A Boy and His Blob

This is a fantastic remake of the almost-but-not-quite classic for the NES. The original Boy and His Blob was, despite it's cutesy appearance, super punishing, often requiring pixel perfect platforming despite sluggish movement. Sometimes, you could do everything right, only to call your blob over and have him push you into the water or a bed of spikes! Still, the game was unique for the time, and managed to sell enough to get a sequel on game boy.

Fast forward 20 or so years later, and we get a remake from WayForward, who were clearly fans of the original. This is the rare kind of remake that actually understood the appeal of the first game, and gave it a new, beautiful coat of paint. Rather than one continuous level, the game is broken up into mini-levels, but across multiple worlds. I have mixed feelings about this change, as well as the inability to use all the collected jellybeans at any time; instead you are limited to only those jellybeans that will be useful in the level. It's obvious that this game was made for kids, and you will notice plenty of hand-holding in the earlier levels. However, the difficulty does start to ramp up toward the end of the first world, so fans of the original probably won't be bored. This version of the game also gets extra points for the charming presentation; it's nothing groundbreaking compared to the NES version, but is just so much more user friendly overall. If you have any nostalgia at all for the original game, or just want a breezy platformer to kill some time, I'd definitely recommend checking this out.

100% this game back on the Wii! Extremely colorful, great soundtrack, cute characters and the game play is fun and challenging. S tier game when it comes to puzzles and casual fun, 100% recommend.

For David Crane <3

the blob has no choice

DISCLAIMER: I HAVE NOT PLAYED THE ORIGINAL NES VERSION.

A Boy and His Blob is an engaging puzzle-platformer developed by WayForward Technologies™. It is my first time trying a game from this developer, and I loved almost every bit of it. It is by no means a difficult game, but it is not afraid to push you to use your brain, while also rewarding you greatly for doing so. You play as a Boy... and his Blob... Blob can take different shapes based on the jelly beans you are given in each level. The puzzles take full advantage of this system, and upon completing each level, you get a feeling of accomplishment that not a lot of puzzle-platformers can give. You collect treasure chests from each level, and eventually they all combine into viewable concept art, developer footage, and early level design. This is an apt reward given the effort you put in collecting these chests. I was always excited to see what new piece of art or footage I would be awarded upon completing a challenge.

The game does falter with Blob's Artificial Intelligence, or lack thereof... I would not bring it up were it not significant enough to warrant it. Sometimes I would throw a jelly bean and wait longer than is necessary for Blob to come and digest it. Other times, Blob would get stuck to the point of me having to restart the entire level. This does add up and can create a tedious experience if one is not patient enough to deal with it. Assuming this game is targeting a younger demographic, this can be a big issue as children typically don't respond well to this. On this note, I would also add that this is a 13+ game, and not one for anyone younger. The E rating by the ESRB is generous given that some scenes are decently violent. One final gripe revolves around the jarring switch the environmental art takes towards the latter half of the game. Without spoiling much, I was not a big fan of how contrasted The Boy and His Blob looked relative to the environmental art. This is largely an issue with two out of four of the game's worlds, and is a majorly subjective point of contention. This is not to say that the art taken individually was bad; rather, it is to say that the cohesiveness of the art style when it was combined faltered.

Whatever my gripes are, they are no match for my love of the ambitious Boy and his friendly Blob. At its core, I find that it is a game about friendship and tenacity in the face of a great danger. Alone, neither The Boy nor Blob can handle this great danger; only together are they able to overcome it.This is exemplified well when Blob receives its final transformation as a Mech. It can transform into this massive wobbly imitation of a metallic husk, but only with the help of the Boy can it fight with it.

What this game did very well was make me a fan of of both puzzle-platformers and WayForward Technologies™. I am eager to play through their library of games in the near future, and I wholeheartedly recommend this game for anyone considering trying out a puzzle-platforming video game.

i know the mysterious blobby aka a boy and his blob is a classic but this is just a remake well since you know which god forsaken console however this needs to be updated if only if you want multiplayer. however this is just singleplayer sadly. but at least it might resembles older nes/famicom and gameboy ones.

