable: buildings, trees, cars and using the paint trace even the ground. The main goal of the game is to paint all 17 landmark buildings. Hardcore fanatics can also try to collect all 50 coins that are hidden around the level."
A very nice game for all ages (if we believe our admin even babies like to watch this game), but maybe especially for kids who can learn a lot about the effects of mixing certain colours to create new ones by playing this game.
IMPORTANT HINT: IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO START THE GAME BY CLICKING ON THE EXE FILE IN THE GAME FOLDER: PLEASE USE THE DESKTOP ICON OR THE WINDOWS START MENU INSTEAD!
You can find The Blob here and the game developer's site is here.
Interview with a Blob-creator
After being addicted to The Blob for over a year now, and having kids from the family come visit to play this game, I simply had to get hold of the developers behind The Blob (De Blob in its native tongue).
We were lucky enough to get a hold of Joost van Dongen, and ask him some questions about this hitgame.
Chroelle:
Tell us more about yourself - how old are you, where do you live, what do you do for a living? (one of these basic interview questions)
Joost:
I am 25 years old and I live in Oss, a town in the Netherlands. I am a game developer and together with six friends I founded Ronimo Games, where I am the lead programmer.
Chroelle:
”The Blob” is the title of at least one old horror film. Did you get inspired by any of these titles or did your inspiration come from elsewhere?
Joost:
Nope, that movie did not inspire us. We just used “The Blob” as a working title, because the main character is a blob of paint. We never changed the name afterwards, even though that movie license was problematic. Doesn't matter much for a free student game, though. That movie is the reason THQ named the game “de Blob” instead of “The Blob”.
The main inspiration for the game comes from a black and white photograph of Utrecht (the city I work in). One of my colleagues saw it and remarked that it would be fun to colour the city. And that became de Blob!
Chroelle:
The Blob has a very free roaming game play where you make your own time and do things your way more or less. Did you play any specific titles that made you do this the way you did?
Joost:
We did this because the game was originally intended to be played in an information booth, so people play a couple of minutes and walk on. So a linear game does not work: what if someone picks up the game after someone else has already done the beginning? By making it more like a sandbox, people would always have something to do.
Chroelle:
The citizens are alike in spite of their different colours – could one stretch and ask if there was a racial agenda behind this? ?
Joost:
Nope, nothing like that. We did make sure that we never called the evil I.N.K.T. soldiers “black”, because that would suggest that black is evil, while we only meant ink to be evil. I never heard anyone complain about that, so I guess we succeeded there.
Chroelle:
Did you consider making the people in the streets more realistic at any point to illustrate further the idea of invasion on Earth from out of space?
Joost:
Nope: they are just these funny little paint guys.
Chroelle:
What is it with alien invasions that just makes for perfect game play?
Joost:
Aliens have all kinds of weird features. Depending on which race you depict, they might roll and absorb paint, or do anything else. It is very important to not make them angry by a bad depiction, though! I would not be surprised if we are at some point invaded by aliens that are angry because someone made them look ugly in a game.
Chroelle:
Do you believe? (In extra terrestrial life that is)
Joost:
I am an alien and yes, I believe in myself. Don't tell anyone else, though: I am still in hiding until I take over the world!
Chroelle:
Most of the time aliens land in either New York or Washington – this time they landed in Utrecht. Can you convince me that aliens would have a slight interest in landing there other than crash-landing?
Joost:
They already did! Their UFO is still on top of the “Inktpot” (a famous building in Utrecht). Check this photo to see for yourself that this is true!
Chroelle:
Can you tell me anything I don’t know about The Blob or the production of the game. Simple trivia/fun facts.
Joost:
We originally intended de Blob for males between 30 and 50 years old. Look at the happy colours of the game and see how we failed.
Not that I mind that we made a fun game instead.Chroelle:
Was the .exe file start-up issue ever solved? Will it ever be?
Joost:
Nope, we are not going to do anything about the game. Just start from the start menu. The exe needs to know which language to start the game in and back then we forgot that people might try to run it directly.
Chroelle:
Will we see The Blob 2 ever?
(Pretty please – with sugar on top)
Joost:
THQ has already announced it! (Ed: needs to read up on some things before posting questions)
Chroelle:
Can you tell us about the other games you worked on? Which is your own personal favourite(s) and why?
