Video Game / de Blob

Our hero, ladies and gentlemen. Don't worry, you'll all enjoy yourselves!

de Blob is a Platform/Puzzle Game developed by Blue Tongue Entertainment and published by THQ for the Wii in 2008. It originally started out as a project by a couple of students in Utrecht, The Netherlands, which explains the name of the game and the main antagonist corporation.

The premise of the game is that you start out as a clear ball of water, which has to seek out enemies called Paintbots to change colors between red, blue, or yellow, which can also be combined to make new colors. Afterwards, all you have to do is merely touch the item you want to paint for the entire surface to be your current color. As you destroy more Paintbots, you continue to grow in size to a max of 100 "paint points" which are used to paint buildings or destroy enemies. Also, while you are free to paint, there are several missions you have to do before you can proceed to the next area.

Initially a lively and colorful city populated by its equally colorful and diverse citizens, the Raydians, Chroma City is suddenly invaded by the I.N.K.T. Corporation. A corporate military dictatorship, I.N.K.T. is led by the villainous Comrade Black and dedicated to the eradication of color through its "War on Color". Chroma City quickly falls to the invading army of Inkies and color draining Leechbots, leaving its landscape barren, its flora withered and its fauna in hiding. The citizens are rounded up and turned into Graydians by encasing them in homogeneous gray prison suits with their only distinguishing feature a barcode on the back of each shell. When the last remaining pocket of resistance, the Color Underground (The Professor, Arty, Biff and Zip), are cornered by I.N.K.T. forces, de Blob appears, rescuing them and embarking on a Color Revolution.

There is an iPhone port available.

A sequel, de Blob 2, was released late February 2011. Comrade Black is trying to drain all the color from another city on Planet Raydia known as Prisma City, and Blob, his new robotic sidekick Pinky, and the Color Underground have to stop him again. Unlike last time when I.N.K.T. had completely taken over and the Underground had to take everything back, in this one the heroes are more on the offensive, chasing Black down as he keeps coming up with new schemes, though he has still taken over a lot of Prisma City when Blob gets there.

The series' IP was purchased by Nordic Games (now THQ Nordic) from THQ on Halloween 2014, over three years after the second game was published. In April 2017, the first game was ported to PC via Steam. The second game followed in June. de Blob was then released on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in November 2017, while the Nintendo Switch version was released in June 2018.

See also the Nintendo franchise Splatoon for the similar premise and concept of ink-spraying creatures spreading colorful ink.

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This game provides examples of:

