Gobliiins Collection - Switch Review

Gobliiins Collection by developer and publisher Red Art Games—Nintendo Switch review written by Susan N., with copy provided by the publisher. 

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes  

In the early 90s, Coktel Vision (which later became Sierra On-Line) released a quirky point and click adventure game titled Gobliiins which had players bouncing between three different Goblins to find a cure for good King Angoulafre. To do this requires the help of brave Goblins to seek out a wizard through a series of strange levels and nothing but your wits and observation skills to guide you. After struggling with the game for several weeks, I finally have some thoughts to share about my experience.

An important thing to note about the games in the series is that each game title has a corresponding number of "I's" to indicate how many Goblins you will be managing. Three "I's" means you control three Goblins. One 'I' means you only get one. With that, let's get into the review.

Gameplay

Gobliiins is a game series that is anything but straightforward. Sure, it is a point and click adventure game from the 90s that you would think is easy, but realistically it is not. Each screen is filled with different scenic objects that may or may not be useful in the completion of a level. The worst part is that you will have to pixel hunt for objects that you can interact with. When you pair that knowledge with the rudimentary action buttons, the games can be rather frustrating, particularly on the Switch.

The first couple of games have functions to move, interact, and pickup items, but even with those buttons, only one character can pickup objects where the other two cannot. This leads into all kinds of frustration where you have to get another Goblin to activate certain objects in order to get another into position and I found it to be irritating to deal with. So, poor King Angoulafre waited for so long to get his cure...

Before proceeding, I thought I'd mention that I have grouped the first two games together because they are fairly similar in graphics and style, where the other three are different in their own ways. With that said, let's cover a bit about the individual games.

Gobliiins 1&2

Gobliiins 1 was so infuriating to me that I put down the game for an extended period of time before I tried again. The first level was annoying for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is no real instruction or direction other than the little bit of story at the beginning. Secondly, you have to manage three different characters to achieve one goal - which is not a mechanic that I'm particularly accustomed to. Thirdly, the Gobliiins take damage for trying a number of different ideas which sets you back to the beginning of the level. Fourthly, it took some time to figure out that the 'punch' icon was the action button.

After getting through some of those hurdles, I punched a wall, smacked a tree to get a stick which I used magic to turn it into.. a pickaxe? Okay game... Once you have the pickaxe, you can move on to the next section which presents you with a sparkling wall containing a diamond, a tree with apples that you can't eat, and a bridge you can't cross. The logical solution is to turn those apples into JUMBO APPLES and drop them in the hole to cross the bridge. (Insert me raising an eyebrow here.)

In the first two levels, I thought I had tried everything. I knocked on the door, the window, smacked the tree, opened the gate which was met with DISASTER, and generally I found myself yelling at the game. It felt like I was the old woman yelling at clouds. You know?

Eventually I was able to give the diamond to the person in the house. Then I met the most irritating level in existence. After you complete the previous section, you get dropped into an area with a coffin and a creature that blocks your path. Now, if I was playing this game on PC, some of the challenges with the levels wouldn't be as difficult, but on Joycons? Not a chance. I died and I had no idea what happened the first time because I stopped to grab a drink in real life. I learned that a zombie comes out of that coffin and scares you to death... Literally. That is what killed me. *sigh*

Anyways, this level is the first one where you have to do some clever timing maneuvers. While that was a cool idea at the time, I failed spectacularly and I hated it. This is partly to do with my playing the game on the Switch and the Joycons having terrible analog sticks. After dealing with that frustration, I decided to put down the first game and move on to game number two.

Gobliins 2 seemed like it was great for a change of pace after being stuck in the previous game, but moving to it was a terrible mistake because I floundered just as much as I had in the first. 

It originally released a year after the first game and only had two characters to manage. This time, the Gobliins are on a quest to find the son of the King because he has gone missing. Once more you must seek out the assistance of a mage to help with your quest and you will have to solve quirky puzzles to complete this task. 

Honestly, game two was more frustrating than the first because I didn't make any progress. I couldn't grab the glass that sat behind some characters and the dog in the next area was menacing. My patience with the series was running thin as I failed to do anything useful, and I gave up on it quickly. Perhaps I didn't really understand the game when I thought I had made some good progress in the previous one. However, one thing was clear to me, I might not enjoy the series at all. 

In hopes that Gobliiins could redeem itself, I moved on to the third title. 

Gobliiins 3 - 5

Goblins 3 is a whole other ball game where you no longer have to deal with the King and his family, but instead it shifts to a war between rivals over a mysterious labyrinth. This adventure is different from the other two because of two reasons. First, its graphics style starts to improve which makes interactable objects easier to spot. Secondly, the puzzle solving logic made more sense and I actually made it through a few levels before being stumped. I'm uncertain if the shift was because I started to understand a bit of the thought process behind the level design or if being able to see objects more clearly made the difference. Perhaps it was the inclusion of a button to show interactable objects, which was not part of the previous two games. It is also the first game where you control only one character, which made life much easier for me to handle. Although, don't get me wrong, the idea of using multiple characters to get through puzzles is a great way to make things challenging for players, I just prefer to have one character at a time. 

