I first played A Boy and His Blob: Trouble in Blobolonia on NES when I was in elementary school, if not earlier. Despite the seeming pointlessness of the adventures of said boy and pet blob, the simple graphics and entertaining way of passing the time made it one of my favorites quite quickly.
The jellybeans that the boy feeds to his pet blob come in a variety of entertaining flavors and cause the blob to shape shift into useful tools such as a ladder or a flame thrower, a rocket, or even a hole in the ground.
Just be careful not to fall to your death if you do not know for sure what the layer below holds in store for you!
I think that the best part about this game is that the simple graphics cause the player to focus more intensely upon strategizing, while teaching the player what kinds of tools would be most useful in even the most random situations. For instance, if you want to get to the other side of a house that is blocking your way, it makes more sense to turn your pet blob into a rocket than it does to try and torch the house down. Or if you need to reach something that is up high, you might
want to figure out how to turn your blob into a trampoline or a ladder. And if you are going underwater, you may want to have your blob encircle you as a bubble filled with air so that you can still breathe.
It has been a while since I have last played, but I do know that this is a fun game (and even a little bit on the frustrating side when you run out of clear objectives you may have set for yourself). I would suggest giving the game a bit of a wander just to kill some time and to remember the way old computer games and video game systems used to be... simple and less about role playing than about having a clear objective. I think it even borders upon being educational if you consider the strategy component of the game.
It may not be the best game around, but I find that it is more satisfying and less time consuming than many of the other games I have attempted to play since that time. Since there is no actual set goal that would be obvious to any player who laid hands upon the software, it is easy enough to walk away and come back later when time allows than it would be with one of those games with all kinds of levels and goals and saving checkpoints.
Perhaps the simplicity is my personal preference, but I think anyone else who isn't quite into the more experienced and time-consuming games would enjoy it as well... there's not really any feeling of failure here.