General

• 100% Completion: Which unlocks some movies and concept art in both games.
• Aerith and Bob: There are some weird names like Blob, Zip, and Bif along with relatively normal names like Arty and Reggie.
• Alien Animals: There are animals you'll see roaming around that look very similar to Earth animals, such as parrots, cats, and cows, although they appear to be much bigger than the Raydians.
• Alien Sky: The original PC game features a relatively normal-looking sky, with the exception of giant, misty rainbows and a grimacing, grinning sun. Neither of these aesthetics are carried over to later games, although in those titles the skies in areas without much color are also depressingly grey for some reason.
• All There in the Manual: The promo comic Long Live Color gives backstories on each member of the Color Underground, including Blob's origins, as well as Comrade Black's motive for invading Raydia.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: The Raydians are all very brightly colored, while the Inkies are all solid black and white.
• Art Attacker: You take over the occupying forces by coloring the world.
• Badass Adorable: The heroes. They're all small, rounded creatures, but can absolutely pack a punch if need be. The Color Underground run a successful and highly disruptive resistance movement in both games, Blob is a powerhouse who can crush enemies in an instant and paint over a whole neighborhood in minutes, and Pinky packs enough of a punch in her arm cannons to blow up an entire space station.
• Bad Boss: Comrade Black is a horrible boss to work for, especially if things aren't working out for him. In the first game he sends a group of Inkies at his headquarters through a trapdoor to a furnace once he hears that the Color Underground has taken back yet another area. In the second game, he blows up a bridge to slow down an angry mob, while some of his loyal grunts are still on said bridge.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • I.N.K.T. Corp. The word "inkt" means "ink" in Dutch.
  • The names of both cities ("Chroma" in the first game, "Prisma" in the second game) qualify as well. "Chroma" means colour in Greek, and the Dutch word "prisma" means "prism", which is a crystal or piece of glass that breaks white light into rainbows.
  • And now in the sequel, we have the Blancs. "Blanc" means "white" in French, though the characters appear to pronounce it as "blank" (which in itself is a Meaningful Name).
• Black-and-White Morality: Symbolically played with. Black, white, and grey are all evil, and any colour is good.
  • Though generally true, areas liberated from I.N.K.T. do use shades of white, grey, and black in combination with other colors (which is mostly seen on altered billboards). The protagonists are all about allowing maximum expression using all colors, while the antagonists stress adherence to a few hues and styles, lending to the games' overall theme of diversity versus conformity.
• Blob Monster: The protagonist of the games. He had an entirely different, much blobbier design in the obscure PC tech demo that started the franchise.
• But Thou Must!: A music variant. For the first game, you can only chose Victorious as Blob's Mood for Lake Raydia. In the sequel, you can only chose Pan-Galactic as Blob's Mood for the Hypno Ray.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The "bunnies" on Planet Raydia don't resemble rabbits at all, appearing to be multicolored, noseless, and legless.
• Canon Foreigner: Blob's team and Comrade Black don't appear in the PC game.
• Church of Happyology: The Church Of Inktology.
• Coloring in the World: The titular Blob colors the surfaces he travels on as he leads a Color Revolution against the I.N.K.T. Corporation, led by Comrade Black who wants to not only invade Chroma City and enslaving the Raydians within, but to eradicate color in general.
• Cool Airship: The blimp, in both games.
• Commie Nazis: I.N.K.T., given their desire to homogenize and exploit the Raydians.
• Commissar Cap: Comrade Black wears one.
• Culture Police: The I.N.K.T. Corporation.
• Cyclops: Inkies.
• Design Student's Orgasm: This game was literally made by a bunch of art school students.
• Dirty Commies: The I.N.K.T. Corporation, weirdly enough. Under them, the government runs all the businesses, everyone looks the same, and their leader's name is even Comrade Black!
