BLOBBO/docs/IDEA.md

# 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.