Format: Wii
Release: Out now
Publisher: Majesco
Developer: WayForward
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For a machine once codenamed Revolution, Wii quickly shed its bolshie convictions and settled for the politer role of reimaginer. Through a bustling porting scene, Konami’s WiiWare ReBirths and Nintendo’s own Play On Wii brand, a neat and orderly queue of familiar faces parades through our glowing blue slot. Most, however, betray their roots with uncomfortable controls and tired visuals. A Boy and His Blob, a reworking of David Crane’s 1989 NES puzzler, does not aim to exploit Wii's unique hardware, but it does tailor itself to its unique audience.



Bar a handful of start-up logos, WayForward has removed all such unintuitive gaming baggage as title screens, save files or tutorials - just presenting one Boy about to meet his Blob. From a tree house den you trot through surrounding gardens, guided only by wooden signs, until you happen upon your companion. Braid’s minimalism comes to mind, though that game's lofty journals are replaced with a hug button. It’s a welcoming, uncluttered approach to storytelling, more story-doing, that sets the tone for the next ten hours.

You learn about Blob’s eating habits through observation. With a radial menu depicting the resulting transformation (a confusing omission in the original), beans are introduced at a gentle pace and in levels designed to linearly reveal their abilities. Finding three chests within a stage unlocks a challenge world, itself uncovering advanced tricks you’ll need at a later stage in the common story missions. All this without a single developer interjection – the kind of instinctual training of the best Zelda dungeons and WiiWare’s recent LostWinds.



Easing us in, WayForward maintains comfort levels with rules and abilities that are as rigid and predetermined as the hand-animated frames conjuring them to life. Trampolines will jump you only so high, gaps and holes match the sizes of their required tools. Everything is just so, solutions left to theory and never the happenstance of execution. Multiple approaches ensure handholding isn’t too tight, but in the overly prescribed applications the grip rarely lets go. Certainly, no solution buzzes with the off-the-cuff invention of Braid and Portal.

There are odd hints of a more ambitious game, too. Beans are aimed with a dotted trajectory line, allowing surgical placement factoring in wall rebounds and bounces, but it's a skill that's mysteriously underused. Why let us place beans anywhere if they should not have purpose everywhere? Likewise, getting Blob to follow you is a fluffy affair. Hammer the call button and he’ll eventually transform into a balloon, floating through all surfaces to rejoin the boy. He’ll even pass doors and soil you would otherwise have to solve a puzzle to pass. A hurried design tweak? Hard to tell.



Meanwhile, certain transformations, those geared toward more instant thrills, feel jarring. Rockets, space hoppers, parachutes and bubbles suddenly inject arcade ideals - fast reactions and pinpoint jumps – into what is otherwise one of the most relaxed titles on Wii. These are artefacts of WayForward’s wilder days, the Contra 4 days. Though reasonably well executed, they add the frustration of repeat death to a game that previously punished only for leaping before you think. We reserve an extra special fist-shake for the Zorbing bubble; a stiff physical creation with a foul grasp of momentum. 

These later developments bring to the fore a dilemma in which many Wii developers find themselves: stuck between a rock and a hardcore place. An elegant, intuitive front end and adorable art style are a warm embrace to the newcomers, a hug in a landscape of sternly tutting fitness trainers. But what of the gamers who have paid WayForward’s bills, the Contra lovers and Shantae fan clubs? They're rewarded with extreme difficulty spikes, enacted by the amorphous lovelies of a Miyazaki film. A Boy and his Blob panders to the Wii’s unique audience all too well, dividing itself, and its impact, in the process. [7]