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: Being all about colour, the game naturally uses this. Often you'll be asked to paint things in a Chromatic Arrangement, and in the sequel there is a Rainbow Powerup that automatically makes Blob the right color for a given object.
• Fertile Feet: Lack of any locomotive appendages aside, Blob can restore plants and trees to their former blossom on top of being able to paint buildings. Inverted if he's inked.
• Flipping Helpless: Graydians are prone to this due to their large, round, and heavy suits.
• Graffiti of the Resistance: The main character paints on buildings to restore color to the city he lives in, which have been drained to grayscale by the I.N.K.T. Corporation.
• Grimy Water: Ink serves this purpose in the game.
• Harmful to Touch: Ink. For Raydians, ink is lethal when it's on Blob. If he rolls over a Raydian while covered in ink, they will die.
• Hostile Terraforming: Interestingly, neither the Raydians nor the Inkies seem to be able to tolerate the environment that is suitable to the other; A world full of color and lacking ink is downright chaotic for the Inkies (and deprives them of the ink they need to replicate themselves), while the Inky world of black and white is painfully dull and polluted for the Raydians, even more so if they are forced into the suits that impede their movements and are the only known way that the Inkies can generate new ink. So it follows that in the areas that the Inkies take over, they dramatically alter the environment in addition to altering / bleaching buildings. This is often seen in the first console game in the form of massive spills / slicks of ink on the surface of formerly clean water and stunted vegetation. In the second game these effects are much more pronounced - Prisma City has suffered both heavy water and air pollution even before the formal Inky takeover, some buildings / landforms are submerged underground to impede Blob's progress, and perhaps most dramatically of all, the canyon leading to the Inktron Collider (formerly Prisma City's hydroelectric plant) is near-completely submerged in frozen ink. Of course, as Blob makes progress, he alters the landscape in a fashion that is detrimental to the Inkies.
• Hypocrite: The Inkies hate color and seek to eradicate it on Raydia... yet they're perfectly willing to infuse their own soldiers with it if it makes catching Blob easier.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The Inkies aren't really sympathetic, but they're very ineffectual.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: With the simple case that polychromatic is superior to black and white.
• Marathon Level: Each level, not counting bonus missions, takes around 20-30 minutes to complete. Fortunately, there are checkpoints.
• Meaningless Lives: It is really, really hard to die in either game. Slightly more downplayed in the sequel; there are far more Bottomless Pits and spike traps, gives you less lives to work with, and places a cap on how many lives you can carry that you can upgrade with Inspiration, with a maximum of 5.
• Mecha-Mooks: Inkies are an entire race of them. Part of their motive is to make the Graydians miserable enough to generate ink to build more of themselves.
• The Men in Black: They're shown very briefly, as both concept art and when Comrade Black tries to gain better publicity. In the second game two of them appear as Comrade Black's personal assistants.
  • They were also I.N.K.T.'s original design from the PC demo.
• Mickey Mousing: Most of Blob's actions come with a music cue:
  • Progressing through a level slowly ups the tone of the music, bringing it from a simple backbeat to a full-blown jazz tune.
  • Painting things gives off a short solo by an instrument linked to the colour - most often saxophone red, trombone orange, trumpet yellow, electric piano green, bass blue, guitar purple, and turntable brown.
  • Shaking up a landmark adds maracas.
  • Completing a challenge produces a cool riff.
  • Navigating Z-jumps produces a drum-roll which ends with a struck cymbal.
  • Touching bleached cars or buses causes a variety of horn beeps.
• Military Science Fiction: A more watered-down, cartoonish take on this genre, the plot of the game simply amounts to a La Résistance against a fascist, militaristic dystopia, except IN SPACE!
