Almost There...a boy and his blob

 

After beating the admittedly difficult and frustrating boss from world 3,  I reached the fourth and final world last night.  Throughout the final few stages of the third world, a huge ominous castle loomed in the background, suggesting that would be my next destination, and sure enough it is. Even though the exterior of world 4 looks like a castle, the interior looks more like a factory. Lots of brown and copper colors and gears and switches and levers are everywhere. 

Visually, it's nowhere near as interesting as Blobonia's candy laden alien landscape, but gameplay wise, the developers saved some really interesting mechanics for the home stretch of the game. The first stage of this world separates the boy from his blob, leaving you to navigate the mechanical monstrosity without the help of your gelatinous buddy.  That was a really interesting change - when a game trains you for so long that you are able to do "X" and then take that away, it's funny to see how the mind wants to continue to use "X" even though you know you can't. In this case, since I had no blob, none of its helpful jellybean-induced transformations were available. But that didn't stop me from opening up the jellybean menu time and time again only to find that it was empty.

This game has been a slow burn, and it feels like I've played it for so much longer than I have, but I'm still loving it. With any luck, I'll finish it in the next day or so and have the full review for you.