Being a robot is supposed to be cool. You're supposed to get lasers and x-ray vision and rocket boosters in your feet and mega-strength that lets you crush tanks with your pinky finger which isn't a pinky finger at all but is instead a gargantuan column of shining steel—no, something cooler—awesomenium that only looks like a pinky because the rest of you is so unspeakably massive that you generate your own gravitational pull.
But no, not you. You had to wind up as a janitor ...in a slime factory no less.
In Globule, yet another unique puzzle game courtesy Rowland Rose, maker of Scorching Earth and Music Bounce, you are that robot, and though you have no lasers, you do have the ability to collect slime and have it trail behind you like one giant, sticky, tail. It won't make Johnny Bolts from high school jealous at your ten year reunion, but it is a pretty useful ice-breaker at parties.
Unfortunately there's been an accident in the slime factory and now it's up to you to clean up the mess. In each level you must collect all of the puddles of goo and direct them down one of the available suction vents to make it all go away. To do so, you'll have to push boxes out of the way and mind the arrows which allow you to travel in one direction only. Most importantly, you have to remember that you can travel along the slime trail as much as you want, but you can only move the whole thing by either end; not through the middle.
Analysis: Plainly put, Globule is fun. This should come as no surprise considering Rowland's out-of-the-box puzzlers mentioned a little earlier.
In this case, Globule may initially feel very familiar given its more than obvious roots in Sokoban-esque box pushing gameplay. The genius twist here is mashing that time-tested formula with that of the classic snake game where you run around the board gobbling up little dots, each one increasing the length of your snake.
Running into your tail will not kill you in Globule, but it can stop you dead in your tracks. Thus, while the first handful of levels will lull you into a false sense of security, you quickly come to understand the challenge of the game is not just pushing blocks around in the right order, but also managing your ever growing slime trail in such a way that you don't cut yourself off from necessary paths.
To this extent, one of the things that impressed me the most is how Globule pits you against yourself. You can trick yourself into thinking you're stuck when you really aren't, just as you can convince yourself that you can proceed ahead only to find later on that you were blocked off a long time ago. The end result is that you'll wind up laughing at yourself more often than not as you restart the level because you should have known better.
On the upside, when you do finally make it through a particularly nasty level, watching your slime trail that takes up three quarters of the screen get sucked down the drain can be very satisfying.
The visuals aren't much to write home about, and I'm sure there are going to be some of you who will be grateful that you can turn the music off. But neither the sights nor the sounds are the focal point; that would be the fifty levels of slime collecting goodness, as well as the level editor just in case fifty levels isn't enough.
So if you get excited when you see an oddly shaped room filled with crates; if you, like me, still occasionally dust off your old Adventures of Lolo cartridge; or you just like a nice mental workout from time to time, Globule shouldn't disappoint.
I can't do anything after completing the first level :(
Fun game. It needs an "undo move" option though, so you don't have to start over all the way at the beginning of the level when you get stuck.
Cute game.........I'm stuck on level 6.
Nice review, and a very nice find. Globule reminds me a lot of old shareware PC games I used to play, back in the DOS days.
I love this game!! :) I'm currently stuck on level 15 and figured it was a great time to leave a comment.
Great find!
The only thing I don't like about this is how you can't move from one end of your tail to the other quickly. Since you can't really do anything useful in the middle, you should be able to zip from your head to your tail and back lickety-split, without having to navigate through the whole maze of your own body every time you need to change directions.
I'm stuck at level 11. Any hint?
Also stuck at level 15, so here I am commenting. Good game! I like the snake-sokoban combination quite a lot.
Uhm -- hints on 15?
Music Catch was not made by the same person/people.
[Edit: You're right. We meant, of course, Music Bounce. The review has been corrected. Thanks! -Jay]
I cannot get past level 15. Stuck forever!
Level 11
Get the bottom row except the far right glob. Go back to the left, then through the Up arrow. Go to the right across the second row and get all of the globs except the far right glob. Go through the Up arrow. Go left and get all globs across the third row. Fill in the grey area along the top until your tail has come through the maze. Get the remaining globs and work your way through the Down arrows to the grate.