• People's Republic of Tyranny: Both Chroma City and Prisma City become this under I.N.K.T. rule- brutal dystopias where the Raydians are enslaved by the Inkies and everything is drained of color, with the emphasis on conformity and authoritarianism. Despite this, the Inkies have a Propaganda Machine that vainly tries to portray them as a benevolent force, to the point that their leader, Comrade Black, is called Prisma City's "democratically elected president" (even though he rigged the elections to win).
• Planet of Hats:
  • Planet Raydia's culture revolves around color, music, art, and creativity.
  • Inversely, the Inkies are a race of black, tar-like creatures, their society (and the society they try to force onto the Raydians) an authoritarian corporatocracy based on conformity and the absence of art and color.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Color Underground. They consist of an incredible powerful alien creature capable of painting entire buildings with a touch and smashing enemies into puddles in an instant, a disabled old man who can design and build anything from blimps to sentient robots, a hyperactive sports enthusiast that is only ever seen on rollerblades, a ridiculously strong fighter whose only solution to any problem seems to be "punch it", a bubbly art enthusiast with little regard for her own personal safety, and, in the sequel, a cheerful, but reckless sentient robot with an arm cannon that can destroy anything from crates to orbital space stations.
• La Résistance: The Color Underground, the main resistance movement against I.N.K.T..
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: Of the communist variety. Heck, the Big Bad is even named Comrade Black.
• Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink: It takes place on an alien planet invaded by an evil race of aliens lead by a Galactic Conqueror. It features robots, Flying Cars, spaceships, advanced technology (including devices that alter gravity), an Unrealistic Black Hole, and levels that take place in outer space.
• Speaking Simlish: You can occasionally make out some words like the characters' names, but for the most part it's this. Listen carefully and you'll notice that every line of Simlish (or rather, Raydian) is a unique recording and generally matches the text.
• Sugar Bowl: Chroma and Prisma City, at least until I.N.K.T. takes over, at which point it's a Sugar Apocalypse.
• Super Soldiers: Elite Inkies are immune to all but one color. Some can even change which colour this is.
• Super Wheelchair: The Prof has a floating hoverchair he uses to get around, with all sorts of different built-in features. Comrade Black steals it in the sequel.
• Terrain Sculpting: As part of a World-Healing Wave, the most powerful Transformation Engines can severely alter the nearby terrain to get Blob to the next area or just celebrate the completion of the level.
• Timed Mission: Each level has a timer, and you lose a life if it runs out. There are plenty of time pick-ups however, as you gain extra time for completing missions and freeing Graydians. In the sequel, the timer gets stopped as soon as you complete the final landmark.
• Variable Mix: The music changes in complexity depending on the color in the level. At the beginning where there is little to no color, the music is very minimalistic and dreary, but as you color the setting the music picks up in instrumentation and complexity, so by the end when color is brought back to the level the music is extremely vibrant and expressive. The music goes back to being minimalistic when Blob either comes in contact with ink or lacks any color, and picks up when Blob absorbs color again.
• Villainous Breakdown: Comrade Black really starts freaking out towards the end of the games.
• Walking Wasteland: Blob becomes this when he's inked, purging the color of everything he touches.
• World-Healing Wave: The Transformation Engines.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Throughout the game you will kill hundreds of Inkies. Doesn't matter, they're all evil.
• Weird Sun: The sun in the PC game.
• You Don't Look Like You: The characters look vastly different in the original PC game than how they do currently. For one thing, Blob and the city residents seem to be much "blobbier" in design, and don't have their trademark large ears, tan marking around their mouth, or White Bead Eyes. Blob is also fatter in appearance, has legs, and wears shoes. The I.N.K.T. members also received a massive design change too, as they looked much more human-like in the PC game and more like a Men In Black-esque police force than the militaristic soldiers they were eventually made to be.

