Ooblets is an indie game developed and published by Glumberland that combines elements of games like Pokémon and Stardew Valley. Described as a "farming, town life, and creature collection game", your character arrives at the mainland after leaving their small island home and is recruited by the mayor of Badgetown to be their assistant and help the town prosper while learning the mysteries of the creatures known as Ooblets... and busting some sweet moves.
The game was released in early access in July 2020, with a full release in September 2022.
Ooblets provides examples of the following tropes:
- An Interior Designer Is You: You can buy lots of furniture to decorate your house. Some of it, such as storage chests, your bed, and your oven are functional, but the rest is just for fun.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Many characters, when you fill up their friendship bar, will give you Ooblet accessories related to who they are—such as Videon giving you Nerd Glasses, or Officer Zuffle giving you police caps.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- If you would gain an item in a situation in which you can't easily manage your inventory—such as getting an Ooblet seed after battles or while Sea Dangling, when what you get is random—it will still go into your inventory even if it would push you over your item limit. You still can't pick up new items if your inventory is full, or add them to your inventory from storage, but you can't be forced to drop something.
- During the Port Forward quest, which requires you to beat the high score in a bunch of minigames, there's an NPC who will let you pay her money to hack your high scores into existence, if you either don't want to or can't beat them all.
- Similarly, the prizes you can earn from redeeming arcade tickets have a chance to show up for sale for regular Gummies in a shop only available in the end-to-postgame— Oobazon, via the Oobnet—if you don't want to grind for them.
- Black Comedy Burst: Mead is a sweet, friendly old lady who is heavily implied to be a barely-reformed Ax-Crazy former crook. Half of her dialogue abruptly transitions from her talking about her garden to all the terrible crimes she's committed in the past.
- Boring, but Practical: Shrumbos have this as their fighting style—all their signature moves do nothing but gain points, but they do so at a good rate.
- Buffy Speak: The rules text for Rockstack's gem-spawning skill is that it "spawns some kinda fancy rock" (before clarifying that it means Oobsidian, Gembers, or Droostals).
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Coffee is "beanjuice" or "spressy", snacks are "treabies", computers are "puter's", etc.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Pantsabears do wear pants, but they don't look like bears. They look more like fuzzy imps.
- Card Games: The dance battles work like these; each round you get a new hand with random cards in it representing different dance moves, and you have to pick which ones to use that round. Some moves will give you points, others can steal points from your opponents or give you more hype. Each Ooblet has moves specific to them, and will gain more when they level up.
- Com Mons: Since all Ooblets spawn at roughly the same rates, the Com Mons in this game are those Ooblets that require extremely easy items to get. In town, Lumpstumps require only abundant Planklets to fight so are basically always available, and Fleebles require the slightly less abundant (but still common) Sporebets. To go with this, both have extremely simple, easy-to-use skill sets that are helpful throughout the entire game. Once the player unlocks Mamoonia, there's also Hermbles, which require Buttonboys—the most common foragables in town.
- Commonplace Rare: Soggy Balloons, i.e. balloons that have popped and fallen to the ground, can only be found by "sea dangling" in Port Forward, and they're a fairly uncommon catch, too.
- Dance Battler: All Ooblets qualify as this, as they "fight" by showing each other their dance skills.
- Dance-Off: How Ooblet battles work; you're given cards each round that will allow your Ooblet to bust out different moves until you reach a certain number of points.
- Deck Clogger: Certain moves replace some of the opponent's cards with useless ones.
- Difficult, but Awesome:
- Fleeble's Miniscule Medley skill makes all other moves you play that turn cost just one Beat. However, it costs three Beats to use out of the max of five you'll naturally gain a turn, meaning that unless you had two other moves in your hand that cost at least three Beats, you won't usually gain much from it. However, when combined with other Ooblets who have Beat-gaining abilities (like Gullysplot) and those who can either draw you lots of cards or who have high-cost moves, it can be a powerful tool for using lots of high-cost skills.
