It’s the Brady…..er; BLOBBY Bunch!

Today’s mouthwatering patch adds a sweet new Costume Editor to the game for free! Once the patch is installed, head over to the in-game pause menu and select the new “Blob Costumes” button. There, you’ll find a fun in-game editor that lets you dress up your blob with all sorts of tasteful accessories like hats, glasses, ears, skin textures and more!

Kanye Blob approves of 90s Blob’s ugly sweater pattern.

You’ll probably notice that some costume accessories aren’t available right away. Never fear! These are unlocked by collecting the yummy little points that are located throughout the levels. Finally, a new reason to snag those hard-to-get floating blue dots of joy.

Bird Blob does NOT approve of Pig Blob.

And if that wasn’t enough, March 8th will also see the release of a Premium Costume Pack for anyone who wants to show off a REALLY stylish blob. This pack doubles the available accessories for a fashion feast fit for a king. We hope you enjoy it!

For the last few months we’ve been hard at work putting the finishing touches on our upcoming PSN platformer Tales from Space: About a Blob. I’m very excited to announce that the game’s release is now just weeks away! In North America, the game will be released as a PlayStation Plus exclusive on February 1st, with a general release to follow a week later on February 8th.

First, a quick recap for those of you who may have missed our previous PlayStation.Blog postings: Tales from Space: About a Blob is a side-scrolling puzzle-platformer about a race of alien Blobs that land on an Earth-like planet and start eating everything around them. The game features a retro-inspired art style, local co-op gameplay, a monster-movie theme, and a healthy dose of humor.

Collection is a big part of the game. As you make your way through the levels you must find and eat objects that are smaller than you, which causes you to grow. Little by little you get larger and larger, eventually becoming large enough to absorb cars, people, buildings, etc. Collectible points and hard-to-find “Blob friends” are also scattered about the levels. These are used to provide secondary achievement targets to players looking for an extra challenge.

The Blobs have a variety of abilities at their disposal. Basic abilities include jump, absorb, slam,
and “run” (if you can call what a Blob does when it moves fast “running”!). From the start of the game, player Blobs can also spit out objects they’ve already absorbed and then pull them back from a distance using a special “attract” ability. In co-op play you can use the spit/attract abilities to pass objects back and forth between players.

Over the course of the game, the Blobs are given a couple of additional powers. The first of
these, “Magnetic”, allows Blobs to pull toward and/or push away from metal objects. In-game, these objects are outlined with a purple glow. If a Blob uses its magnetic ability near a fixed metal object like a steel wall, it will be pulled toward or pushed away from the wall. Blobs can use this ability to hover in mid-air around certain areas. When used around loose metal objects, the magnetic ability causes these loose objects to fly away from or toward the player.

A second special Blob ability – introduced a bit later in the game – is the “Electric” power. This ability allows Blobs to pull electricity out of special machines (outlined in blue) and push it back into other machines. This can be used to manipulate objects in the environment: Turning moving platforms on and off, for example, or causing platforms to rotate. The electric ability is particularly useful in some of the puzzles found in the second half of the game.

The full game features a healthy amount of content. Each of the game’s seventeen levels contain special speed run and collection achievement targets. We have also included online leaderboards to track top speed run times for each level.

There will be a free trial version of the game from day one. If you decide to give it a try: Grab a friend if you can – co-op is really a lot of fun. I hope you guys have as much fun playing the game as we did making it!

Tales from Space: About a Blob is a game about a race of alien blobs that land on an Earth-like planet and start eating everything around them. Eating is just what Blobs do — they can’t really help themselves. Although the Blobs aren’t really out to hurt anyone, mistrustful humans greet them with hostility.

The game is a side-scrolling puzzle-platformer with a monster-movie theme and retro art style. Humour is also a big part of the style.

Players will interact with the game environment using unique growth and absorption-related control mechanics, experiencing the world at vastly different scales as they progress. Both single-player and co-op play will be supported.

Two friends and I started DrinkBox back in 2008 after Pseudo Interactive — the larger Toronto-based development studio we had all previously worked for — shut its doors. Shortly after we started DrinkBox, a few more of our ex-Pseudo team-mates came on board. Since then we’ve continued to grow our team: We’re now up to about 10 employees.

Over the past couple of years, we have had the opportunity to contribute in support roles on a number of console titles being primarily developed by other studios, including some big games by EA and Activision. Most recently we’ve been helping out fellow Toronto-indies Capybara Games with their new title Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes HD.

Tales from Space: About a Blob, though, is the first console title we’ll be releasing on our own as a studio and we’re pretty excited about it. Sony has generously offered to demo About a Blob in their booth at E3 next week: If you’re attending, please do check it out! Also: A blog for the game has been set up at www.aboutablob.com, head on over for the latest updates.

Both Chris Harvey (DrinkBox CTO / lead designer on the project) and I will be checking back in here over the next little while to respond to questions. If you’re curious about anything, please let us know.