Anyways, I managed to get off the ship with an umbrella and miraculously I landed on the ground without any injuries. Then I found myself confronted with a bunch of guards and a strange character hanging inside a hole in the ground. It is at this point that I start to get some of the charm of the game, although I can't explain why. The 2D nature certainly brings me back to 90s gaming. So, perhaps I can chalk it up to nostalgia? I don't know.

Gobliiins 4 brings you back to the three character format, but this time the art style has dramatically improved from its predecessors. After struggling to beat the previous games, this one was a bit easier to handle and even still, I had to press beyond my limits of understanding. I fed the gherkins to the plant, I used the microscope on the flea, and gave the bird some bread. Eventually I needed to hand over a carrot to my plant who would bite me otherwise. Thankfully in this game, I don't take damage and have to restart like I did in the first one. 

Now, what I like about the fourth Goblins game is that I only have to deal with one character. It is also the only game in the series that is pseudo 3D, including the one after it. At the time, the leap to 3D would have been huge, but unfortunately it lost its charm on the fanbase and the developers returned to the 2D model for the fifth game. Personally, I rather enjoyed seeing the improvement and the risk it was to make such a large leap in graphics style. The gameplay seemed to make more sense and while it still had it challenges, I quite liked the third and the fourth games. 

Disappointingly, I did not make it to the final game because the reality is that there is a lot of content to cover in one review when you have five games and a couple of extras tossed in. Though, I can say that the fifth game does return to its original 2D format and has the option to slow your cursor movements while solving puzzles. Once again the graphics style is more refined and feels more like animated characters than pixelated graphics found in the first couple of games. It also features flavor text when reading notes or interacting with objects instead of relying on the audio to get information. Thus, I get the impression that this game seems like I will have a much easier time playing, and that is excellent.

The Good and the Bad of Gobliiins

So let's talk about the good points and bad points of the Gobliiins Collection.

Some of the good points of the series is real progression in terms of storytelling. Despite it being released originally in the early 90s, the games had an end objective that was interesting. Players would get to run around as goblins and solve challenging puzzles with multiple characters. To solve these puzzles, you had to break out of the normal way of thinking. I would never have thought to use magic on a plant for it to grow taller so that I could use it to climb. Similarly, I did not think that feeding carrots to a plant would be important to progressing a level. Essentially, some of the good points revolve around the complexity of its gameplay especially for the time period. Point and click adventure games in the 90s were challenging in their own ways, and that is part of what drew us to them.

Over the course of a few years, the graphics style had dramatically improved and the game wasn't as punishing as it was in the beginning. Clearly, these games were well regarded because other reviewers at CGR were excited to see that there was an updated version of the collection which includes the music and some extra goodies! For instance, there are two modes for each game which is the Floppy Disk version and the CD Rom version. You can switch between the two modes to see how the graphics have been updated in the collection without losing any of your progress! That, in itself, is awesome.

As for the bad points of the Gobliiins Collection, I can say that after looking at screenshots of old, there doesn't appear to be much difference between the original titles and these ones. That's not to say there aren't differences, but I don't have a real basis of comparison as I never played the original games. Although, graphical integrity isn't what makes or breaks a game for me, it's often the story telling and the gameplay that does. With that in mind, these games didn't grab me in any way. I respect the fact that they are quirky. And while I think of myself to be decent at puzzle solving, there were several points where I simply couldn't find my way out of a paperbag. I often found myself upset at the lack of direction and information within the games, which led me to put the collection down for long stretches of time. 

Another glaring issue for me is the fact that I decided to review these games on the Switch. Normally, that is a non-issue, but unfortunately there are levels that require a bit of reflexes (like the aforementioned zombie level) that were incredibly difficult because of the Joycon analog sticks being awful and unrefined. Furthermore, I don't relish pixel-hunting regardless of Joycons or touch screens. In other words, I might have enjoyed the game a bit more if I was playing the collection on PC. 

Finally, there is the absolute lack of options. You can manually save in a couple of the later games, but the early titles have an autosave feature - which is great except you are unaware of it at first. You can change the resolution size of the game which adds interesting frames instead of a simple black sidebar. But apart from that, there aren't screens that remind you what your task is or a hint to your next steps. Basically, you are forced to endlessly experiment with the characters and the objects to see what happens. Also, there's nothing in the way of accessibility options either. While I wasn't expecting a full remaster of the games, I had hoped that there would be a couple of additional quality of life features in this large collection. Sadly, this is not the case.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I'd say that the Gobliiins collection is an interesting blast from the past for many gamers who grew up in the 90s. The games are strange and certainly approached the point and click genre in a new way. However, I found myself disliking my time with the collection overall. It has little to do with the unique nature of this particular series and more has to do with my own personal gaming interests. Gobliiins seemed like a collection of games that I would absolutely love, but I found myself frustrated at the difficulty level and the platform I chose to review on. I don't find that these games are bad in any way, I just discovered that this particular series of games aren't meant for me. And I've come to the conclusion that perhaps the series is too abstract for me to really get into. But despite that fact, the Gobliiins collection is quite good. There are several challenging puzzles to solve and really good graphics that improved over time. Red Art Games even added the complete original soundtrack as well as a virtual book that details the origins of the Gobliiins games. For around $30 USD, there is a ton of content to sink your teeth into. So, if the Gobliiins Collection brings back memories, then there is no reason to skip out on it because it is definitely worth the price.

Score: 8 out of 10