As an interruption from a WiiWare line-up of bonsai barbering, beanbag-tossing and goo-fueled bridge-building we now can download Ronimo Games' Swords & Soldiers, a side-scrolling real-time strategy game for one player or two. It's like Patapon without the controllable drumbeats and with a lot more Aztec sacrifice.

But in the demo-free zone that is Nintendo's Wii download service, is it fun enough for your 10 bucks?

Loved
The Look And Feel: Side-scrolling RTS is a sketchy proposition. But thanks to bold and bright character design and a minimalist remote-only control scheme, it's quite easy and enjoyable to hire gold-miners and begin generating the Viking axe-men, corpse-resurrecting shamans, golden giants, old Chinese men and other warriors at your disposal. Depending on which of the three ethnic groups you control, you have a different tech trees' worth of characters to generate or spells to elicit. Those characters you generate go on a victory march to the right of your screen, usually to destroy a base about 20 screen lengths away… unless you're a bad strategist. Then it's just a sorry death march.

Boulders, Sacrifices And More Unexpected Stuff: The game's first campaign is deceptively simple. As the Vikings you learn the basics (and hunt down a killer chili pepper – the game's kind of a comedy). Ten missions and at least an hour later, you get to play as the Aztecs, and that's when Ronimo's originality begins to shine. Effective Aztec strategy involves sacrificing warriors, a tactic opposite to winning with brute Viking numbers. The Aztec and Asian campaigns reveal many surprising units, tactics and special attacks, including the unleashing of a player-controlled screen-tall bouncing boulder and others I won't spoil.

Hated
Aged Thinking Why must I play the three campaigns in only one order? Why must the default difficulty become so hard halfway through Aztec, but then not allow me to switch to the locked Asian campaign instead? And I hope the levels don't have as narrow an array of winning strategies as it sometimes seemed. The best strategy games should allow hard-thinking players multiple paths to victory. I suspect there are multiple methods for some of Swords & Soldiers' most vexing levels, but I found quite a few that seemed to have only one right way to win – as best as I could deduce.

At a time when the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3's downloadable services have hit a bit of a lull, WiiWare finally is coalescing into a platform with several varied and well-made games.

Swords & Soldiers could have easily sold for more than its list price, as its graphics and sound are top quality, and its 30-mission campaign, bonus missions and split-screen multiplayer present a generous package. For the team to not stumble while making a game in such an untested genre is quite an achievement. Plus, it has violence.

Swords & Solders was developed by Ronimo Gamesfor the Wii's downloadable game service WiiWare on June 8. Retails for 1000 Nintendo points ($10 USD) Played through all three campaigns over about six hours, dropping from the default difficulty halfway through. Played the bonus missions and sampled the game's split-screen multiplayer.

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THQ CEO Brian Farrell puts de Blob sales at a very respectable 700,000-plus, according to a report from Edge. Not bad for a title that's holding on to a $49.99 price point. It almost gives one hope that good games will sell well on the Wii. Actually it does give THQ hope.

Farrell said at today's Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference that the company is continuing its Wii attack, focusing on more than just licensed and budget titles, but with a third prong as well.

That includes a "niche" Wii game that may fall under the company's "Nintendo-esque" description. In other words, higher-quality games with better production values that can sell to a wider audience.

"The people who buy Nintendo games, [we want to] get them to buy things like de Blob," Farrell said. That's a good idea, Brian.

THQ: de Blob Sells Over 700K [Edge]

What they literally said, attributed to a THQ spokesman, was, "We're pleased with de Blob's performance worldwide. It's a great intellectual property and you can tell your readers to expect to see more of de Blob in the future."

It's a score for well made games and for the choice of making a new IP instead of a sequel. Although, the irony is, a sequel no longer makes de Blob new IP, so ... wait a minute ... that makes it a victory for sequels over new IP ... crap.

THQ: Expect more de Blob [IGN]

Singled out for praise in a feature titled "If Jackson Pollock Were a Gamer" are De Blob, World of Goo, Echochrome and Flower, coming out soon on PSN.

"Independent, low-budget movies changed Hollywood. Niche cable shows revolutionized television. Digital music toppled record labels. But for decades, console video games have remained overwhelmingly corporate," New York mag writes. The drop in development costs and the opportunities presented by digital distribution have given rise to art houses "unshackled from the blockbuster-or-bust mentality of the big corporations," and free to deliver "a new golden age of smart, beautiful, and really weird games."