Joost:
We did some more student projects, but the only full game we have since made and released is Swords & Soldiers, which was released last month on WiiWare on the Nintendo Wii. Swords & Soldiers is a real-time strategy game and we got awesome reviews so far: we have an 8.4 on Metacritic right now and Edge Magazine called us the best WiiWare game to date. I am really proud of that!
Chroelle:
And are you currently involved in other game creation? Freeware or commercial?
Joost:
Yes, at Ronimo Games we are now working on a new super secret commercial game project... I might tell you what it is, but I would have to slowly kill you afterwards! Muhaha!
Chroelle:
When did you start playing games? Do you have any fond memories of those times and did you decide to make a game of your own because of some of them? Is The Blob based on some of them?
Joost:
My parents already had an MSX with games for my older brothers and sister when I was born, so games were always there. From the MSX I went to the PC. I have always played tons of games and wanting to make games comes naturally after that, I guess.
Chroelle:
Did more people work on the game, and if so was it difficult leading the progress with volunteers/paid workers working for you.
Joost:
We made de Blob with a team of 9 students, so there were no volunteers or paid workers. Teamwork is always a challenge, but we were all highly motivated to make de Blob as awesome as possible, so things went relatively smooth.
Chroelle:
How do people react to the game when they talk to you about it?
Joost:
They usually tell me its awesome!
Chroelle:
If you were to describe a demographic that plays The Blob who do you think it is?
Joost:
Mostly children, I guess.
Chroelle:
Have you thought about making it into a multi-part series?
Joost:
Nope: we have sold all the rights to THQ, so we cannot do anything with de Blob anymore.
Chroelle:
Do you remember any ideas you had for the game that didn’t make it?
Joost:
We considered making an extra level that was not in a city and instead contained all these crazy shapes, loopings and stuff, just to go crazy. However, that game was to be about the city of Utrecht, so this never made it in.
Chroelle:
Was the game ever in danger of not being published? Why? And at what state?
Joost:
We published our own version ourself, so publishing was nothing more than putting it online and posting about it everywhere. No reason not to do that. The THQ version was more difficult: the contract had to be between THQ, us, our school and the city of Utrecht, which made the contract incredibly complex.
Chroelle:
Which freeware games do you remember playing that made you take on freeware game development?
Joost:
It was a school assignment, so that is why it became freeware.
Chroelle:
Were there any games that inspired you for The Blob? Maybe something other than games?
Joost:
The French student animation “True Color” was the most important inspiration. It is about colour and ink and its pretty awesome, you should check it out! Another inspiration was games where you had to roll a marble through floating platform environments, I think we played several of those while developing de Blob.
Chroelle:
What part of The Blob was the hardest part getting done?
Joost:
The size of the level. The city is rather large for a four month student project.
Chroelle:
What kind of game you would love to make if you had the resources needed and open boundaries?
Joost:
Weird, arty stuff, which is more about the concept than about the polish. But I really enjoy making commercial games like Swords & Soldiers as well.
Chroelle:
What do you think was the coolest feature in the game?
The colours spreading over a building when you paint it.
Chroelle:
Where do you see yourself 5 years from now regarding game making?
Joost:
Still at Ronimo, except by that time I hope we can make slightly larger and even more awesome games.
Chroelle:
Do you have any favourite games from the freeware scene?
Joost:
I don't play that much freeware games, actually, but I really like Cactus Arcade. It is a compilation of a lot of really small games by one guy. All the games are weird and not all of them are fun, but it feels very much like channel surfing on TV. You click through until you get something awesome and there are enough games there to actually make that work. That makes the whole quite a unique experience.
Chroelle:
Any other freeware games you think we should know about for our site?
Joost:
Nope.
Chroelle:
Which leads up to the next question.
If you were to mention somebody special in the world of freeware, who would that be?
Joost:
I guess Cactus? I don't know anyone else in the freeware scene, I think.
Chroelle:
If you could choose to do a freeware game with any game developer or publisher (freeware or commercial) who would it be?
Joost:
Myself. That is a weird answer, but I already work with awesome people (at Ronimo) for our commercial games, so for a change of pace I might make something on my own.
Chroelle:
Ok. To finish off the interview. The classic question:
Any words for enthusiastic independent game developers?
Joost:
Go do stuff! Making games is fun!