This is Globbo!

A PICO-8 adaptation of the classic Mac game Blobbo.

The goal of the game is to pick up all toy chests before proceeding to the next room through the stairs. Tread carefully though, or you might find yourself squished by a bowling ball or punctured by an arrow.

The game contains a subset of the features found in the original. Many of the rooms in this version have been inspired by the original. My approach for these rooms has been to try to make condensed versions of the originals, trying to capture the "theme" of a room while taking liberties with its layout to accommodate the 16x16 grid.

The aim was not to make a fully featured port of the original, but rather to pluck the best parts and reshape it in a way that works well with PICO-8.

Please enjoy! ^_^

Globbo 1.1

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Globbo 1.1

by siwu

Cart #globbo-8 | 2022-08-26 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

6

Controls

D-pad / Arrow Keys: Move Globbo
Hold Cross / X + Circle / Z: Undo
Hold Cross / X + Up: Show play statistics

Changelog

level 5 was a big difficulty jump for me, but I got past it eventually. I wish there was a way to skip/replay levels -- a level select in the pico8 menu maybe?

but those are both small things; overall this was really fun, and had some nice puzzles. "combination lock" was particularly memorable for me. thanks for the game!

Thanks for the feedback @pancelor! I'm glad you enjoyed the game ^_^

Getting a feel for the difficulty curve has been particularly challenging, so you sharing your experience is super valuable!

I've been considering updating the game with a save feature at some point so that players feel like they can set the game aside and come back later without losing any progress. Allowing players to skip a challenging room and return to it later during a playthrough could also be a good QOL improvement. In the end, I want to provide an experience that is challenging, but not so overwhelming that players give up.

Potential room 5 spoiler below

haha yeah I can see why you chose a different name! more thoughts on level 5:

You're presenting some nice insights there!

I suppose the punishment for dying is pretty harsh. I've previously considered not forcing a restart when you die, instead allowing you the option to undo (sort of like in Baba is You). My main concern there has been that softening the blow for dying would remove too much of the game's challenge or sense of stake. But I haven't had enough play testing opportunities to test those theories.

You're not the first to find the undo flash a bit jarring. Could be that I need to revisit that 🤔. Regarding the undo being slow, an alternative to try could be to not record frames where the player moving was the only change, so that you're only stepping back through moments where something significant happened.

Thanks again for being so generous with your feedback! 😊

New version released!
This one removes the undo flash and adds a level select as suggested by @dw817 and @pancelor

Hi @siwu. Glad to help out.

Another thing you might consider is when the player dies, this can also be rewound 1-move. I was noticing many turn-based puzzles today (2022) allow for for this rewind so you spend less time repeating moves and more time thinking about solving the puzzle.

Also please don't shake the screen for rewind. Maybe okay to shake it good for death of player.