Talk about a game I really wanted to love...

The aesthetic is beautiful, and the game at its core is a really solid brain-teaser, using all the Blob's fun abilities to solve the puzzles and advance through the stages. Despite all the nasty things I'm about to say, it is a thoroughly charming game that deserves to be a lot better than it actually is.

Unfortunately, the animations actually interfere with the gameplay; they're often too long-winded, which is a massive pain when quick reactions are needed. The boss battles are especially egregious in this respect, resulting in a lot of unfair deaths. Thankfully punishment for death is never too severe, as you restart more-or-less at the point where you died.

Blob's pathfinding AI can also be irritating, as sometimes it seems to take him forever to find a jellybean that you only threw a few feet away.

The worst thing of all is just moving around. Movement is mapped to the analogue stick, rather than the D-Pad, which in the case of a 2D platformer is such a massive blunder, making things like going up and down ladders in-particular an exercise in pure frustration. A game that ultimately needs a lot of precision is rendered haphazard and clumsy by this one idiotic decision.

Oh, Wayforward... You just can't stop releasing games that deserve to be a lot better than they actually are.

it's a really fun platformer and puzzle game rolled into one- thank god it has infinite lives or this game would be nigh impossible. some of the puzzles are a bit convoluted but they're all doable! good brain teaser with stunning visuals and lovely homey animation!

For the most part, this is a relaxing puzzle game, however, there are times when I wish at some parts, that there was a better checkpoint system. Most of the time, it's very forgiving, but others place you so far back, that it's a chore to get back to where you last were. Also, If you don't finish and entire level, and decide to quit out, you'd have to start all over from the beginning of said level. Finally, there are some boss fights that don't give you much time to figure out what to do, and I'd have to go to Youtube to see how to defeat them. Probably my poor gaming skills, but I thought I'd forewarn people that might experience the same thing. But the artstyle, the music, and most of the gameplay do make me recommend the game overall. And the price was cheap.

Magical, heart-warming, and sweet-spirited, this game is the rare occurrence where the remake vastly outdoes the original. As a huge fan of the NES classic, A Boy and His Blob, it's hard for me to type out a comment like that without feeling like I'm betraying my boyhood. However, this updated game presents a hauntingly beautiful and pleasant dive into a boy's adventures with his amorphous alien friend.

The game is presented in such a sway that it feels like you're in control of your own Saturday morning cartoon. The animation style is a clean hybrid between Studio Ghibli and classic Disney animated series like DuckTales and Rescue Rangers. The music is incredibly catchy and whimsical, further enthralling the player with a soundtrack guaranteed to lift hearts and spirits during play.

The game play is solid, as are the puzzle-like levels that are laid out throughout the game's story. The Boy and Blob must traverse the various environments using jelly beans to transform the alien into tools and items, bypassing and overcoming obstacles and enemies. The game is challenging, but in a way that remains relaxed and meditative.

In short, the game is fantastic. I don't review games... like, ever. This game is worth it. If you want to play something sweet, wondrous, and that is guaranteed to make you smile, A Boy and His Blob is where it's at.

6/10
I was unusually divided on this one. It’s a beautiful, masterfully made game…that ultimately just isn’t for me, which is ok.

Created as a re-imagining of the 1989 NES game, this 2009 version brings a warm and bright animation style recalling 80s cartoons, anime, and Studio Gibli vibes. The artstyle and music are superb throughout. (The “Brawlers” that throw you are the best!)

For me, this puzzle platformer was dreadfully slow for the first half of the base game. Unfortunately, all your powers stem from your Blob friend…so the boy yells commands at him constantly to proceed through levels. (I believe every 4th scream or so is a whistle which calls him from pits, etc. If a kid yelling “Blob! Come here! Hurry!” Etc over and over isnt your thing, you’re gonna want to pass…I found it unbearable throughout the first half of the game)

Credit where its due, pushing through the first half rewarded me in the second half. The puzzles became more interesting, the gameplay more fun, and the boy’s yelling either lessened or I just didnt notice as much. The blob’s AI got a little funky at times, but mostly it was fine. After collecting all 3 chests in each world, challenge levels open up. (So there is plenty of game here!) i found the first half great, the second half painful and tedious. (Rounding off my experience as bad, good, good, bad 🤣🤷🏻‍♂️)

This game is fantastic for anyone wanting a puzzle platformer with a very chill vibe. (Great for kids!) Its developed by a great company, and made with a lot of heart (as is seen in the bonus material, where you can see “the boy” being modelled after the creator’s son). For these reasons, I recommend it. 👊🏻

Deep down, I really, really love this game. It's one of my childhood games.

