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Review: Bloop Reloaded – A Gloopy Physics Puzzler

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Bloop Reloaded – What We Think

Bloop Reloaded is a liquid physics puzzle game. It is thematically simple; you are creating potions for a shop. “We are not good at making a plot for this game,” the game proudly announces, and that’s fine, because do we really need more confusing plots for what should just be a simple puzzle? No? Right, good.

Bloop Reloaded is a fairly simple puzzle. Your main tool for solving levels is your infinite ability to create platforms for liquid to run down. In addition, you have the ability to manually pick up globs of fluid with your mouse cursor and toss, throw, drop or even push other objects around with it. In the last few levels, you are also given some gravity blocks that push and pull blobs of bloop, but it’s barely used, which is disappointing because, it made for some of the more interesting puzzles.

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As a puzzle game however, it’s very easy. Just about every level can be brute forced simply by making a cup to catch all the water and scoop it into the bottles by hand. You should be fairly motivated to create some Rube Goldberg-machine-style series of ramps to maneuver the flow of fountains to their designated bottles.

Understood on Different Levels

One of my favorite levels involved three streams that had to be kept separate though a reverse gravity field that all flowed at the same time, requiring me to create channels to delay the flow of one sprinkler as the others finished dispensing their streams. The set-up for that level was one of the most simple in the entire game, but the thought process for completing it took the most planning out of all of them.

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Besides simply getting your potions into their bottles, there are two more aspects to many of the puzzles, one major and one minor. The major aspect is that when you need to unlock a nozzle with a key stone, the only way to do this is to move the stone over to its lock, the trick being that you still only have the ability to manipulate fluid. You can have a bit of fun with the physics here as you try to carry the key to its keyhole with a handful of gloop.

After completing this task, the second valve erupts with its potion, and you may then reset the level so you can then focus on getting the two or more streams into their proper flasks. Resetting does not reset the locks, so in effect this turns one puzzle screen into two semi-separate objectives and a very nice way to reuse the level to extend its exposure.

Put It Together and What Have You Got?

The second minor aspect is that sometimes you’ll need to combine two potion flows in a mixer to create a new substance. While this is mostly a checkpoint mechanic, some of the resulting potion mixtures had some interesting attributes. There’s a thick tar, rolling stars, and what looks like bouncing asteroids of bits of cookie crumb. Sometimes you have to take into account the thickness of a fluid or its penchant to rebound off walls when creating paths to its final resting place.

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Get Your Hands in the Muck

Yet, for its simplicity, you’ll get about as much out of it that you are willing to put into it. You can go for the straightforward solution, or you can needlessly muck about and have fun with it. It teeters on the borderline of “toy” territory, but for what it sets out to do, it does fairly decently. It’s lighthearted and fun in its own special way. It doesn’t over-stay its welcome, and it does not pretend to be something grander than it is. It is a modest game, and that’s just fine.

Spoiler: He dies at the end.

Get Bloop Reloaded on Steam

[xrr rating=”3.5/5″]

Watch the trailer for Bloop Reloaded below: