Ooblets is a game being developed by a two-man company (plus some freelancers), Glumberland, and it is slated for release later this year. In their most recent devlog post, Rebecca Cordingley, the programmer and artist half of the team, revealed a fleshed out version of the oobcoops, a sort of analogue to the PC system in Pokemon for holding extra Pokemon.
Ooblets is an upcoming game that bills itself as a combination of farming sim, town life, and creature collection game inspired by similar games such as Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons, Pokemon, and Animal Crossing. The game has your character managing a farm, exploring the world, and raising and battling the titular creatures. An interesting feature about the game’s character creation system is that you aren’t asked to pick a gender. Instead, you create a sense of your character by choosing a base model and applying the hair, outfits, and other accessorizing options onto your character. It seems to me like an interesting way to work with gender fluidity, and I’m curious to see how others feel about it.
In the September devlog last year, the concept of the oobcoops was created. Like the PCs in the Pokemon games, this is a system for holding ooblets that you aren’t currently in your active party (cutely referred to as your ‘followbabies’). The latest update fleshed it out to be more than a UI panel. Now, your character can pop their head into the oobcoops and watch the little critters running around their home! There are plans to add upgrades and little furniture for the oobcoops, but Rebecca isn’t sure about getting everything in before release.
Additional updates for April’s devlog include new furniture made by Sander, couple of new human characters (Churles the clothing shop owner and Millew, who’s described as “…a little abrasive, judgmental, and bitter, but I think it might be because he’s covering up some insecurities.”), and a new ooblet based off a concept design by Miski. This new ooblet, called Bittle, is a grumpy-looking beetle wearing a helmet with horns shaped like beetle pincers.
Like all North American citizens, the dev team also had to deal with the dreaded time known as TAX SEASON:
In North America, April is the month of spring, a time to relax and enjoy nature and also panic about taxes. Now that we’ve made a company for the studio, our taxes have gotten a lot more difficult, but now we’ve compiled all our papers, signed everything in triplicate, and mailed everything out CERTIFIED, so it’s a big weight off our shoulders. Sure, taxes aren’t directly game-progress related, but we’ve been dealing with them so it’s goin’ in here! Gotta get some value from it.
We tend to take elements of our life and integrate them into the game, so maybe we’ll eventually put in a taxes minigame one day. Maybe it will be paid DLC… Tax DLC.
Ooblets is currently expected to release sometime during the second half of 2018 on Steam and Xbox One.