It's adorable, the morphing blob concept is great, and some parts are really fun. But man... does it have some of the most annoying platforming I have ever experienced. If your position is off by a fraction of a pixel or your timing is a millisecond off, you will plunge into spike pits and get eaten by evil blobs over... and over.. and over. It does not help that the controls are not particularly responsive (at least, I do not find them to be). To say nothing of the boss battles, which are even more tedious.

It gets really frustrating. If you like cute things and have lots of patience, it can be fun. Or you might just give up after having to repeat the same section ten times in a row.

It's one of those games that I hesitate to give either a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down because the first half is really fun, but as the game progresses I feel like the frustration outweighs the fun.

Ah memories, good old memories. And therefore you came. For the Blob and the Jelly Beans. Maybe also for the cute graphics, the atmospheric music and the fun puzzles.

Check out my video review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RNl4NWyAbA

The only thing that really carries A Boy and his Blob is nostalgia+modern production values. So if you never played the original NES version, this will probably have a lot less value for you. It's almost endless puzzles back-to-back, so if you don't like puzzles, avoid it.

Visually it's pretty polished and a lot of the puzzles are creative, but it gets seriously tedious, especially toward the end. You switch abilities and aim jellybeans over and over. At some points it's pretty difficult and the controls aren't as responsive as they should be, AND it doesn't save enough of your progress. So count on repeating the same part ad nauseam.

A manual save system would have been a big improvement. Also you don't really acquire new abilities; they just show up in the menu. They should have made new abilities something you earn. You don't really feel like you're making progress; you just get a change of scenery.

This game should have been HALF as long.

Overall, buy it if it's 50% off or more.

Teslagrad with jellybeans instead of magnets! A very weak yes, but a yes nonetheless.

This Wii port is a 2009 remake of a particularly strange NES game designed by David Crane, the guy who made Pitfall. In both games, an evil tyrant king has taken over the planet of Blobolonia, and one of its citizens, a small white blob, crash-lands on Earth in search of help. He meets a random schoolboy who discovers that feeding jellybeans to the blob will give him various powers which, oddly enough, correspond to the jellybean’s flavor in some way (Tangerine = trampoline, apple = jack, and so on). Armed with nothing but a bottomless pocketful of jellybeans, the two heroes set off to the blob's homeworld to defeat the evil king.

Whereas the original NES game was a non-linear treasure-hunting game like Pitfall, the remake has wisely chosen to be a level-based puzzle platformer. There's no shortage of anti-frustration features: unlimited lives, absolutely no penalty for death, and abundant level checkpoints. Jellybeans aren’t limited anymore; instead, you’re only allowed to use a specific subset of jellybean colors per level. Death doesn’t make you lose your treasures. Furthermore, you don’t have to worry about keeping the blob with you – if you call for the blob three times in a row, the blob will instantly turn into a balloon and come to you. It’s obvious to me that this wasn’t originally intended, as the levels are designed in such a way that it’s obvious you were meant not to lose track of the blob (like a companion cube), but I suppose the idea was ditched at the last minute in favor of making the game less annoying.

Everything about the game’s artistry and presentation is stellar. The story is told with no dialogue. Soundtrack is fantastic. All of the worlds are beautiful in very different ways. Sprite animations are masterfully adorable, and some of the boss designs really took my breath away when I first saw them. There’s so much love that went into this game, so many cute little nods to the NES game, and so much attention to detail. I especially liked that all of the jellybean color puns were kept in, although they’re never explicitly spelled out for you, but you’ll notice them if you’re familiar with the old game.