de Blob

• 100% Completion: As well as the general requirements, obtaining all 100 awards in the 10 main levels unlocks a character bio section giving brief snippets on each of the main cast. The Long Live Color promo comic is basically a more in depth version of this in print form.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: At least for the first◊ game◊.
• Astral Finale: In the final level, I.N.K.T. tries to leave the planet, and take all of the color with them to dump into a black hole. Your job is to sneak onto the spaceship before launch, beat Comrade Black, and transform the whole thing out of the sky.
• Concept Art Gallery: One that unlocks as you play different missions, which in turn are unlocked when you get silver or gold medals.
• Day of the Jackboot: The plot is about Blob's home planet being taken over by a dictatorship from another galaxy.
• Groin Attack: An Inky on a jetbike receives one from a billboard.
• Harmful to Touch: Ink. Having ink on you will drain you of color points and eventually kill you when you run out.
• Hat of Authority: Comrade Black's Commissar Cap is bigger than the helmets worn by his underlings. He makes sure not to lose it, even when deprived of all his other clothes, possibly because he would be indistinguishable from any other Inky without it.
• Heel–Face Turn: Subverted. As the situation in Chroma City rapidly gets out of hand for the I.N.K.T. Corporation, Comrade Black hastily broadcasts some sort of staged peace agreement with a Graydian representative, hoping to win over the populace. However, the Color Underground intercepts the signal and exposes I.N.K.T. as an oppressive bunch of bullies and Blob as a hero. Cut back to the original feed: Black is struggling to throw furniture around the room in a tantrum while one of his aides is strangling the other.
• Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: The final boss is a giant Inky mecha piloted by Comrade Black.
• People Farms: The large amount of ink the Inkies use to poison the water and bleach the world is revealed to be farmed from the Graydian's "misery", the restricting outfits they are forced in used to harvest it.
• Pivotal Boss: In the first game, the final boss, which sits in an ink pool in the middle of a circular arena.
• Punny Name:
  • Guggentraz Island, a combination of Alcatraz Island and any number of art galleries named Guggenheim, and the Last Resort, which was a resort... and the last hideout of La Résistance.
  • Don't forget Comrade Black.
• Puzzle Reset: A strange take on it. Your color meter and your color itself are reset to how they were before you start a mission, but nothing else is.
• Show Within a Show: The I.N.K.T. News Reports.
• Shout-Out:
  • Some concept art of inked up Blob gives him golden eyes, making him look like a certain 12-pound ball of tar.
  • One of the billboards you can find has the Newgrounds logo, except with an Inky tank to replace the regular one.
  • When Blob paints billboards in the PC game, they display knock-offs of popular products, mostly candies.
• Starfish Language: The Inkies' written language seems to be made out of barcodes. Despite that, they Speak Simlish like the heroes.
• The Stinger: After the credits, there's a short scene where Comrade Black lands on a deserted island, surviving the explosion of his spaceship. A bunch of colorful creatures appear from the bushes and jump on to him, cuddling him and freaking him out in the process.
• Terrible Artist: One cutscene you get before entering Downtown has an Inky holding a drawing drawn by one.
• Those Wacky Nazis / Commie Nazis: I.N.K.T. seems about as close as you can get for an E-rated game.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Rolling over a Raydian whiled inked can kill them, and it does not affect your total score of the game.

