Sometimes, games that rework familiar gameplay mechanics can offer up some of the best surprises, and Blobun is one such experience. It is a game that takes on the popular casual puzzle one line mechanic. Players are asked to cover the entire playing area in a level without ever breaking the line or crossing over previous steps. It’s been doing the rounds for years, but Blobun shows that through a charming aesthetic and some excellent level design, there is plenty of life in the young rabbit yet!
The story has the player control Stephanie, a bunny turned into a slime bunny head. Stephanie needs to work their way to a witch to undo the spell that turned her into slime, but to do so, Stephanie has to traverse various worlds and levels. Each level is carved into gridded tiles, with most levels taking place on a single screen. You can move in the four compass directions to touch a tile and cover it in slime, eventually working out how to cover them all. This starts out as a simple path logic game for the first world as you get to grips with different level shapes that might catch you in a dead end or have you miss a crucial corner. This is all prep for the rest of the game, where level design continually changes.
What makes Blobun stand apart from most other one line puzzle games is what happens from about level 10 onwards. Every few levels, a new mechanic is introduced, and later, these mechanics are combined in more complex levels, which require thoughtful planning. It starts off with some special floor tiles with heart or diamond shapes that require switches to raise or lower to your level so you can slime them. Then portals are added to zip you around maps, followed by broken floor tiles or tiles that require multiple steps to slime. The best twist is the state change pickups that turn Stephanie into a fire, ice, or electrified bunny slime. These are combined with ice, water, fire, or electrical tiles that require the perfect match to trigger or not trigger certain actions. Ice tiles cause a slide. Electric tiles usually turn on or off lasers or switches (which may or may not be placed to kill you). Fire tiles melt ice Stephanie. There are a few other mechanics, like collecting pickups in specific orders or coins to unlock gates, too. They are introduced separately, but slowly combined over Blobun’s runtime to keep things constantly fresh and interesting.
As each level is usually a single screen, the complexity is never overwhelming, but there are options to choose from and ways to get stuck. In Blobun, you only need to pass 10 out of 15 levels to progress to the next world and you can skip a level at any time. There is also a hint system that gives you the first four or five moves towards completion, which is often enough to set you on your way to success. I love the open nature of progression as it prevents you from getting stuck for too long. It helps that the graphics are bold and clear, whilst the controls are simple and responsive. Undo and restart are quick to trigger, meaning test and learn approaches are welcome for puzzle solving.
Beyond the game itself, Blobun currently has a level editor in beta, which acts like a tile painter. Paint in the grid what you want the floor to be, and then drop in your traps or contraptions. This felt quite intuitive, although I haven’t spent long with it to date. The only minor hurdle is that level sharing isn’t through Steam Workshop, it’s through mod.io instead. Hopefully, a nice community of level creators will grow there, but the extra step does mean it runs the risk of being slightly out of sight. My only minor criticism of Blobun comes from a framerate drop when multiple different states are shown in a level. If there’s ice, fire and electricity all running simultaneously, the frame rate drops significantly and the game slows down. It is a very minor quibble in what is a delightful game to play.
In an age of procedural generation and AI slop, it is a delight to see a carefully crafted puzzle game with thoughtful level design that builds upon previous ideas and mechanics in a natural, cohesive way. Charming, chirpy, and a delight to play, Blobun is a wonderful exercise in getting the foundation of a game right and making it shine for players to enjoy. There is a demake-style spin-off called Blobun Mini, which is free if you’d like to test the ideas out first on a smaller scale.
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