Controls are decent. You can toss your jellybean around at any trajectory you want, which quickly becomes quite important. There’s a button to center the camera on the blob, which is invaluable in some of the harder levels. There’s also a dedicated button to hug the blob, which is useless (except to get one of the achievements) and a “scold” button, which is actually quite important, as it makes the blob stop jumping around, making it much easier to solve certain puzzles with precision.

This game has a lot going for it, but there’s just one little problem: the gameplay.

To put it bluntly, the game progression is agonizingly SLOW. It takes a century just to do a simple task, because every little thing in the game requires four different button presses: one to call the blob, one to choose a jellybean, one to throw the jellybean, and then one to do whatever you needed to do in the first place. If the blob happens to be stuck somewhere, you have to call it three times in a row, wait for the balloon to catch up to you, then call it once more to get it out of balloon form. You have to do this every time, all four button presses, for each individual transformation, dozens of times per level. Make sure you map all the buttons to something you’re comfortable with, or you’ll get really frustrated constantly getting them confused.

Puzzle design is very weak. 75% of the time, it’s obvious what you need to do, but it requires really annoying precision, and sometimes it will take dozens of tries just to execute it correctly, and lots and lots of waiting. Now, I love it when a puzzle game is annoying in such a way that it forces you to re-evaluate the game mechanics and fully understand them, at which point it becomes satisfyingly easy. And to the game’s credit, sometimes it does this - sometimes a puzzle will be really irritating if you’re trying to do it the hard way, until you realize how to do it the easy way (particularly on the bird boss, where a genius trick makes the whole fight trivial). Other times, the game will give you a wonderful lateral-thinking puzzle that only this game could have pulled off. But the majority of the time, the puzzles just require annoying precision, and it’s as simple as that. Puzzles involving dozens of transformations will feel like they take an eternity, and if you screw up and die, you have to start the puzzle all over. In beating many of the game’s challenges, I mostly felt an overwhelming sense of relief that it was over with and I’d never need to do it again.

Furthermore, the game doesn’t spell out its rules very well. It never teaches you how to toss a jellybean, you need to figure that out on your own. It never teaches you how to whistle-call. It never teaches you how to apply the Scold button or the blob-cam, which become practically required to understand in the bonus levels. Sometimes you need to be standing on a treasure chest to collect it, and sometimes the blob can do it remotely, and there’s no way to differentiate the cases. There’s a puzzle where you need to infer that you can jump into a cannon sitting on spikes, and another one where the ladder’s behavior is changed specifically for one place in the entire game, and many places where the physics will wonk out in unintuitive ways and ruin your solution if you haven’t figured out the minute quirks of the physics engine, making it seem like the intended solution isn’t working.

This is a curious case of game difficulty: it’s always either too easy, or too frustrating, and there’s never a middle ground. Maybe a middle ground doesn’t exist; maybe the developers really did make the best possible remake of A Boy and His Blob, but the best possible remake is simply a subpar game experience. But it’s obvious that a lot of thought and rebalancing went into this game, and it could have been so, so much worse, and I can’t help but appreciate that they really did their best; look at some of the unlockable bonus features and it becomes quite clear how much heartfelt planning and characterization went into this. Despite everything, I think it’s a remake that deserves to exist.

In all, I give this game a 10/10 in presentation, art, and music, and 10/10 as a remake of a weird old NES game. But overall, I give it a 6/10. The gameplay is an irritating exercise in patience, especially the bonus challenges, and you’ll be nothing but relieved when it’s all over. But if you’re the kind of person who liked Teslagrad, you’ll probably like this, too. I think that the charm, the cuteness, the art and the music really are worth slogging through the journey, and there really is a huge sense of accomplishment (and maybe a pulled heartstring or two) when it’s all over.

Completionists: it takes about 15 hours to 100%, depending on how much trouble you have on some of the irritating bonus levels.

At first this game was charming and felt kid friendly, however, as I progressed through the game I found myself raging at several levels/boss. If you want a challenging platformer full of puzzles this is just the game for you, but if you go into this expecting a casual fun time, I have some bad news for you.