de Blob 2

• 100% Completion: There are several movies unlocked for completing everything in the console versions.
  • Getting an S Rank in every level unlocks one of the orignal teasers for the first game, while getting all Gold Medals unlocks the second teaser for the first game.
  • Collecting all 100 Gallery tokens unlocks a third bonus video featuring behind the scenes commentary by the developers.
• Arc Words: During your first encounter with a Blanc, it tells you that, "Grey Day is coming." You then don't hear about it and probably forget until the last I.N.K.T. transmission before the last level says, "All parties are cancelled. Tomorrow is Grey Day." In the final level, it's revealed that this refers to Comrade Black's planned brainwashing of all of Raydia via the Hypno Ray.
• Astral Finale: As I.N.K.T.'s forces are beaten back, Comrade Black flees the planet in a rocket. Blob and Pinky hijack a rocket of their own and give chase, narrowly escaping the Hypno Ray as it brainwashes everyone on the planet's surface. In the level itself, you make your way to the Hypno Ray by jumping from asteroid to asteroid, before fighting Comrade Black in the disc of the Hypno Ray itself.
• Battle Trophy: After Comrade Black captures the Color Underground, he takes the Prof's Super Wheelchair and keeps it for the rest of the game.
• Blatant Lies: Comrade Black being referred to as a "democratically elected president", despite the fact that he committed voter fraud to win that title and quickly abuses his power to turn Prisma City into his usual grey dystopia.
• Boss Subtitles: Every enemy is introduced this way once you first encounter them, complete with a 2D rendition of their model, the amount of paint points needed to crush them, and a little information blurb with some hints on how to defeat them.
• Bring My Brown Pants: When Blob notices the black hole eating the Hypno Ray, he whimpers in fear, and a bubble of paint forms on his backside before splattering over the floor.
• Bus Full of Innocents: In the final level, Comrade Black uses this three times. He fills three habitation domes with Graydians and rigs them to blow. If you stop to save them, he taunts you, saying that by halting your progress to the Hypno Ray, you've doomed the whole planet. If you keep going without saving them, you have to watch a cutscene where Blob helplessly watches as the domes explode.
• Captain Obvious: Pinky, on occasion.
  (final boss intro cutscene plays)
  (big "Boss: Comrade Black" sign appears on the screen)
  Pinky: It's Comrade Black! Get him!
• Church of Happyology: The Blancs, led by Papa Blanc. Their religion is entirely based on rejecting color, and its members are initiated by being forcefully dunked in ink and then hypnotized to attack anything colorful.
• Collection Sidequest: There are 100 Gallery Tokens hidden throughout the console versions of de Blob 2. Each 10 that you collect unlocks various concept art, while collecting all 100 unlocks a bonus video featuring the developers taking about the development of the game. The lead in to the video shows a second pink creature that looks like Blob... and he takes interest for a moment.
• Concept Art Gallery: Unlocked by collecting Gallery tokens scattered around the levels.
• Day of the Jackboot: While in the first game, the invasion by I.N.K.T. took place over a single cutscene, in the sequel we get to see how exactly Prisma City's takeover plays out. Papa Blanc, Comrade Black in disguise, runs for president, brainwashes his followers using ink and hypnodiscs, and rigs the election. After becoming president, he immediately implements martial law, imprisons poll workers and political opponents, deploys the military to the city to stop protesters, and replaces the independent PNN news broadcasts with I.N.K.T. propaganda. Blob and Pinky manage to liberate the Senate while the invasion is still taking place, and the State College before civilian protests and uprisings can be quelled, but after that, I.N.K.T.'s takeover is absolute.
• Determined Expression: At the end, the normally cheerful and carefree Blob gets quite serious after Comrade Black uses a giant hypno-disc to hypnotise the planet. He gives Comrade Black's surveillance camera a look which very clearly says, "I am coming for you, and you WILL pay for this."
• Distressed Dude: Prof becomes this in the DS version, being kidnapped by Dr. Von Blot at the start of the 4th world.
• Enemy Mine: An interesting and briefcase in the Inky Fabricator chapter of De Blob 2. An accident has created a monstrous, mutated inky monster that apparently hates both vibrant colors and black and white. Being unable to defeat it, the Inkies suggest a truce of sorts: Blob is let into the fabricator to beat the monster, which also lets the Color Underground transform the fabricator. After accomplishing this goal, the usual animosity has returned, with the Inkies also calling Blob a monster.
• Fictional Political Party: There are fantastical political parties on Raydia, each based on a color.
• First-Person Snapshooter: The DS Version of de Blob 2 features Chroma Cameras that need to be activated by pointing the DSi or 3DS system at various colored objects in the real world. Activating all 15 Chroma Cameras will complete the Chroma Crystal, allowing Blob to change color any time without needing color sources or Paintbots.
• For Inconvenience, Press "1": Played with nonverbally. Dr. Von Blot calls up a INKT phone line after being met with a stuck loading screen for his rocket. The Inky on the other end isn't helpful, advising him if he tried rebooting (when it's not even a computer) or suggesting that he takes a cup of coffee instead.
• Goofy Print Underwear: Heavily parodied in the sequel's final cutscene when it shows that Comrade Black wears several kinds of silly underwear.
