23 reviews: Toblo

Name: Toblo
Author: 5 students at Digipen
Version: 1.2
Platform: Windows
Price: Free!
Players: 1-10(?)
Website: Official Toblo homepage
Video: Video found on youtube (and one on the website)

Toblo is a student made capture the flag physics game. The environments are made of various size blocks, which you throw at your opponents from the other team to knock them out and bash their base. You play as either the “Cloud Kids” (little blue angels of virtue) or the “Fire Friends” (basically forum trolls), yes, it is a little childish, but the design is colorful and very fun. The objective is to take all three of your opponents flag blocks and return them to your base. You can only carry one flag block and you can not throw any blocks while carrying the flag block. As well as the special flag blocks and normal blocks the environment is built out of, there are the bomb blocks, these create explosions when thrown and can cause massive damage to the opponent’s base and/or knock out multiple opponents at a time, these are very useful for breaking into and/or completely destroying the enemy base.

This game is very easy to understand and play, as well as fun enough to play again and again and use new strategies. This game can be played over LAN, and comes with 5(?) maps but new maps can be added and created if you have enough technical savvy and effort to try it (the tutorial is on the main site).

The physics in this game are very impressive (it's sorta like playing Boom Blocks), and the design may be fairly simple, but it fits the feel and is very friendly towards young, old, and anyone in between. Definitely download this game and give it a try, you might be surprised by how fun it is and how much you’ll get attached to the design, your teammates, and even your opponents. Even more personality is added to the characters with little snippets of text in a bubble that fit the situation that occasionally pop up. If you like these slightly less fancy pick up and play games with unique game play try visiting digipen and checking out their massive collection of student made games, or even IGF's nominated top student made indies.

P.S. Toblo was the 2007 winner of the IGF's Best Student Game award. And it's as fun now as it was back then.