Invasion of the Blobs II: The Evolution Revolution
The sequel is a completely different game. Instead of a top-down action adventure, it’s a platformer (mostly). The player character is different; the game is set ten years later, and now you play as the girlfriend to the original protagonist. The game mechanics are different. The story is larger and more ambitious, as is the game design. Every level feels like a brand new experiment. The resulting game uses just about every advanced technique I’ve seen in a Game-Maker game, and makes about the best use of them that I’ve seen.
There’s an element of world-building in Invasion of the Blobs II. As I said, it expands the timeframe, the active cast of characters, and their relationships. Something that strikes me is that every stage seems to both lead logically to the next and from the previous stage. Often the previous stage is visible through an open doorway, and the tag leading to the next stage is hovering in the corner. For instance, after traversing a locker room you enter a behind-the-scenes area filled with leaky pipes. You plug the leaks with blob enemies, pass through, and climb to the roof. When you’ve reached the end of the roof, you leap off and grab the tongue of an enormous blob hovering in the sky. Startled, the blob begins to rocket backwards in space.
This leads us to one of the most technically interesting stages in a Game-Maker game, a sort of Space Harrier tribute which seems possibly inspired by some of Eclypse Games‘ work. If so, it uses the techniques in a totally new way. Other clearer influences include RSD’s Pipemare (in the custom intro screen) and Nebula (in the elegant mode selection menu), rounding up the demo game circuit.
There’s a ton of neat stuff in here, from particle effects to background objects that you can kick around. Yet as with the first game, it’s the small things that impress me here. For instance, combat. The construction of Game-Maker makes melee attacks very difficult to realize. To harm a monster, a player sprite has to somehow birth a monster of a higher power level. Although it is technically possible to birth a monster that looks like an extension of the player sprite, it’s a pain in the neck to get right. And even when it’s almost perfect, it never quite works the way that it should. Through what must have been painstaking trial and error, though, this game gets it right. The protagonist attacks mostly through high and low kicks. I’m also struck by the amount of thought that went into the range and use of the attacks.
Also uncommonly for a Game-Maker game, the visuals are obviously imported from an external painting program — allowing more flexibility and consistently in the backgrounds and sprites. I’d use the then-industry standard Deluxe Paint; Perrucci used Neopaint. Same thing.