• Groin Attack: The Prof's stolen pants engine spills boiling hot coffee down Comrade Black's front in the middle of one of his temper tantrums, during which he kept hitting random buttons.
• Hand Rubbing: In one cutscene, Comrade Black sinisterly rubs his hands (or at least, the Inky equivalent of hands) together during his Evil Plan.
• Harmful to Touch:
  • Ink, though not as bad as in the first game. Being in contact with pools of ink drains your paint points, while being covered in ink just prevents you from picking up other colors until you wash it off.
  • Fire replaces ink functionally: Touch a flame without protection and Blob will lose his current color and rapidly lose paint points (which double as his life). As usual, the only way to put out the flames is with water.
• Herr Doktor: The Inky scientists all speak with German accents.
• Hypno Ray: Hypno-discs are essentially floating hypno rays that either patrol along the streets if they originated from a Blanc TV, or are sent out directly by Shepherds. Comrade Black has a really big one orbiting the planet, which is activated in the final level and hypnotizes everyone on the planet's surface.
• Intercom Villainy: Although he's technically speaking gibberish, Comrade Black taunts you throughout the final level, promising that you can't get to his orbital hypno-ray in time. He even gets kind of meta, telling you to access the menu and quit the level.
• Lampshade Hanging: From the Rocket Range level:
  Pinky: I suppose you've been wondering, "Hey, seeing as Pinky can fly, why didn't she just fly me across that missing bridge?" I have my reasons. Subject closed.
• Laughably Evil: We don't see a lot of Comrade Black's personality until the last level, where he constantly mocks Blob. He comes off as simultaneously extremely sadistic (holding Raydian astronauts hostage with explosives, in hopes of stalling Blob while he brainwashes the entire planet), and incredibly goofy (forgetting to lock up a ladder leading to his superweapon and then blaming his grunts for not reminding him to do so).
• Lucky Seven: Seven colors, and in the sequel, seven levels remaining in the city after the I.N.K.T. regime begins. Not a coincidence.
• Non-Standard Game Over: What happens if you let the Ink Monster destroy the color vat. The arena collapses, taking Blob and the monster with it. Downplayed in that you only lose a single life and restart from the beginning of the boss battle, but you can still Game Over if it's your last remaining life.
• Noob Cave: Paradise Island is the first level of the game where you learn the basics and get used to the controls. It's also a very simple level with only one path and the only danger is very avoidable ink, as opposed to subsequent levels where you have to deal with more hazards and maneuver through maze-like areas.
• Oh, Crap!: Comrade Black's reaction when he realizes Blob calls him to let him know that he is not only not hypnotized, but has hijacked a rocket and is coming for him.
• Painting the Medium: Of a sort - when the Inkies take control of the city, the names and descriptions of the remaining levels change and the locked level symbols are replaced with Inkies.
• Sadistic Choice: In the last level, Comrade Black taunts you with the choice to save some doomed workers or stop his world domination scheme. There's actually enough time to do both.
• Sequel Escalation: Stronger enemies, an upgrade system, a whole host of new powerups and collectibles, Super Mario Galaxy-esque gravity physics, TWO boss fights, and the ability to go inside buildings into a 2½D space.
• Ship Tease: When Blob rescues Arty in the Prisoner Zoo level, she gives Blob an affectionate hug. Blob himself is trying hard not to blush, though this may be a hint from the developers for Blob/Arty fans.
• Show Within a Show: The news ticker at the bottom of your screen. There are 3 major broadcasters, PNN news, I.N.K.T. propaganda, and the Color Underground radio.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Inktron Collider level, which contains very slippery platforms and yes, frozen ink.
• Super Soldiers:
  • Elite Inkies again, but this time they're even more powerful. In addition to the fact that they can only be smashed if you're a specific color, they have a very fast spin-attack and can shoot ink projectiles at you.
  • The Spikeys, whose rocket launchers make it dangerous to jump anywhere nearby; being a platformer this makes them important and somewhat painful to get rid of.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Comrade Black sometimes has his moments of being fed up with the Inkies' incompetence.
• Tempting Fate: A Raydian that you rescue in one Chroma Ghetto level states that they are tired of INKT invading Chroma City again and plans to move to Prisma City, because nothing bad ever happens there. Oh to be so wrong...
• Toilet Humour: Blob deposits colour into Color Sinks by pressing his bottom into them and squeezing, followed by a flushing sound.
• Vice City: Prisma City starts out as this even before Comrade Black's tyranny, although it steadily becomes more lively and joyful due to Blob's influence.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: In the last level, you have the option to leave behind Graydian workers on doomed terrestrial domes, even though you have plenty of time to save them. Doing so each time will show a cutscene where they blow up.
• Xanatos Gambit: Comrade Black sets up a color energy distribution system so that if Blob manages to free the whole city, he'll have enough color energy to power the Hypno Ray and blast the entire planet, instantly hypnotizing everyone.

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