Blob
Release type: Incomplete
Release date: N/A (begun June 11, 1994)
Levels: 1
Author: cly5m
Website: Autofish.net
Related games: N/A
Next to Shooter, Blob (aka Chess) is probably the most developed of cly5m's early Game-Maker experiments. A little cubical fellow with a propeller can emit blobs of goo.
As he meanders around a checkered world toward a pair of Chess-themed bosses, the fellow is obstructed by little hooded leaping men.
Shoot the blue men, and their heads come off, much to their consternation. Collect the heads to increase the blocky fellow's scant hit points.
The rules here are sort of unusual. The character begins with no health and no extra lives; one touch is fatal. Whenever the player shoots a leaping man, his head falls off and becomes flustered. Collect the severed heads to increase the character’s HP. As the player absorbs more and more heads, the character becomes more prepared for the final showdown with the oversized chess pieces.
Although Blob is still a somewhat violent concept (one that becomes more macabre the more one thinks about it), it demonstrates a much more coherent and fantastical vision than cly5m’s previous game. The game borrows from existing conventions yet works to its own logic that creates an original space and a consistent, if strange, set of themes.
Somehow Blob recalls a little of Shadow of the Colossus. Perhaps it’s the way that Blob takes familiar ideas – the concept of power-ups, the pervasive use of faceless enemies – and changes their meaning, causing the player to think about the expressive use and purpose of design tropes that most games just accept as mechanical truths. It's not necessarily deliberate, but there’s an astute sensibility taking shape here.
Contents
Instructions
- Arrow keys: Move the character
- Spacebar: Shoot
Credits
Availability
Prior to this archive's online presence, this game is not known to be publicly available.
Archive History
For years, cly5m had maintained a page on his website with screenshots of unfinished and unreleased Game-Maker games. For a time, the occasional inquiry went unanswered. On May 20, 2011, cly5m responded positively to a new request, framed in the context of the pending revival of seminal independent game site Insert Credit. All four games were made available at that time, along with the entire directory structure of cly5m's Game-Maker installation.
Links
