#blobun

Blobun Mini (Cyansorcery, 2025)

Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!

Didn’t really pay attention when downloading this because it looked so cute when it showed up in my feed–I guess I assumed it was a Crush Roller-a-like, or something. However, it turned out, concerningly, to be more of a “hard” puzzler, where you’re trying to fill in every square in a map with your cute little slimy bunny and you lose if you need to backtrack to do it. It’s not Sokoban, exactly, but it (maybe unfairly) raised memories of every game I’ve ever played where you do a complex chain of things but have fucked it up at one point in the last 100 moves and have to try and make sense of it.

As a result I was initially considering putting this down completely, but I decided to stick with it for a bit as it's a free PICO-8 game, so I was able to pick it up on my Trimui Brick whenever I had a spare moment (don’t leave me with my thoughts! I need to be doing something, please don’t leave me with my thoughts!) and Blobun Mini won me over for several very good reasons. 

Firstly: every part of it glows with polish, from the charming UI through the responsive movement. Secondly, the game has an unbelievably smooth difficulty curve. It introduces new concepts carefully–and it has many for a game with just sixty levels–and every map is short enough that you never have too much to fix if you screw up. And thirdly, the game is unbelievably forgiving, with a complete rewind and even hints to start you off on each level.

Much like Dino Sort, if you’re looking for a charming puzzler that you can pick up and put down and eventually finish you can’t really go wrong with this (I mean, it’s bloody free) and if you like it so much you can go ahead and play the “full” version of Blobun, which does look like it’s too much for me, but that’s fine.

The only problem I have with this, actually, is that I finished every level but the last level didn’t “tick off” so it looks like I haven’t. A bug, maybe? But it’s a minor quibble.