High praise indeed. Chalk down another one for the serious discussion of video games as an art form.

The New Art Form: If Jackson Pollock Were a Gamer [New York Magazine]

Loved
de Storyline: Like any great animated cartoon, in its story of an evil regime taking over a city and the people fighting back manages to convey a strong message while still being suitable for children of all ages via brilliant and humorous CGI cutscenes sprinkled throughout the game.

de Gameplay: de Blob takes a very simple gameplay concept - changing the color of buildings - adds platforming elements, and manages to create one of the most entertaining third-party titles to grace the Wii console. The effects of your colorization are immensely rewarding, compelling you to complete as much of the game as possible.

de Music: Music plays a far greater role in de Blob than in most games, changing as you complete more and more of each level. Unlocking new music genres is a real treat that makes replaying levels with a different tune selected it's own unique experience.

de Presentation:
From the crisp, colorful graphics of the game itself to the comic-book panel intros, de Blob oozes a style all its own. Little touches like being able to doodle with your Wii remote during loading screens only add to the game's charm.

Hated
de Control Restrictions: De Blob controls well for the most part, but I couldn't help imagining it would have controlled much better with a standard controller in place of the Wii remote / nunchuk combo. Flicking the remote up to jump is not a very accurate or entertaining control mechanic.

de Camera: The camera often catches De Blob at strange angles, and while you can press a button to center the cam behind you or use the d-pad to slowly swing it around, stopping to do this in a timed challenge can shave precious seconds off of your alloted time.

de Blob is, simply put, the most fun I've had playing with my Wii in a good long time, which is an extremely rare statement where a third-party title is concerned. Most of the truly quality titles I've experienced on the console so far have come directly from Nintendo, with other offerings generally falling somewhere between better than average and not worthy for inclusion in a flash banner ad. Even after completing the game, a task that took me a good thirteen hours or so, I found myself going into the Free Paint mode just for the sake of splashing some color around while enjoying the music. I'm even looking forward to my nephew's next visit so we can play a bit more of the game's local multiplayer, and half the time he smells like onions.

de Blob takes a simple concept, adds a splash of color, and creates one of the most uniquely entertaining experiences I've had on the Nintendo Wii this year.

de Blob, developed by Blue Tongue and published by THQ was released on released on Sept. 22 for the Wii. Retails for $49.99. Completed all levels to at least 90%, mucked about with multiplayer modes, and spent a great deal of time in the free paint mode.

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While I'll be reviewing the game a bit further down the line, the accompanying toy receives extremely high marks for being adorable, in a devious sort of way. Hit the jump to witness it taking it's appointed place upon my mantle, joining the ranks of the first things to melt should I ever attempt to use my fireplace.

Sharpen your weapons: “Swords & Soldiers” is coming!

Ronimo Games announces their studio and the first competitive strategy game for Wii Ware: Swords & Soldiers.

UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS – August 15, 2008 – The developers of the original version of “de Blob” announce their new game studio Ronimo Games and their first title: Swords & Soldiers.

Ronimo Games is founded by seven developers in Utrecht, the Netherlands. As students the team was responsible for the original pc game “de Blob”. Being an innovative and fun game, “de Blob” became popular on the internet and was eventually picked up by THQ. The publisher bought the IP and will soon release the new version of “de Blob” for Nintendo Wii.

Fabian Akker, one of the co-founders: “de Blob was the eye opener for us, that we can make cool games and function as a good team. The game definitely gave us the opportunity to start our own company”.

The team is developing a new game for Wii Ware: Swords & Soldiers. Swords & Soldiers is a sidescrolling real time strategy game, in which three distinct factions battle for the powers of the gods. The game will feature a single player campaign and a competitive splitscreen multiplayer mode as well as several other game modes. Three screenshots are included with this press release.
Akker: “We always dreamed of designing an RTS and when Wii Ware came out we immediately figured that this was our chance.”

Swords & Soldiers will be the first competitive strategy game on Wii Ware and is scheduled for European, Australian and American release in Q4 2008.