I'm still in the process of finishing this for a perfect game, but I feel I've played enough to give an accurate review.

A boy and his blob is a remake of the classic NES game of the same title. Having grown up playing the original, I loved how charming it was, and it had unique mechanics that were never really duplicated in any game I can call to mind.

This remake accurately takes the charm of the orginal and turns the dial up to 10. This game oozes charm, from the enemies, to the various forms your blob can assume, the artwork is gorgeous. Gameplay is decent, though somewhat monotonous, but the game isn't very challanging, and when it is challanging, its usually due to being unfair. What I mean is that some animations take so long (and there are ZERO invunerability frames) that a boss will kill you, or an enemy will kill you because your timing is off. The second boss in the game is exceptionally frustrating due to this. As well, the controls are very wonky for some of your blobs moves, not to mention you have to bash the call button a bajillion times to get him to come to you.

So the breakdown:

Pros
-----
* Gorgeous game
* Accurately remakes an NES classic
* OK puzzle/platforming gameplay
* Charm out the wazoo
* pretty long if you 100%

Cons
-----
* Sometimes frustrating gameplay due to slow animations and wonky controls
* Really easy when its not overly frustrating
* Wish there was a true tutorial level...
* 90% of the trophies are given on the last world, which is really weird

Overall I'd give this a 6/10. Not a must play by any means, but definitely one to pick up on sale if your a fan of the original, or just want some platforming action.

A spiritual remake of a great NES game I played once upon a time. This one is more of a spiritual success as a lot of the gameplay is different. But the jellybeans are still there!

This is not a hardcore action platformer but more of a artistic slow paced puzzle game through different worlds.

Don't forget to hug your blob often!

Fun, Cute game. My 4yr really enjoyed playing this ( with a little help of course). I found playing just as enjoyable as he did.

I bought and played the original 'A Boy and His Blob' (Trouble on Blobolonia) when it was new. I loved it. I could only beat it with a Game Genie, though. I bought and played through the Wii version, also. I loved it for different reasons. One of them being: You can beat it without a Game Genie.

This appears to be a faithful and stable port of the Wii version. I find the game incredibly nostalgic and lovely in many ways. This is likely the influence of the game's director, Sean Velasco (The director and designer of Shovel Knight).

Sure it is more linear and not as challenging as the original. But it captures the soul of AB&HB and presents it in a more light-hearted (and finishable) package.

Skip one trip to Starbucks this week and give it a whirl.

A pretty decent port of an underrated and largely forgotten remake of a mostly ignored and forgotten classic.

It has a "hug Blob" button, what more do you need?

A Boy and His blob, originally on the nintendo Wii makes it rounds to other platforms, including PC this year, after a long time of being exclusive to the Nintendo console. Quite possibly one of the most charming games I have ever played also on the Nintendo Wii.

A Boy and His Blob is simply put a game about a lone boy who happens to come across a space blob, reminiscent of Gleep and Gloop from the Herculoids. Almost instantly and without any influencing factors the boy and the blob create a bond. I mean even Elliot and E.T. had to work up to each other, and not without the help of some Reeses Pieces.

The game takes place in a varying set of locations including forests, caverns, and more, made up with different levels. Each level features both platforming and puzzle challenges throughout as well as an assortment of enemy creatures also similar to our sidekick, the Blob. If you've ever played the original NES classic, you'll feel right at home with the games main feature, being that blob can transform into different objects through the consumption of different flavored jellybeans. This may again be somewhat of a throwback to E.T., though I don't know. You control the boy, and do the platforming, and feed the blob jellybeans and he transforms. The different objects the blob can transform into include things like ladders, trampolines, bubbles, and more. And each stage has a different set of jellybeans to help solve the different puzzles and even find hidden areas throughout. The platforming may lean a little more to the challenging side as opposed to being relaxed, as the "boy" does not have a very high jump. Luckily he does have air control. But his very small jump arc means jumping over some gaps and enemies requires good timing. It's not a constant thing, but you'll see how important it is in the very first stage. The game is extremely pleasant and magical looking, featuring hand-drawn characters and environments, and has said to have drawn "inspiration from a number of sources, including the films of Hayao Miyazaki.". The music is equally enchanting featuring some nice relaxing medleys of both original pieces and even something for the fans of the original NES game.

