Ooblets' cute creature-farming will hit 1.0 next month
After 6 years of development
I've been following Ooblets since 2016, when it was called Moblets and consisted of some sparse but finely animated GIFs on Twitter. For that reason, and without having played it, it's great to hear that Ooblets is going to hit 1.0 and exit early access on September 1st. Aw, the Oobs are all grown up.
Here's a new trailer to mark the release date announcement:
Ooblets mixes together Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley-style farming and Pokémon-style creature-collecting, with several wonderful twists. First of all, those two halves are linked: the Ooblets you befriend are grown in your garden, not (or not only) discovered in the wild. Second of all, the lovable creatures who follow you around don't fight with bites and elemental magic, but via card-based breakdancing.
In her early access look at the game, Sin Vega felt that merging farming and creature-collecting dodged the worst habits of both genres, while not being as sickly-sweet as its art style and cheery dialogue sometimes implies.
It's tricky to get across just how gentle and pleasant Ooblets is without it sounding saccharine and insubstantial, like a sack of candyfloss. But it's more of a sponge cake. It's light and fluffy, but tasty and filling nonetheless. You'll find the time flying by, but it never reaches the worryingly compulsive level that I'd feared. I don't think it will become as all-consuming as Pokémon or Stardew Valley, but I don't think it wants or needs to either.
It sounds splendid, then, just as it looked all those years ago.
Ooblets will leave early access on September 1st, and for now remains exclusive to Epic's game store, the Epic Game Store. I hope Ooblets' release means its developers resume work on IT Simulator.