About Ronimo Games
Ronimo games is a new developer, founded by the original creators of “de Blob” in October 2007. The team focusses on creating innovative games for a broad audience. The studio became a Nintendo licensed developer in spring 2008 and is currently working on their first Wii Ware title: Swords & Soldiers. For more information on Ronimo Games and its products visit www.ronimo-games.com.

About “de Blob”
“de Blob” started as a student game project for the city of Utrecht, in which the player rolls through the city as a giant alien paintball, painting the streets and buildings. THQ bought the IP and is currently working on a new version of the game for Nintendo Wii. For more information and a free download of the original “de Blob” visit binnenstad.hku.nl. For more information on the new THQ version of “de Blob” visit www.deblob.com.

As we've told you in the past, you play as a pretty cute blob. Squishy blobs are in right now - just think of Independent Games Festival buzz-generators World of Goo and Goo!, to name just a couple. In fact, as Crecente reported last year, De Blob is actually the result of a student project from the 2006 Independent Games Festival.

As such, it retains both the simplicity and attractively colorful, offbeat vibe we often associate with promising indies. What are you a blob of? Color, it looks like, a heroic little splat plunked down in Chroma City, an adorable world that's had all of the hues sapped out of it by the evil I.N.K.T. Corporation.

It's super cute and quirky, but how does it play? Details and screens after the jump.

My tendency was actually to be a bit leery of THQ's Wii-heavy strategy. As I've mentioned before, I've got a little bit of "waggle fatigue," and you may recall I was not pleased with Battle of the Bands, where I felt the motion controls seemed a little bit frustrating and redundant.

De Blob, however, controls very simply and tightly judging by the few minutes I had with it - the way you roll your blob around with the nunchuk's thumbstick works particularly well, and put me distinctly in mind of Katamari Damacy. In fact, a lot of De Blob's gameplay seems to take a Katamari cue, from the camera control to the fashion of rolling over Chroma City's poor trapped citizens to set them free.

As Flynn explained, you hold the Z button to lock onto objects you can smash, and swing the Wii Remote down to jump on them. When you hit a paint can, your blob takes on the color you splash through, and colors can blend - if you're red and hit a blue can, for example, you become purple.

And as you roll through Chroma City, you paint it with the colors and patterns you're currently hanging onto, and you earn higher scores for a broad color palette and pattern diversity. The more paint you soak up, the heavier and less agile your blob becomes, and if you roll through two colors that don't blend well, like purple and green, you turn brown. Roll through water to rinse off and become colorless again, taking off some of that weight.

Your blob has to avoid stumbling into ominous-looking black rivers of ink, though - if you get inked, you'll spread depressing blacks and grays all over your colorful handiwork, killing trees and even obliterating your cheerful Chroma City citizens. You can wash off the ink by rinsing in water if you get there in time, though, and an optional onscreen map can point you in the general direction of the nearest water source.

The game features some platforming elements, and you swing the Wii Remote upward to jump, higher if you want more air. Flynn had said he noticed some issues with this - while I've never found motion controls to be ideal for platforming, I found it at least workable here, even if getting the timing and size of the movement just right might take some practice through playtime.

Just rolling the blob around and painting with color is surprisingly engrossing, especially because of the outstanding sound effects and music. The THQ rep told me that the entire soundtrack was done by an Australian local band who plays jazz music, and all of the game's tunes are sprightly and clever. My favorite part was how the music changes depending on what color you are, with the accompanying sound seeming to go with the hue.

Katamari Damacy succeeded through surprising aesthetics and simple gameplay, and it looks possible for De Blob to do the same - my one uncertainty about it is that it's still not clear to me exactly how much structure there is to the missions, or how you obtain the satisfaction of completing a single objective. That's not necessarily a problem - it might still be simple fun as an open-world, color-saturated free-for-all, but personally, I thrive on the joy rush of beating the clock and accomplishing something.

THQ president and CEO Brian Farrell said that most of its struggles were due to a crowded and competitive market for kids' games, as well as key franchises — Juiced, Stuntman and Conan that ultimately "were simply not competitive."

"Insufficient game quality led to inadequate sellthrough, resulting in markdowns at retail," Farrell said.

Farrell said the company spent heavily to promote Juiced and Stuntman, and had to take a loss when those titles fail to perform. What growth THQ did see, Farrell credited to Frontlines: Fuel of War, MX vs. ATV Untamed and WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008, all of which exceeded expectations.