I did not want to make a big long review for the game itself but rather sum it up briefly. It's a great game! It's faithful to the original NES game in some ways, while still bringing its own originality and flavor to the new (when it came to the Wii) title.

I actually wanted to instead discuss how the port is. So, how is it? Well, I'm really mixed on this one.

Controls: The controls are all fully mappable on both keyboard and controller. This is a plus. I'm glad to see they did not take the easy way. There is no need to go into any menus either to switch between keyboard or controller. Just pick up and use whichever method of control you prefer.

Graphic settings: This is where I'm a bit torn. There's not much here. You can change the resolution which is great. You can change the game from fullscreen to windowed to even borderless windowed, which is fantastic! But that is where it ends. I honestly did not expect things like aliasing options to be implemented. I mean the game looks fine on its own without the need for an aliasing option. Well maybe for the far background, but it's not a big deal. No, what bugs me instead is the lack of v-sync. A v-sync option is badly needed for this title. Right off the bat you can see screen tearing here and there. It's not a game breaking flaw, but for some people it is going to call a cause for complaints and gripes. And you know those people are going to be vocal about it. I personally would love to see a v-snc option patched in. Luckily some cards come with the option to force v-sync into games. But there are still some people playing without graphics cards who will see this as an issue.

In any case, v-sync issue aside, this is a wonderful port, and any fan of the original NES classic or someone who missed this title on the Wii should give this game a try.

I bought this knowing it was pure nostalgia. I wasn't disappointed. The gameplay is smooth and the updated version of the mechanics is perfect. I can run this in 4k with 21:9 ratio. Im so impressed with how smoothly and gracefully this game transitioned from Wii to Steam. 10/10 must own!

Don't forget to hug Blob!

Its 9$ people! This game is adorable, colorful, beautiful, and runs great on PC! I haven't tried it with keyboard and mouse, but it works fine with my X Box controller. Controls are tight and simple. Beautiful animation, music, and sound. So far the port is exactly what it should be.

So what is A Boy and his Blob?

It's a remake of an 8 bit nintendo game that had an awesome concept without the capability to pull it off properly or do it any real justice. Basically, you are a boy who befriends an alien blob that eats jellybeans on a mission to save Blobonia from an evil tyranical emperor. Depending on what kind of jellybean he eats he will become different things. If you feed him a licorice jellybean he will become a licorice ladder for example. You use these various transformations to solve puzzles and traverse the levels. Unlike the old version, you will never run out of Jelly Beans so you don't need to worry about that. You are free to experiment although so far there has been only one right answer to the puzzles. Maybe that will change later on. I haven't played enough of it to determine the difficulty yet. I don't know how tough later levels get.

If you like casual puzzle platformers you really really should have a look at this. I can't understand why this game was not a bigger hit on Wii. :( Anyway, all of this is a mere 9$. Come on! Grab yourself a pack of Jellybeans, sit back, and let boy and blob take you on an adventure!

Oh, and there is a hug button. You can hug your blob, and it's the cutest thing in the history of video games.

One of the first games I ever played on the Wii, enjoyed it on there and now loving it on the pc port!

Pros:

- Beautiful graphics
- Cute characters
- Fun story line
- Easy controls
- You can hug the blob

Cons:

- Sometimes what you have to do and where you have to go next can be a bit vague

A Boy and his blob is a game about friendship. You start off with a meteor falling from the sky so you go to investigate. Once you get to the crash site this white blob jumps out from the meteor and at first you are scared of it but then you become curious and become frends! Once you get back to your treehouse base a jar of beans on the table next to your bed falls over and a single black bean falls out. The blob eats it and turns into a ladder allowing you to climb up to a higher level of your base.

Throughout the game you will collect many different coloured beans that each allow the blob to change into a different form. You will need to use these to overcome obsticles and to safely get a boy and his blob to their next destination.

Also did I mention you can hug the blob?