Level 15
This one is a little trickier to write out the steps. Get about half of the globs and go to the grate in the top-right corner. Then get the remaining globs and go through the set of arrows. Then go around the center blocks counter-clockwise and back toward the grate. When you return to the arrows, your tail should still be covering some of them. This will prevent you from sliding through the complete set of arrows, letting you slip out to the right. It might take a few tries, but you'll get it. Remember this strategy, because you'll need it in later levels.
Level 40 has me a little flummoxed, but this is a fun little game.
I agree with Psycotronic that a button to put you on the other end of your tail would be nice. the fact that I can't do so annoys me to the point where I can't play the game, which is a shame considering it looked very promising.
i got stuck on 39 and gave up. its a pretty nice game though. thanks for posting it. maybe now someone can help me get past that level of pure evil
i can't get past the title screen. the game won't load. i am using seamonkey 1.1.9 with windows xp.
I think the issue with using a button or something to place you at the other end of the body would be if your body crosses an arrow that won't allow your head to pass through when trying to get to the other end of the body. For instance, on level five, there is an arrow going up and one going down. You can get yourself trapped if you have an extra long tail because you can't move your head through the body and past the up arrow to get to the untrapped end.
I would like this game if there were a more instantaneous way to move from one end of your slime to the other, but as it is it gets very tedious.
level 15 hint
After getting as many boxes to the top right hand grate as possible, collect the others and then push a box from the bottom. It will stop your progress through the arrows. Then you can go right into the grate.
I'm glad people are enjoying the game. I did want to touch on the instantaneous warping from one end of the tail to another because I remember feeling in a level or two the same thing you guys feel.
But, for me anyway, the flip side to it is a lot of the challenges are kind of psychological, and I think just switching back and forth kind of dwindles that aspect of it. I agree, on a practical level traveling up and down the slime trail manually serves no purpose, but I think it does greatly change the way you think about the puzzles presented.
Of course, since I have nothing for comparison, I can't prove it.
Any hints for level 4? I can't seem to get all the crates out of the way. Many thanks.
What a lovely game! One of those where I don't really know what I'm doing but somehow I can do it............and enjoy it.
There's something rather pleasant about slime-ing around and finding youself on level 16 almost without thinking. Yet you are thinking. And there are boxes to push - heaven!
I really like this game, but at the moment I'm stuck at level 40...
Does anybody know how to get the slime up left?
I can get to it by blocking the arrows with the boxes, but I can't get out again.
Help?
Well, like so often... as soon as I posted, I found the solution.
For level 40:
FIRST collect the slime at the right side of the field (all 16 dots)
SECOND move the right box 1 step to the left, and move the left box 1 up and then against the other box
Then go up, collect the slime and go down using the arrows... your slimepath blocks the arrow and you can escape to the left :D
ooh ooh! if you found 40 then you must have hints for 39. please help! I will give you smilies! :D
For 39:
Hint:
You can walk back along your slime trail
Basic Solution:
It's just straight-forward "walk every tile".
The trick is: first walk the one end of your slime trail to the top left corner stepping on every tile in the upper half of the playground, then walk back along the trail and finish the lower half.
I won't post something along the lines of "left,right,up,down,down" - too tedious and error-prone ;)
Done! I liked this game very much and solved it all by myself. I'm sooo proud *gg*
I've been resisting posting for two days now as nobody else seems to have a problem with level 38 - I must be doing something really stupid but I've tried every combination I can think of and still can't get to the bottom glob. Please help!
Claribel, for level 38:
You need to get that bottom glob FIRST.
Block the arrows like this:
box 1 on the field 1 down, 2 left from the gutter
box 2 left of box 1
box 3 above box 1
Cross the arrows upwards and use the box there to block the arrow 1 up, 1 left from the gutter.
(While there, take some time to clear the box in the top line out of your way. DO NOT COLLECT SLIME)
Go left, cross the gutter (it is important that at that point, you are slime-free), go down and collect the bottom glob, then the others... the rest should be easy :)
I am completely stuck on level 31 and would appreciate some advice please! Thanks!
This is a very fun game. Yes a button to instantly take you to the other end might be nice. But I like the simplicity of this game, and I don't mind the pace so much. I kind of like it as it is. I'm on level 21 so far.
level 48 help anyone?
nevermind, got it... now onto #50...!!!
Help with level 25 please.
I'm stuck on 46 - help
Benedicta - thank you for saving my sanity. It never occurred to me to not collect the globs in the right hand area and now I know that, as I suspected, I was just being stupid!
