Stepping into the fourth and final world that A Boy and His Blob has to offer, I was struck by a rare level of design Zen. Elements that make the original NES title so memorable, the imaginative spirit that comes from pairing a boy with any strange creature and setting them off on an adventure, meets with WayForward’s aesthetic ambition, and a few new ideas on the matter of jellybeans, to create an experience that proves unique, and worthy of the revisit.

A series of factory stages suddenly offer a dramatically darker color palette, compared to the warmer settings of earlier environments. The sinister facility is filled with the machinery and gears that lead quite naturally to switch puzzles and, require Boy, Blob, and several shadow creatures to clear the path ahead. Fellow blobs are held captive in hanging cages, the player able to free them if they choose, simply by tossing jellybeans in their direction. This decision is left completely to the conscience of each player, because there is no reward for doing so, beyond personal satisfaction.

A new enemy came running toward me as I took the first steps into this factory. It was a shadow shaped like Boy, and my immediate reaction was to retreat. But as soon as I did so, I saw it do the same. Like the dark mirror image it represents, its movements mimicked my own in reverse, and the potential for the game seemed to instantly shine brighter from that single shadow.

The factory reminds me of a Studio Ghibli film, and I know that gets said entirely too often and freely, but there’s just no avoiding some light comparison here. The soft character design of both Boy and Blob contrast against the dark environment, not for the sake of fear, but the discovery of a mysterious unknown, reminding me of elements from films like Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. That stages are filled with shadowy blob creatures no doubt helps to strengthen the connection.

But this bit of bliss is the final stage of the game, sans a short epilogue. And like a jar of jellybeans, not every flavour I came across was equally sweet, so we’d better start back at the beginning.

The game begins with Boy sleeping soundly in his treehouse, when a light suddenly appears in the sky as Blob crashes into the forest. In search of the disturbance, Boy encounters the first of many shadow creatures, reaching the crash site and having his strongest reaction of fright at his first glimpse of Blob. Seeing the creature, Boy screams and runs, but takes only a few steps before suddenly stopping and turning around to coax the creature into the light. It only takes a single hug to create the bond, and a fallen jar of jellybeans back at the treehouse quickly reveals Blob’s abilities and sets the game into motion.

This essentially gives the player everything they need to know, in a minimalist way that maintains the soft and quiet nature of the game. Being possessed of a storybook nature, it’s interesting that the game avoids a traditional narrative introduction. Keep in mind that I simply started playing the game because I know it’s a game, and without any real direction I can grasp the concept of moving to the right of the screen, solving puzzles to move further right and eventually to reach the end. Like World of Goo, the intuitive nature of the controls and straightforward concept are everything the player needs. And yet, I can’t help feeling that there’s a piece missing, one that could more smoothly establish the game and provide narrative direction to compliment the gameplay. For instance, we only know of the evil emperor because of the mentioning on the back of the box.

Mind you, I like believing that the game credits its audience with a certain level of intelligence, and reaches back to the roots of the original, when all games simply dropped the player into strange new worlds and provided the tools not only to travel through it, but also to understand it. There’s a certain level of self awareness offered in that. But it’s a shaky leap of faith to assume that was the intention over the possibility that a better solution for beginning the game was lacking.

At the risk of over-generalizing, part of what makes the original game memorable is the seemingly endless world it offers, which players progress through without any real sense of progress – a dark age, before percentage gauges and level selection. The original game offers a fairly stressful trip, with the player never knowing if a potential solution will work, or simply result in their death. It also seems worth mentioning that jellybean management within the original offers an added frustration that might have been my first young lesson in abstract finance - absent in this new version. Players can toss jellybeans around without a second thought from the endless supply provided. The game also predetermines which jellybeans the player is given for each stage.

WayForward’s revisit fragments that original idea, splitting the game across four worlds, which are broken down further into stages, and tied with a bow at the end via boss confrontations. Each world provides a hub, a hideout where a map allows access to the stages. And each stage contains three treasure chests to be discovered, which blob will eat and cough up back at the hub, rewarding the player with decorative trinkets. Beyond the fashion, these trinkets open up challenge levels that offer further puzzle solving situations, which reward the player with concept art, videos, and other behind the scenes treats.

