THQ splashes out to make the world a more colorful place.

One of the more appealing Wii titles for 2008 looks to be De Blob, a quirky sandbox game built on the simple idea of coloring things in, and creating a fusion of color and sound within its world.

The game’s setting, the city of Chroma, has been taken over by the fascist INKT corporation, and all color has been outlawed. The locations are thus monochrome to begin with, sharp lines and pavements delineated in shades of grey and the odd black line.

Blob begins each level as an opalescent outline, but by picking up the paint pots that are scattered around takes on their color and gains a limited amount of gloop with which to begin re-painting the world.

This is, simply enough, achieved by touching objects – the locations are dense with buildings, benches, trees and lampposts to be splattered – and the main pleasure of the game is in the synaesthetic touches put in place around this central mechanic. Paint trails follow Blob’s path, little splashy furrows of color, while hitting any object results in a bright torrent moving over its structure in varied patterns, and as locations become more colored and less monochrome the music begins to sync up.

The audio is linked to actions, so each time paint hits a surface there’s a small breakout of sound, the specific pitch and style of which is affected by the pattern of your paint (patterns can be changed with pick-ups distinct from the paint pots), with the default setting a funky jazz number.

Although the game’s environments are open and can be relatively expansive, progression is linear and based upon gaining points from challenges dotted around – these typically involve painting certain sections certain colors in a limited time, or taking on groups of enemies. Completion rewards you with a smart bomb, which has the visually rewarding effect of coloring huge sections surrounding their location. It’s thus a relatively simple game in terms of structure – it’s easy to see why Wii and DS are the chosen platforms – and its aesthetics are obviously informed by Blue Tongue’s previous work on Nickelodeon properties (particularly Spongebob Squarepants).

There are several multiplayer modes in the current build, although only the relatively standard races were fully functional: these were a free-for-all in which a city distinct from any of the singleplayer stages starts off blank and four blobs try to cover it in their color (and can paint over each others’), and a ‘Blob Race’ where only specific sections can be colored at any one time, causing a rush when they change places. They’re hectic and highly enjoyable, with the emphasis on easily understandable environments and objectives, but there is some tactical depth. The importance of managing Blob’s size, for example, becomes clear in these modes – less paint means he can move further and faster, but can’t cover as many surfaces, whereas being full of paint slows him down and can lead to becoming stuck in openings and shortcuts that are now too small.

De Blob looks fresh, and although several months away from completion has a core idea that works extremely well. The fluidity of the visual and aural effects is accomplished, and the game could be a sleeper hit when it’s released in the summer – and if nothing else, being loud and bright and messy in the name of communism (part of the game’s appealing skewed humor) is a welcome break from the usual Duke Nukems of modern gaming.