# GLOBBO — paint-buff blob racing *Captured 2026-07-17. Raw idea, pre-design.* ## Elevator pitch Fall Guys × Splatoon. Friendly white blobby dudes (Michelin-man-ish, fewer rolls) race a giant absurd Rube-Goldberg obstacle course. Paint cannons along the course spray colour; whatever sticks to you matters — **your relative % coverage of each colour is your buff/skill loadout**. The course paints you, and being painted changes how you play the course. ## Core mechanic — paint as loadout - 7 primary colours, each mapped to a buff/effect (e.g. mostly-red = on fire / speed burn, blue = ?, green = ?, etc.) - Buffs scale with (or unlock at) **relative % of total coverage** — probably a minimum threshold so trace splatter doesn't flicker buffs on/off. - **Secondary blends**: adjacent colours mix (red+yellow zones on your body, or overall ratio ≈ orange) → way more permutations than 7. Mastery = deliberately building a blend, not just grabbing one colour. - Course gives repeated chances at each colour → routing decisions: detour for the paint you want vs. straight line. ## Counterplay / paint economy - **Detergent bubbles** on course: cleanse (full or partial?) — reset a bad mix. - **Bumping other players smudges paint off/onto each other** — contact matters, griefers can wipe your carefully built loadout, or you can steal/share colour. - Open Q: does smudging transfer colour (I take some of yours) or just remove? Transfer is funnier and more strategic. ## Tone / physics - Gravity-heavy, Rube-Goldberg-esque, out-of-scale props (comically huge and tiny things) — absurd and funny, not sweaty. - Blob physics: soft-body wobble is half the comedy (see Fall Guys, Gang Beasts, Human Fall Flat). ## Course as machine (the extra Rube Goldberg twist) - **Players are the marbles**: contraptions are triggered by blobs, not timers. See-saw → boot → bucket → conveyor → paint dump on the tunnel below. Everyone upstream is constantly (accidentally or deliberately) rigging the course for everyone downstream. - **Paint = weight**: coverage adds mass. Heavy blobs sink pressure plates and tip see-saws but wobble slower / launch shorter. Merges the paint system and the contraption system into one — route for colour *and* for mass, and detergent bubbles become tactical weight-drops, not just buff-resets. - **Colour-keyed machinery**: some mechanisms only respond to a blob of their colour (mostly-green blob turns the green valve → shortcut opens for them and anyone tailgating). Emergent temporary alliances, no UI. - **The course remembers**: triggered contraptions stay tripped / reset slowly; sprayed paint lingers on surfaces as slip/grip zones (Splatoon-style). The back of the pack races a messier course than the leaders — chaos as natural rubber-banding. - **Readability rule**: every chain reaction telegraphs for ~0.5s (winding gears, teetering buckets) so getting flattened reads as funny/earned, never random. Random deaths are what make ragdoll racers rage-inducing. ## Scale play (environment scale as a mechanic, not just art) - **Scale zones**: shrink sections where you race *inside* the machine (marble runs, domino chains, between gears); giant sections where you stomp over a model town and the tiny racers dodge your footsteps. - **A colour controls size** (e.g. purple = grow, pink = shrink) — plugs into weight/contraption systems: big = heavy, triggers plates, blocks paths, easy paint target; small = light, pipe shortcuts, hard to hit, flung far. - **Paint stretches with you**: growing dilutes coverage % (surface area up, paint spread thin, maybe flakes off for others to grab); shrinking concentrates it. Size trades directly against your buff loadout. - **Players as course furniture**: a giant blob is a platform/obstacle/ counterweight for tiny blobs — the machine incorporates the players. - Prior art: Superliminal (perspective scale tricks), Katamari (scale escalation), Grounded (tiny-scale traversal). ## Physics zones & surfaces (everything is goo/viscosity) - **Gravity switches**: contraption outputs, not fixed — a lever flips gravity for a zone. Heavy painted blobs slam to the new floor, light clean blobs drift. Ceiling-running through upside-down oversized rooms. - **Underwater**: buoyancy = inverse weight. Clean blobs float across the top (fast lane), paint-heavy blobs sink (slow lane, better pickups?). Water slowly rinses paint — underwater shortcuts cost loadout. - **Zero-g / space**: momentum pinball; paint floats as wobbly globs in the air — fly through one to wear it. Mid-air coating unique to zero-g. - **Honey**: slow but sticky = climb walls/ceilings. Traversal tool. - **Oil**: fast, no steering, luge. Fire-buff blob crossing oil ignites a trail behind them — emergent trap-laying. - **Mud = anti-paint**: coats you brown, masks colours, suppresses buffs until washed off. The debuff you wear; makes water sections double-edged. - Theme glue: players are goo, environment fights back with other goo. One coherent viscosity playground, not a gimmick grab-bag. ## Open questions - Buff table for the 7 primaries + which blends do what. - Threshold model: min % to activate? dominant-colour-only? top-2 blend? - Is 100% one colour a super-state ("all red = on fire") with a downside (visible, targetable, one bubble ruins you)? - Player count / real-time netcode (Fall Guys did 60; soft-body + paint sim + 50 players online is the hard engineering problem). - Does paint also affect the *course* (Splatoon-style ink on surfaces = grip / slip zones) or only the player? - Anti-cheat from day one — cheating is literally what soured Fall Guys. ## Prior art - **Fall Guys** — the racing/format template (the game John couldn't name). - **Splatoon** — paint identity, coverage %, but coverage is territory not self. - **Micro Machines / Re-Volt / Toy Commander** — out-of-scale courses: tiny racers in giant everyday environments (breakfast tables, supermarkets, a whole house). The scale-absurdity tone reference. - (Not these but adjacent: Army Men, Toy Soldiers — toy-scale combat, not racing.) - Key novelty: coverage is measured **on your own body** and is your skill kit.