Noby Noby Boy

Noby Noby Boy is the latest creation from surrealist game designer Keita Takahashi the brains behind the Katamari Damacy series of games. Noby Noby Boy is impossible to pigeonhole into one gaming genre or another.  It has the artistic feel of the Katamari Damacy games but with no apparent purpose or goals.  You have the overwhelming feeling that you have been transported into the mind of a toddler.  Everything is about discovery and simple unbridled fun.

In Noby Noby you control Boy, a strange pink Play-doh® like creature who can be stretched, moulded and bent into as many shapes as is physically possible.  You control Boy’s front and rear ends independently; each end corresponds to a separate analogue stick.  Move Boy’s ends away from each other in a pulling motion see him stretch like dough to the point of separating, but at that moment of breaking Boy stretches into a multi-coloured worm.  The more you pull the longer and more colourful he becomes, Boy will become longer and longer to the point of becoming too long to be accommodated in the level.

In spite of Boy’s worm like appearance he has the ability to fly by pressing the triggers repeatedly; OK flying may be pushing it.  It is more like the actions of a small child taking their first few strokes as they learn to swim.  Boy’s little legs flap hysterically as his body twists, flops and tangles.  If you look closely enough you can see his little head swings to-and-fro as if to get a little more propulsion.

Boy inhabits randomly created maps.  Each map is populated by various static objects such as trees, factory buildings with smokestacks and Egyptian pyramids.  While the residents of the maps are bizarre, children riding chickens, unicycling devils and giant frogs are just some of the residents.  The residents are fully intractable.  Chase and attempt to devourer people and they will run away in terror, whereas if you twist and turn your Boy through hoops around trees and over houses they will gather in a crowd to see what he’s doing.  If you’re lucky the residents will jump on Boy or go for a ride on his back.

All the objects within the world are just there to be played with.  Topple buildings, get tangled up in windmills and uproot trees.  The more enthusiastic your activity the longer Boy becomes, the extra length makes boy more ungainly and unpredictable to control.  But you must watch out for residents in vehicles as they have the ability to slice Boy in two like the proverbial gardeners spade.  Separation of Boy leads to the comical notion of having to eat himself to become whole.

Aside from moving Boy through the use of the analogue sticks, Boy has the ability to consume most objects.  Pressing the left trigger makes Boy eat object that are in front of him, swallowing the object whole like a multicoloured boa constrictor and just like a boa the object bulges and wriggles as it makes its way along the tangled body.  But what goes in must come out and come out they do.  Holding down the right trigger makes Boy evacuate himself with comic effect.  Objects are sent flying skywards with ferocious effects and the right amount of immature sound effects.
For the most part the camera is locked onto Boy’s midriff.  The screen can be rotated through 360 degrees with use of the shoulder buttons, zoomed in and out by holding L1 and tilting the controller into or away from the screen and rolled head over heal by holding L1 and L2 and the same tilting actions.  Screen controls are adequate but on occasions it is easy to become disorientated with overly sensitive and fiddly Sixaxis controls, but after about an short time it becomes second nature.

And that is pretty much it.  There are no boss fights, goals or even a real purpose.  There is no work.  There is only childlike fun.

The lack of objectives and goals may seem like you are just wasting time.  But like an infant playing with a cardboard Box Noby Noby Boy is about imagination, creativity and discovery.  You will find yourself trying to round up all the residents of the map, enclosing them in a pen made from your multicoloured body or wind your Boy around a cloud or create a bridge from tree to tree.  Noby Noby Boy is the ultimate children’s toy box, full of farm yard animals and sports cars; your only limitation is your imagination.

I suppose it is somewhat wrong in saying there are no goals, Noby Noby Boy is a communal gaming experience.  An experience not in the usual way of competition, rivalry, death and destruction but being one driving force aiming for the stars.  When each player grows their Boy that size is combined with every other player and totalled into the length of Girl.  Now this is something that you normally only hear on the school playground; to make Girl grow you need to tell her the size of your Boy.  To do this you need to talk to the sun.  As is the way in this game the sun isn’t your typical yellow dwarf at the centre of the solar system, no; it’s a giant anthropomorphic lion that is observing your activities through the hole in the ozone layer.

As Girl grows she ventures further and further into the solar system, the further she goes the more random themed maps become available.  Game designer Keita Takahashi reckoned it would take players a couple of weeks to reach the moon, when in fact it only took four days. However reaching Mars will take considerably longer. Girl isn’t just an indicator of how far the Noby Noby community has travelled she also acts as a leader board ranking each player in a number of areas.

Noby Noby Boy fully supports Trophies.  Thirteen can be collected by doing various actions or causing certain events to trigger.  All trophies are mysteries with no description, you can discover the actions which unlock the trophies with one quick internet search.  But with such a sandboxed styled game I would recommend just having fun and the trophies will be awarded during natural un-spoilt game play.  Slickly integrated YouTube and screenshot facilities round off this joyous adventure.

At times, you find yourself smiling incredulously at the shameless glee the game induces.  Depending on your viewpoint Noby Noby Boy is either one of the greatest games of all time from a gaming visionary or this is a global social study orchestrated by Bandai Namco to see if people will pay for a game with no actual point.

Noby Noby Boy may be totally pointless yet it is fantastically brilliant.

Mark Craven