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GDC 2012: Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack

Christopher Park

Christopher Park

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Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack is one of the first downloadable PlayStation Vita titles. Drinkbox Studios is now in the process of porting their game to PC on Steam.

CEO Ryan MacLean demoed the game showing what looks like a fairly complete build of the game. He told me that while the original release was designed for the PS Vita, all the development of the game was on PC. Most early builds were tested on PC before PS Vita.

Gameplay

Mutant Blobs Attack is simple from the first look, but uses a lot of puzzle elements that create an interesting experience. While keyboard support is planned, I played the game with a Microsoft Xbox PC controller and mouse. The majority of the controls exist on the controller with the mouse replacing the touchscreen elements of the PS Vita.

Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack requires you to eat various things from food to orbs. The more you eat, the larger you grow. As you progress through the game, the blob grows from a small little green cell to a gigantic monster capable of devouring the world.

The blob forms to the environment, squishing to fit in tight areas or rolling over the level. Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack also has a lot of platforming gameplay like jumping up to reach different areas. The level design is excellent with a lot of horizontal and vertical travel.

PC controls

Early levels are much easier and display the different powers of the blob, but later levels require a lot of fine control to avoid dying. The difficulty appears to ease you into new levels, but I jumped from the first stage to one of the last and was quickly defeated.

Some of the extra abilities of the blob are telekinesis and magnetic powers, used to get extra food or find extra orbs. The PS Vita version used the touchscreen to initiate these powers, but the PC uses the mouse. While I thought that changing from controller to mouse would be annoying, the puzzles that require the mouse don’t break up the gameplay.

A promising summer title

The game is intuitive and getting the hang of all the controls only took a couple minutes. The level design shines a lot more in the later levels, but my short demo has me convinced of the solid gameplay and presentation.

Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack has a great art style, taking a cartoon 1950’s sci-fi look and is a lot of fun to play. The game is planned to release on Steam during the Summer of 2012 with Steam Cloud and Achievements in development.

Christopher Park

Christopher Park

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