By Adam Smith on January 24th, 2012 at 4:48 pm.
Fun fact: ibb and obb shouldn’t be capitalised, as per The Well of Lost Plots from which their names are taken. They are capitalised in my headline though, but so is everything else. Such is the way of the Style Guide (must also be capitalised) that guides my hand. Now that I think about it, that wasn’t very ‘fun’ at all, so here’s a new trailer for ibb and obb instead, which shows the gravity-bending cooperative platformer in action.
Now that was fun, or at least I thought so. The visuals are simple and clean but quite unique looking, which is a good thing considering how many indie platformers are out there. Sometimes I hear them scratching at my door at night, whining and snarling, their limited palette lo-fi throats crunching and compacting the sounds into what I can most succinctly describe as the noise of a thousand Commodore 64s playing chiptune versions of Chopin’s funeral march as they melt on a bonfire.
ibb and obb isn’t like them. It’s colourful and jaunty, and I can play it with a friend rather than alone, so it’s a sociable little fellow as well. It wouldn’t clamour at my door, craving flesh and attention.
Let’s just see when it comes out…”ibb and obb is a cooperative game for two that will launch Q2 2012 on Playstation Network and some months later on PC“. Oh, ibb and obb, just when things were so good between us. Back out with the others, in the cold, you cur. Maybe I’ll be waiting when you come back. Maybe.
A co-op puzzler! Come to think of it, I can only name one co-op puzzler currently on the market. Why isn’t it milked harder?
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Treasure Treasure is another one. I’m sure there are more.
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“Why isn’t it milked harder?”
Probably because it’s a kind of game with the longevity of a single player game with the additional hassle or requiring someone else to play with.
Which is why pretty much all of them have a single player component. Even aside of the obvious choice of Portal 2, games like Trine or Lara Croft and Guardian of Light can easily be considered examples.
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Network code is hard! Probably.
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If you want to play co-op with people you don’t know, go ahead. It’s your funeral.
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Wyv & Keep! Although it isn’t out yet, the beta rocks.
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This is relevant to my interests.
Heck, might even be able to wrangle The Wife into playing this with me!
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Yes, amazingly my wife stated she wanted to play this one with me.
This is breaking news since it’s the first game she shows any interest in playing since Tetris and Donkey Kong.
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It looks really fun. With ibb and obb, and Duet I shall probably be fairly content.
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The part with the cliff they kept coming back to (in the trailer) was extremely adorable.
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What lovely music. I shall have to investigate this Kettel band/person/group further.
Also the game looks fun, I might have to capture me a co-op slave to play it with.
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It looks gay, but since gay is ok, and this game looks solid it might be a good game for friends.
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Looks great, yay for coop puzzlers!
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++ for Fforde reference.
(PS, anyone else read Shades of Grey yet? It’s great!)
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I read Shades of Grey and I have to admit 25% of the way through I was ready to bin it, but it picked-up quite well from there…
No sign of a follow-up yet??
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Lovely description of the indie game pack.
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For random reasons I need to know: which one is ibb and which one is obb?
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ibb’s the short one
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Jasper Fforde’s Well of Lost Plots? :)
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Is it possible that ibb and obb got even MORE adorable since I saw the last trailer?
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Lovely presentation, but it doesn’t actually make me want to play it. It’s a little too… I don’t know… calm? Nothing in that trailer had a hook to get me interested. It still appears well-designed, though, so I hope they make some dough.
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I remember reading about that game. In 2008 or so. What is up with that?
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