- Puffed Disrupt is a rare card, exclusive to the Frunbuns Clubhouse shop, that spawns a random Gleamy Ooblet somewhere in the region when it's used. This makes it very useful for those hunting gleamies, but to compensate, it costs 8 Beats to use. Since 5 is the max you'll gain naturally in one turn, you need to sculpt your party around using it, either via beat generation or the aforementioned Miniscule Medley skill, in order to make it work. Once you do, it makes hunting gleamies a breeze. It can be further combined with Sidekey's Finite Loop skill to use it twice in one battle—a trick that costs an almighty eleven beats to pull off, but, when done, summons two gleamies and makes things even easier.
- Eat Dirt, Cheap: Droostals are pinkish crystals found on Mount Tippytop that nonetheless have "a slightly tangy taste." They're roughly analogous to pink rock salt, which is a real-life edible rock, but unlike real-life rock salt, they can be made into a soup with chunks of crystal that's said to be loved by hikers.
- Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: Some of the crops you can grow are just real plants with funny names (sweetiebeeties are sugar beets, caroots are carrots, zinookas are blueberries, etc), but others don't match anything in real life. The pompadoot, for example, is shaped like a cylinder, and its juice has similar properties to milk. Flootiflowers resemble dandelions, but the inside of their seed head is edible when fried, and can also be turned into some kind of sweet sauce.
- Farm Life Sim: Your character owns a small farm where they can grow various crops to sell and make into food and materials. Dance battles will also give you seeds which you can use to grow new Ooblets.
- Global Currency Exception: Each club has its own special currency, called Tokens, which can be used to buy accessories unique to that club, one-use cards with powerful effects, and a special food item necessary to tame that club's Starter Mon.
- Hates Small Talk: One NPC sometimes says that they hate talking about the weather because it feels like both them and the person they're talking to have failed at being interesting.
- Holiday Mode: The game has several holiday events that depend on the real-world time of year. For example, in Winter, snow falls in town and holiday-themed decor can be made, while in Spring, flower petals fall and a special spring-themed Ooblet called Taterflop can be found.
- Humans by Any Other Name: The people in the game aren't humans, they're "oobins." Except for Videon, who claims he's an alien from the planet Froddlekron, but the fact that his sister Rugnolia is also an oobin pokes some holes in that statement.
- Interface Spoiler: The game goes to extra lengths to hide the existence of Bunglebees from you. They're the only Ooblet without a silhouette in the Almanac before you meet them, and the spot for their figurine in the Town Hall is hidden by the statue of the Ooblet High Council until the postgame.
- Item Caddy: Plobs have signature moves that all spawn items, from resources to crop seeds. Spurdles do the same with gembers, while Rockstacks can spawn "fancy rock" items. And Bunglebees can spawn any kind of item at all.
- Joke Character: Grebuns are described in-game as "rare ooblets with mediocre moves (sorry)."
- Joke Item: Pibblepug Pie is described as "perfectly bland," and restores one energy. Its only use lies in recruiting Dooziedug, and if Frunbuns happens to ask for it for a quest.
- Mascot Mook: Shrumbos are the face of the game. Interestingly, the Shrumbo used in most of the screenshots and early promotional things is specifically the yellow-orange Uncommon Shrumbo instead of the standard red Common one.
- MegaCorp: The "Ooblet High Council" who have been trying to evict Badgetown is a front for the Bunglebeebun corporation, who are unethically farming Bunglebees in a cave and want to expand their operation under Badgetown.
- Minigame Zone: Port Forward is full of arcade machines that contain different minigames, which let earn tickets you can spend on prizes.
- Mon: The titular Ooblets, though unlike most Mons they battle through dance-offs instead of fights.