Farrell also said the kids' market, in which THQ has several franchises, was the most competitive in years, and that the company's currently struggling to compete with music games and Nintendo first-party titles.

Nonetheless, THQ appears to have placed its faith in the Wii, concentrating much of its upcoming original IP there. Although Saints Row 2 and Red Faction Guerrilla are still the "anchors" of its lineup, Darksiders, De Blob, Deadly Creatures, Big Beach Sports and All Star Cheer look likely to be slated for Wii along with other unannounced projects, though the company did not announce specific platforms.

New installments in existing franchises for fiscal 2009 include WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009, Disney/Pixar's Wall-E film tie-in, and its previously-revealed Nickelodeon portfolio. The company will publish a game based on DreamWorks' Animation's unannounced 2010 fall film, and has slated WWE: Legends of Wrestlemania for 2009.

Notably, the company seems to have an eye on the free-to-play, microtransactions-driven online gaming market in Asia, highlighting the co-publishing agreement it's signed with Shanda Interactive to bring Company of Heroes Online to China in 2009.

THQ is more confident about the year to come, with three new initiatives in place: "We are rolling out a stronger slate of products. We have put in place and are executing against initiatives to improve our product quality and competitiveness. We are also realigning our cost structure to generate significant operating leverage in fiscal 2009. We believe these initiatives will restore profitable growth and improve value for shareholders," said Farrell.

"We faced a number of challenges, but I believe we have the right strategy to overcome these challenges and achieve significant growth."

Each area of town you go to has a different challenge. Some require you to paint everything the same color, while others have you using as many different colors as possible. Large green areas denote side quests that can be taken on and there are many spread out in the game's large levels. There are also quite a few time challenges that have you trying to paint a certain area of town or group of buildings in the allotted time. Multiplayer will support up to four players, but unfortunately, online play will not be available.

De Blob was developed for the Wii and, as you can imagine, it makes much use of the Wii remote's motion sensors and the nunchuck. Flicking the remote will cause your colorful little blob to jump up in the air and with the right movements you can get quite the speed going. Soon you will be bouncing off of buildings and into the sides of other buildings, splashing paint all over the place as you go.

Of all the Wii titles shown at the event, this was my personal favorite and I found myself inadvertently standing there playing, while the lines formed behind me. Finally, after some rather cranky fellow journalists started grumbling I decided it might be best to move on.

If you haven't yet checked out De Blob and you are a fan of quirky games, do yourself a favor and at least peruse the small gallery of screenshots below. This will definitely be a Wii title well worth picking up.

Corporate sadness and apologetic execs at the official release.

THQ Updates Fiscal 2008 Outlook [Yahoo! Finance]

In the game you play as a colorless blob that can take on the colors of the critters it crushes. Once your blob has absorbed a color it can slap into a building to paint it. From what I saw of the game, it looks like it features both elements of free-roaming and missions. The missions typically include getting you to paint buildings different colors or racing around sections of the monochromatic city before a timer runs out.

While I love the look of the game and like the fact that there seems to be a deeper meaning lurking just below the game's mechanics, the thing that really sells this game to me is the fact that it's designed for the Wii and relies heavily on the console's motion controls.

To roll around the city you use the nunchuck's thumbstick, but if you want to crush an enemy, and absorb its color, you need to lift up and then swing down the remote as if swinging a hammer. To jump into the side of a building to color it you flick your remote in the correct direction.

I played around with the multiplayer for a bit and found the controls fairly intuitive and certainly something that added to the fun of the game. It was a bit tricky to get your blob to make bigger, rather than smaller jumps, but not so difficult as to be off-putting.

The one thing I didn't enjoy about the game was the seemingly endless and sorta pointless multiplayer. In the version we played, we roamed aimlessly around a city coloring the buildings in an attempt to get the high score. But the lack of a time limit and the fact that someone could follow behind you changing your buildings to their colors made the game a bit of a bore. While I wasn't told this, I suspect that the multiplayer was very, very much incomplete, so I'm not too worried.

The game looks like a perfect fit for the Wii's motion controls and its vibrant colors would look quite nice on the Nintendo console, I bet. I was, in fact, planning on including De Blob, which you can pick up here, as a contender in the Game Club.

THQ Wii exclusive - De Blob [Go Nintendo]