Blob

Revision as of 02:46, 7 May 2021 by MilkyWayWishes (talk | contribs) (rewrite)

The blob is an amoeba-like green monster whose direction is completely random, and moves at half the rate of other monsters. The only limits on a blob's direction are illegal moves.

In Chip's Challenge 1, the blob is the only monster that is never cloned.

General mechanics

The direction of the blob usually means nothing, because the randomly selected direction will take effect from a blob's first move onwards. This random value is not reset between deaths and levels so blobs will usually move differently between attempts[1].

MS behavior

In MS blobs move every other turn, depending on the level's current step. A blob's direction is randomly chosen from all legal directions, meaning that if a path is open a blob will always move.

A side effect of the random movement is that a blob on a cloner will clone in any legal direction, regardless of the direction of the blob on the clone machine.

Lynx behavior

In Lynx blobs move at half the speed of other monsters, taking 8 ticks to complete a move. Unlike MS blobs will randomly choose any direction, meaning that even with an open path blobs can remain stuck for some time.

Blobs on clone machines and moving through traps do follow the direction of the blob, cloning or moving according to the direction of the blob on the machine or in the trap.

Steam behavior

In Steam blobs act almost identical to Lynx except for the random selection. In Steam levels have 3 settings for blobs: Deterministic, which causes all blobs to act the same between deaths; 4 Patterns, which causes the blobs to cycle through 4 possible patterns of movement; and Extra Random, which causes the blobs to cycle through 256 possible patterns move movement.

Origins

Melinda's special dispatches reveal where the blob came from: it was an accidental creation from a series of failed genetic experiments. Blobnet was the first appearance of the blob, and they largely appeared sparsely from then on, save for Blobdance much later in the game.

See also

Footnotes

  1. An exception is the original Lynx version where the value does reset between attempts.