- Missing Secret: The head of the newspaper on the Dirigible is constantly hunting for pictures of Rockstack to prove it exists, but even if you walk up to him with Rockstack in your party, he won't react in any special fashion. This, and the reference in Rockstack's description to them being "imaginary mythical folklore Ooblets who turned out to be real," are merely references to the fact that Rockstack was very nearly
Dummied Out before actually being included in the game. There's no special content related to them otherwise, aside from the fact that they spawn in a different fashion than other Ooblets. - Our Monsters Are Weird: A delightfully quirky cast of characters,
including creatures like pants-wearing little imps, multiple types of mushroom creatures, and clowny penguins. - Palette Swap: All Ooblets come in three color varieties—a Common variant that spawns frequently, an Uncommon variant that's, well, less common, and a Gleamy variant that's rare. Gleamy Ooblets also are covered in sparkles and leave a shine trail as they move. Some variants also have other differences—Uncommon Radlads have more leaves that the Common or Gleamy variants, all three Shrumbo variants have different cap sizes, the Pantsabear variants have different patterns on their pants, and the Rockstack variants have different little plants growing out of their heads (and the Gleamy variant has lava instead of grass).
- Planimal: Ooblets look like everything from plants to animals to fungi to, as the game puts it, "somethings," but they all grow from seeds in the ground.
- Random Effect Spell: Bunglebees' first special skill can spawn any regular item in the game.
- Raymanian Limbs: Most Ooblets' arms and legs kind of float in the general vicinity of their bodies, but it's most noticeable with Grebuns (whose wings are clearly unattached to their bodies) and Fleeble (whose legs pop away from their bodies when they jump—it also causes their tiny arms to briefly become visible).
- Shifting Sand Land: Mamoonia, the first region outside of Badgetown that unlocks, is a desert village full of sand dunes and cacti.
- Silliness Switch: Certain moves do nothing but cause silly things to happen to your character model, such as shrinking you, giving you a big head, or making your arms extra wiggly.
- Starter Mon: Four to choose from, based on what club you join in the beginning - Frunbuns (the cute ones) gives you Tud, Peaksnubs (the elite ones) give you Bittle, Mossprouts (the outdoorsy ones) give you Shrumbo, and Mimpins (the nerdy ones) gives you Sidekey. These can't be befriended until unlocking them in the town's wishing well (which takes quite a few points), and each requires a special item to tame them that can only be gotten with special currency exclusive to that club.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: An unusual case—the high score in the Plob Pen minigame in Port Forward is 799. However, scores in that game are only rewarded in multiples of 100—it's not actually possible to achieve a score between 700 and 800. Since the goal of Port Forward is to beat the high scores on each minigame, this is to ensure that the player will always beat, and never tie, the leading high score in that minigame. (Due to the way scoring works in other minigames, this trick isn't necessary there as it's much less likely the player would accidentally tie the high score.)
- Trademark Favorite Food: Every Ooblet has a food they love the most, which you have to give them in order to challenge them to a dance battle. Some of these "foods" seem quite inedible, such as soggy, popped balloons and outright rocks, but their descriptions make it pretty clear the Ooblets are eating them nonetheless.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: In most of the towns, you have to challenge the residents to Ooblet dance-offs in order to reach the local Oobnet tower. In Port Forward, you instead have to get the high scores in six arcade minigames. Or you can pay someone to give you high scores by hacking.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: The final boss, the Malfeasance Server Firewall, is composed of three dancing glitch-shapes and has a deck using cherry-picked Ooblet special skills from across multiple species. Not only is the firewall untameable, but players have to use all three of an Ooblet's special skills in their deck, and can't just pick and choose.
- Virtual Paper Doll: You can dress up both yourself and your Ooblets in various clothes.
- Waddling Head: Many Ooblets have either no arms or tiny arms, while their face takes up most of their body. Gloopy Long Legs, in particular, has a tiny jelly-like body and long, looong legs attached to it.
- Weird Currency: Gummies, which seem to be purple gelatinous cubes.
