After five minutes of de Blob, your TV screen will resemble the aftermath of a John Woo firefight in the Art Attack studio. Playing as a dull grey blob (de Blob), you’re never spawned more than a remote flick away from a paint canister; lock on with Z, flick and you’ll dive through it, coating yourself in paint. Here’s where the mess begins…
Smacking against monochrome buildings and the bleached trees of Chroma city injects them with a rainbow chromo-blast. Sliding around the world leaves splattered trails in your wake (and in a neat touch, de Blob sounds like a roller applying paint). With the modern day blood-fests of next-gen gaming playing out on nearby televisions, it’s hard to see these winding primary coloured trails without imagining a heavily wounded Teletubby lying at the other end.
The mess all feels delightfully spontaneous and chaotic, probably the closest you’ll get to playing Jackson Pollock without having your parents/roommates/spouse tearing off your face for wrecking the carpet. And although the angular world doesn’t seem like the most graphically advanced landscape, developer Blue Tongue have done an impressive job keeping as much of your mess in place as possible. Trails will eventually fade, but not before you’ve had the chance to lay ten gallons more.
Although you’re free to roam the ten city districts, a time limit needs fattening by completing challenges set by your underground chums. These tasks not only shepherd you toward more interesting painting feats, but reward you with a colour smart bomb. These items are Nintendo to a T: detonated to a rain of confetti and the cheers of an adoring crowd, they see your surroundings bloom into full colour.
