Base price: $25.
4 – 8 players.
Play time: ~15 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 3
Full disclosure: A review copy of Blob Party was provided by WizKids.
Sometimes you’re a little late to the party. This one’s actually a bit embarrassing, but I legitimately thought I lost the game? Like, after I moved, I could not find Blob Party for the life of me. This really became uncomfortable when it won our American Tabletop Award for Early Gamers and I couldn’t find my copy to take pictures. Thankfully, my friends at Going Analog bailed me out, but I just chalked it up to a game that got lost in my move to the Pacific Northwest. Months later, I would be looking at one of my shelves and it was just … on the shelf. So, I’m an idiot, and that’s fine. First step is admitting you have a problem. A problem I’m rectifying now. Let’s talk about Blob Party.
In Blob Party, players take on the roles of various blobs. Being a blob is great and all, but the best part of being a blob is that you can blob other blobs and become one bigger blob with both of your thoughts. Only one mouth though. Your goal is obvious: why have many little blobs when you could, instead, have one giant blob? But the only way to grow is to align your thoughts, so focus up! Will you be able to subsume all your friends into one giant goop?
Contents
Setup
Setup isn’t too tough. Shuffle the Category Cards:
Shuffle the Word Cards:
Give every player a player board and a marker:
Now for the fun part. Each player gets an eye in the color matching their player board:
Then, divide the clay up equally:
Each player then gets to make a blob in their preferred shape and style, sticking the eye on there to indicate it’s their blob. Joyous. Either way, once you’ve done that, you should be ready to start!
Gameplay
Blob Party is a cooperative party game! Your goal, as mentioned, is to eventually combine into one massive blob. But how do you do that?
Each round, reveal a Category card and a Word Card. Those, combined, are going to specify what kind of answers players should write on their player boards. For instance, you might get “PURPLE” and “FOOD”, to which most players would probably write “GRAPE”. Once everyone’s written their answer (which can be more than one word, though, risky), reveal them!
All players who wrote the same answer have achieved Peak Blob and can combine! They smoosh (technical term) their blobs together and form them into one bigger blob, removing all but one of their player boards from the game. They’re now on a team and can only give one answer as a collective blob. You can also just stick your blobs together; I’m not a cop. Note that if multiple sets of players give the same answer, they combine into multiple distinct larger blobs.
Repeat until seven rounds have passed or all players are one Uni-Blob. If the Mega Blob is formed at any point, all players win! If seven rounds have passed with no Mega Blob, all players lose! Tough.
Player Count Differences
There’s a distinct difficulty curve with more players, since your goal remains relatively unchanged across player counts. Seven rounds, form the Mega Blob. With fewer players, you essentially start a bit farther along toward that goal. With more players, you really need to make sure you’re getting at least one group formed every round. There are also, by luck of the draw, rounds that are significantly easier than other rounds, so it’s easier to capitalize on that with fewer players. That said, sometimes you get a round where everyone answers the same, so, you just kind of win on the spot. In terms of clay potential, I think Blob Party works best with more players, just because you get to see more fun blobs and spend more time making a Mega Blob, which is always fun. People love tactile stuff; it’s a reason why board games have continued to persist. That said, I’ve enjoyed my plays at four, so it’s not a “don’t play it at low player counts” kind of recommendation; I just think Blob Party shines with more players.
Strategy
- You don’t need to overcomplicate this one. I try to remind players that this is very firmly the polar opposite of Just One; instead of trying to figure out a word that nobody else will guess, try to zero in on a word that’s so braindead obvious that it’s the first thing everyone is going to think of. The more likely you are to do that, the more likely you are to win. Honestly, the vibes are much closer to a giant game of Medium that everyone is playing with everyone else.
- Stop trying to bring strategic thinking into party games. Just have fun and make a big blob. It’ll either go alright or it won’t.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- Clay blobs are fun, obviously. They can be a bit distracting for players, but it’s much more fun to build them and see everyone’s specific and zany takes.
- I really like cooperative party games. They’re always great to bring to things because they teach fast and players can (generally) get into them without making other players upset because of something they did within the game. It’s nice and safe.
- This one seems pretty easy to expand! More cards? More Blobs? I wonder if there’s potential for an Anti-Blob or something.
- The art style is fun and goofy. It leans well into the theme of the game, which is always appreciated.
- It’s a nice contrast to Just One, and I’m here for it. I like that you’re trying to maximize overlap instead of minimizing it. I think Just One has more fun strategy at times, but I’d never say no to a game of Blob Party.
Mehs
- Selfishly, it would have been fun if the clay color was randomized across the boxes. It wouldn’t have meant much in practice, but I would have enjoyed seeing all the various photos of other people’s blobs.
- Be careful when you form a blob that your conversations can’t be heard by other players. It makes the game a bit pointless if other players can hear what you’re planning to write.
- I would love to see a wider range of difficulty levels. Right now, difficulty is largely pegged to the randomization of the cards. I’d love something like Word Slam where there are more challenging cards that you can pull to make the game more difficult. Here, I think it would have to be categories where the “obvious” answer can be several things (like “Car” and “Model” or something). I’d enjoy the extra challenge, but I’d always rather have the option to help increase its cross-group appeal.
Cons
- A bit more clay would be nice; I want the blobs to be stupid large. I understand that I can just go buy clay, and, you know what? I might. The clay that’s provided is fine, but it’s sometimes hard to make something that is weird, will stand up right, and fits some of the bigger eyes. This is what suffering for your art is, I’m told.
Overall: 8.5 / 10
Overall, I think Blob Party is great! I was enthusiastic about it when it came up for the American Tabletop Awards, and I think it was one of the better games in its weight and genre class that came out last year. I think there’s still a huge appetite among the growing tabletop games population for good, simple party games that aren’t just a thinly-veiled excuse to be a garbage person, and Blob Party is nice and straightforward and scales to a pretty good player count. As mentioned, it nicely contrasts with Just One by focusing on maximizing overlap (as opposed to Just One, where you want to minimize it), and the cooperative elements nicely support new players as they learn the ropes and the strategy of a lot of these games. Plus, who isn’t excited about building a blob and then making it progressively more giant as you katamari damacy other blobs into yourself? You can make some truly wild stuff. I think all of these factors will give Blob Party a lot of crowd appeal, and I look forward to the next chance I’ll have to break it out at game night. Four players as a lower bound is a lot, but I’ll make it work. If you’re into word games, you like cooperation, or you just want to make little clay blobs, you’ll likely enjoy Blob Party! I liked it a lot.
If you enjoyed this review and would like to support What’s Eric Playing? in the future, please check out my Patreon. Thanks for reading!