Bluppo

Overview

Created by programming students Matija Tomaskovic and Bruno Babic for MS-DOS in 1995, Bluppo is a clone of retro game Boulder Dash, but adds many new features to the familiar gameplay. The game is now abandonware and is available for free, it requires DosBox to run.

Story

You play as an aspiring cook named Bluppo who's wealthy grandfather offers to buy a fancy restaurant to launch his career—but only if Bluppo cooks him up the perfect meal. The feast his grandfather requests calls for a special sauce that requires drops of sweat from 3,000 scared fish. Passionate about cooking, Bluppo eagerly slips into his scuba gear and begins a quest to collect all the fish needed to feed his grandfather and acquire his restaurant. The story is presented entirely by a short paragraph of text shown in at the beginning that serves as little more than a goofy context for the series of puzzles that follow.

Gameplay

The game is a simple, tile-based puzzler. Set underwater, you move Bluppo through a maze of boulders, seaweed, and barriers to try and collect all the fleeing fish on the stage. With only a limited supply of air, you have to collect all the fish and get to the exit before time runs out. The game includes 80 single player and 80 two-player levels of increasing difficulty and size. The physics of the game are simple—Bluppo moves freely in all directions and is unaffected by gravity. Boulders are scattered through out the stage and fall to the bottom unless held up by seaweed tiles. Bluppo can pass through open spaces as well as tiles with seaweed; however seaweed is destroyed as he moves through it. The fish Bluppo is seeking move very fast and flee from Bluppo and enemy fish. They cannot swim through seaweed or any other barriers, so they are often contained to small patches of clear spaces. A level is lost if Bluppo is killed or trapped or if too many fish are killed or unreachable. Bluppo can be killed by boulders which fall as Bluppo clears seaweed tiles beneath them. He also can be eaten by carnivorous fish. The challenge is to move throughout the maze collecting fish as quickly as possible without dying or letting fish get eaten or crushed. Fish cannot swim through seaweed, so the more seaweed Bluppo clears out, the more space he gives fish to swim around. Predators roam the stage chasing fish and Bluppo and dopey looking sturgeons move around trying to block Bluppo from moving. Other elements of the gameplay include bombs, which Bluppo can collect to kill enemy fish or blow holes in barriers, as well as chemical viles which turn enemy fish into collectable fish when they swim near them. The 2-player mode boasts the most challenging and fun gameplay. Players have to coordinate to solve puzzles and be extra careful not to open unwanted paths to fish. If one player dies the level must be restarted as both players are needed to complete a level.