Gobliiins

aka: Gobliiins 1, Goblins, Gobliny
Moby ID: 1154
DOS Specs

Description official descriptions

Gobliiins is a puzzle game with adventure elements, in which the player controls a team of three goblins: Oups, Ignatius and Asgard (Hooter, Dwayne, and BoBo in the US release) to find four magic components. A voodoo doll has turned their king Angoulafre mad and by collecting the components they can track down Niak the Wizard, the only one who can make things right. The player needs to solve various puzzles by combining the different skills of the three goblins. It's possible to switch between them and control them separately. Most of the puzzles are based on coordinated actions. One of the goblins can cast powerful but erratic spells, another can collect and use objects, and the last can hit things. Action icons are activated at the bottom of the screen. The game takes place in 22 stages, each of which has puzzles that must be solved in order to advance. The characters have limited energy, which can be sapped by traps.

Spellings

  • 頑皮小精靈 - Chinese spelling (traditional)

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Credits (DOS version)

15 People (14 developers, 1 thanks)

Sound Effects
Original Concept
Graphics / Artwork
Programming
Program Manager
Special Thanks To
Music
International Project Manager
Product Manager
Documentation
Quality Assurance
Cover Art
Documentation Design

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 73% (based on 35 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 73 ratings with 2 reviews)

A landmark in computer gaming.

The Good
Practically everything, starting with the wonderful graphics, good interface and positively awesome sound engine (speech on the PC speaker... wish there were more of those...)

With the ridiculous plot and gameplay that make Gobliins what it is, nothing is really wrong with this game.

The Bad
Some of the riddles are a bit annoying at times, and the game is otherwise too darn easy.

The Bottom Line
A really neat game, super-original with no equal in that department.

DOS · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2000

The French know how to create great games, especially involving Goblins.

The Good
Coktel Vision intended to make a spelling mistake in the game's title, and anyone who has played the game will see why it has three I's. Gobliiins is an usual adventure game with puzzle elements, but it also has a fair dose of comedy.

The game starts off with an excellent introduction that made me laugh the first time I watched it. The king is enjoying a peaceful lunch with his family, and everyone is behaving as if they are pigs. Suddenly, someone who has a grudge against him uses a voodoo doll to attack him in so many creative ways. There are separate intros for the CD and Disk versions of the game; and I like the Disk version's more. But I like in the CD version how everything is high-res. Gobliiins is a family game, so there is no blood or gore.

Unlike many adventure games that I played, this is the first one that features three protagonists. The heroes in this game are all Goblins (whose names differ from the US and European releases), each one of them blessed with a certain ability that the others don't have. For example, the bearded one can cast spells while the one in the red hat can pick up objects and use them. There are twenty-two landscapes in the game. Each Goblin has do their bit around the landscapes, and a certain number of tasks are required to proceed to the next one.

The game gives out passwords that can be used to start at a particular landscape, and this is great because it saves you from restarting from landscape one. The passwords consist of seven letters, and they are structured in such a way that most of them could be words that can be pronounced. There are separate versions for the US and Europe, but I don't think the passwords are different between these.

Gobliiins is supposed to be a humorous game, and there is nothing wrong with trying out certain things just to see what happens. Try to walk past a monster and it will frighten the Goblin was under your control. What's even more humorous is the other goblins that curse at you for making a mistake. There is a long, horizontal bar near the bottom of the screen, that decreases every time a goblin is hurt or gets scared. Once that bar runs out, you have to restart the scene, so it's best not to go over the top.

The landscapes look wonderful, especially the second, fourteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth ones. Every foreground object is well designed, and the animations of the goblins and the other character is superb. As I said earlier, the intro in the CD version is beautifully designed, and the table featured is laid out nicely. There are occasional cut-scenes and these help build up the climax.

The sound effects are excellent, adding that comical effect to the game and blending in with what you are doing. There is actual background music in the CD version instead of nothing, and most of the music is relaxing and reflect the landscape you're in. Coktel was one of the few companies that actually managed to make the PC Speaker sounds more like Sound Blaster than beeps and squeaks, So, anyone who didn't have a SB at the time could hear what it sounded like through the Speaker. Really impressive.

The Bad
There are four special items you need to collect during the game. Once you get one of them, you hear an annoying mixture of short and long beeps that seem to get worse the more items you get.

The Bottom Line
I believe that Gobliiins is the very first game to feature more than one protagonist, and it is an excellent adventure game with puzzle-solving elements. The highlight is trying different things that produce funny responses but at the risk of depleting your energy bar. The landscapes are wonderful, and the graphics and sound is great. There are versions for both disk and CD, so take your pick!

DOS · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2014

Discussion

Subject By Date
Censored in later versions. Edwin Drost (9295) Jan 24, 2017
Screenshot captions lacking...everything? DJP Mom (11333) Jun 6, 2007

Trivia

False Windows release

A SoftKey release of Gobliiins on CD-ROM marks it as a product for Windows (the spine and back of the jewel case read "Gobliiins For Windows"), but the contents of the disc are pure MS-DOS.

Awards

  • ST Format
    • January 1993 (issue #42) - #33 in '50 finest Atari ST games of all time' list

Music Credit Error

: While the European boxes said "Music and SFX : Moby (Frédéric Motte)", actually there is no music in the floppy (1991/1992) releases of Gobliiins (except in the Macintosh version). Moby wrote music for the game during the developement , but it was not used in the release version, despite the boxes and manuals credited him for 'Music and Sound Effects'. Some musics written for and not used in Gobliiins were eventually used in Once Upon a Time: Baba Yaga. Moby created the games SFX and the gobliiins unarticulated 'language', but there is no music in the game in almost all of the floppy releases.

Charles Callet wrote music for the PC CD-ROM (1993) release of the game which includes dubbing and music.

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Related Sites +

  • Gobliins CD Patch Download
    Sound Fix available from The Patches Scrolls
  • Hints for solving Gobliins
    If you're stuck while playing this game, these hints will nudge you along and help you solve it.
  • ScummVM
    Get "Gobliiins", as well as many other adventure games, to run on modern systems by using ScummVM, a legal and free program.
  • Walkthrough
    Henning Koch's step by step solution

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1154
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Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Derrick 'Knight' Steele.

Amiga added by POMAH. Blacknut added by Sciere. Atari ST added by Terok Nor. Macintosh added by Игги Друге. iPhone added by Ben K.

Additional contributors: MAT, paw2612, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Apogee IV, jlebel, Paulus18950, Barbarian_bros, Jo ST, RetroArchives.fr.

Game added March 26, 2000. Last modified January 21, 2024.