Spareoh, a hint about Level 31:
push the box closest to the left of the screen two squares to the right before you do anything else.
Hope that helps. I'm stuck on Level 32
Okay, I'm still stuck on level 39. I know I need to walk to the top left corner and back but I can't figure out how to get all the other pieces afterwards. I keep getting it to one left but get stuck after it. Any help!?!
love this game! but been stuck on level 39 for 2 days.. no matter which way I go I always leave one out... anyone got any tips?
I think it's just a matter of how your brain works, how you visualize problems. I found this whole game to be pretty easy. There were only 3 or 5 that I really puzzled over much, and only one I got a hint here for (I'm on level 48 now.) Yet there are a lot of "escape" games that I'm completely lost on and resort to spoilers early on, but other people write comments and say how easy it is. I think it's mostly in how you problem-solve.
Sorry to you folks stuck on level 39- if no one else posts something I will do it later tonight if I can.
For the folks stuck on level 39:
I already posted a hint and basic solution somewhere in this thread :)b
And I agree with Caya. For me, globule was easy, entertaining and relaxing, whereas I split my brain over "escape the room" games and almost never manage without a hint.
Help on level 13? I can't get it.
Level 46
I made a beeline for the left side, then using that as the base of operations for my tail went back and forth (and back and forth) slowly clearing all the dead ends on the right. Get the rightmost part (where you start) very last, or your tail will be too long to get the smaller parts. Here is what it looked like at the end.
About Level 48:
The key is to push as many boxes as possible into the holes. You will do a lot of back-and-forth stuff, going to either end to make slack. You also want to push boxes out of the way as much as possible to maximize the slack (empty spaces) you can have. After pushing some of these boxes sometimes you'll want to go back and go over your route slightly differently so as to maximize your empty spaces. You want to go through all the left, then the middle section, then the right section. Then put the little robot back through the slime towards the left end to finish.
for level 39 - benedicta i saw your post before, I had worked that bit out, but I just can't see a way out without having to go back on yourself only once - which leaves me with one left over every time. don't know why i can't get this one, it was pretty plain sailing up to this point!
nevermind - I got it! must have had brain freeze...
please give me a soulution to 39 i've been stuck on it for 2 days:(
HELP! HELP! I can't figure out level 50. I know there has to be a strategy to the arrows and boxes, but I can't figure it out.
Help for 50? My brain hurts from boxes and arrows...
39
L1, D1, R1, D1, R1, D1, R1, D1, R1, D2, L2, U2, L1, D2, L2, U2, R1, U2, L2, U1, L1, D3, R1, D2, L2, U2, L1, D2, L2, U1, L1, D1, L2, U4, R1, D2 etc. At some stage you need to backtrack and finish off the other end then return to the front and you're all but done. Took me absolutely ages too.
50
What worked for me was
Bottom right corner, bottom left corner, top left corner then top right.
Leve 13 HELP!!!
Any hints on 33? I can't seem to get those last few ones on the sides. :/
Ohh never mind. I got it. :]
Rob
13
D2, R1, D1, L4, D1, R5, U1, R2, U1, R1, U1, L3, U1, R3, U2, L1, D1, L1, U3, L1, D1, L1, U1, L3, D1, R2, D3, L2, D1, L1, D1, L1, U2, R1, U1, L1, U1, R1, U1, L4, D2, L1, D1, L1, D1.
am suck on level 15, this one is a lot harder then cave escaper.
Help on level 4 anyone? :(
I got through number 50 and finished.
I couldn't have done it without the spoilers on this comment page!
Thanks a bunch guys. Pheeee-eew.
...I feel dazed...
And for level 4 (four)? I'm stuck for 2 days on it ....
please...
level 50?!?!
or i'll break my PC
If you get stuck, like I did, and have tried everything that you think will work, try something that you think won't work. If you're stuck on one area, focus on that area first.
Specifics for Level 5:
The crates are not the enemy.
Grab the slime on the other side first, so you won't get stuck between the wall and the holes.
anybody know how to beat level 34?
Level 26 is killing me. It just seems impossible.
I need help with level 40!
Benedicta already told the solution but i didn't get it. how to get to the suction vent when i'm up left and collected all slimes?
Update