While those challenges extend the game, and I’ll admit that puzzle solving with a Blob is fun, it doesn’t differ much from what is already being offered in the game proper - or do anything about the fact that there’s primarily only one solution for each situation, crushing any concept of experimentation. And while the rewards reinforce the idea that this game is something to be cherished, the thing about being memorable is that you can’t really plan or force it. All you can do is put all your efforts into your creation, and hope that an impression is made.

How well the game is remembered depends largely on how significant the relationship between Boy and Blob becomes for each player that experiences it.

Is that relationship implied, or earned? There’s no direct answer. The introduction certainly feels implied, with players being shown the relationship versus discovering it. But smaller charms emerge along the way to contrast that and offer another perspective. Do you stop to free the blobs in the factory? Do you make frequent use of that hug button? Do you notice the separation anxiety Blob suffers whenever Boy isn’t near him? And if so, do you take the time to talk to Blob and tell him to calm down? Do you smile the first time you notice that Boy uses Blob as a pillow? How do you feel about the tone Boy sometimes uses to call Blob? These are questions every gamer has to answer for themselves. All I can do is talk around them, and draw attention to the impression left on me, given the fact that I’m mentioning those moments.

What is apparent, and disheartening, is the way in which the game proves a modern release – broken into stages and segmented, all for the sake of creating a more easily accessible experience. This earnestly depresses me because it feels like far more of a marketing decision rather than a design choice – the belief that few of us will invest the time in a full and open world given our ADD riddled nature.

Additionally, bossfights bring a great deal of frustration and conflict with the nature of the gameplay preceding them. The dynamic of transforming Blob to solve puzzles or deal with enemies is paced differently, conflicting with the fast natured reality of boss encounters, and making for a series of battles that are incredible aggravating not because of difficulty, but because of the complete inappropriateness. That these battles look stunning - and they do - doesn’t enter into it. The game seems to sense this strangely enough, offering a final transformation at the end of the game that offers the player an immense opportunity to relieve some of that built up stress.

The problem with the stage segmentation is that there’s less reason for the player to invest in the creation, and far less room for ideas worth investing in. Rather than appreciating the environments WayForward has created, I’m consistently rushing through the stages, aware of the fact that they are short - creating a bite-sized experience that makes less of an overall impression because of the ease with which I can walk away and come back to it later. Does that mean a game shouldn’t invite you back? Of course not. But if the aim is to make an emotional connection, than it should grab the player hard enough to hold them still, and not worry that some might not enjoy that.

The game is as conflicted as this write-up. It recaptures some frustrations – there are plenty of ways to die again for instance, and the music that occurs when that happens is burned into my memory already. But the game isn’t entirely sadistic. Instead, there’s a strange mix between obvious solutions with helpful signs, and torturous obstacles that can only be solved by trial and error. More importantly, it loses a lot of the subtle extras that still draw me back to the original. What’s the point of naming the jellybeans when a quick menu shows you what they do?

The visual accomplishment is impressive, from the vibrant backgrounds to the smallest creatures wandering through the stages simply to add to the environment. But there’s never any real way to touch these landscapes or forms of life – remember in Zero Mission when parasites could stick to Samus and be moved to devour obstacles elsewhere? This leaves a strong sense of always wanting more, particularly in the interaction between the landscape and Blob’s transformations. But the game is still a visual treat for the Wii, and proof that games can achieve memorable visuals on a system that asks designers to think harder about how to approach doing so.

There’s no avoiding that the game is trying to be everything to everyone, and risks losing an earnest chance for significance with quite a few by stretching Blob too thin with that effort. There’s enough elasticity to the original idea to see it through, but the cracks appear exactly where the game is taped together, appropriately enough. Stages don’t build toward the greater moments so much as hurriedly, and at times awkwardly, stumbling into them. There’s a greater concept emerging toward the end of the game, that doesn’t stretch across the whole of the title, but preys on sentimental attachment enough to necessitate a visit.