Gobliiins

Gobliiins is an Adventure/PuzzleGame developed by Coktel Vision and originally released in 1991. It spawned two sequels: Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon and Goblins 3 (aka Goblin's Quest 3). A third sequel, Gobliiins 4, was released in 2009

The first game is about three goblins (who are more like pixies or gnomes than your typical goblin), Dwayne, Hooter and Bobo who are respectively a technician (sometimes called a "thief" by modern fans), a wizard and a warrior. They are charged with finding a cure for their King, Angoulafre, who has become insane.

Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon is about two different goblins, Fingus (who looks the most human) and Winkle (who is purple and has a pterodactyl-like head) who have to find King Angoulafre's son who has been abducted by Amoniak, a demon lord.

Goblins 3 is about just one goblin, Blount (though the player usually controls both Blount and a sidekick character), a news reporter who investigates a conflict between two kingdoms over a giant maze.

Gobliiins 4 returns to the concept of Power Trio. The story is about the Detective Tchoup and his two buddies, Stucco, and Perluis, who are hired by King Balderon VIII to find his missing favorite pet, an aardvark named Riri.

The number of "i"s in the titles are the same as the number of goblin characters played.

Gameplay revolves around trying to figure out correct sequences of actions. In other words, you must perform action A on one screen object with one of the characters, then quickly switch to another character to perform action B at another location, and so on until the desired result is accomplished. Given the fantastical and downright bizarre nature of the world the Goblins live in, some puzzles require thinking outside the box, and may result in Guide Dang It.

The original game complicated matters with a "health meter" that decreases each time a sufficiently bad mistake is made. This was dropped in later games, since experimentation can sometimes be the only way to figure out the correct action sequence.

Not to be confused with the webcomic.

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Tropes used in Gobliiins include:

• Acid Trip Dimension: Gobliins 2 has two settings that are this even compared to the rest of the game.
• Anachronism Stew: The games take place in a vaguely Medieval-European setting, but there are many more-or-less intentional anachronisms, such as a handgun, basketball playing and scuba-diving.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Blount and Wynnona are meant for each other. How can you tell? Well, they somehow have the exact color of clothing...
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Last stage of Gobliiins 4.
• Big Eater: In Gobliins 2 some tasks can only be completed using Fingus - because Winkle will eat the necessary items.
• Big Red Button: There is one in the cave prison where the Gobliiins get stuck. Obviously, it must not be pressed.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Prince Buffoon becomes like this for a moment after climbing down the beanstalk.
• Clock Tower: In Gobliins 2 is a tree with many clocks and houses. The biggest clock makes a tick-tock sound that displeases Tom the clockmaker, and the heroes have to "replace it with a melody".
• Crystal Ball: Blount meets a female warrior called Korin who has a crystal ball as the hilt of her sword. When Blount looks inside, he sees Princess Winona trying to recover her father's Maze key from Fourbalus.
• Dating Catwoman: Xina and Bodd marry at the end of Goblins 3.
• Dance Party Ending: Gobliiins 4, a concert, actually.
• Dem Bones: The Gobliiins find a hostile animated skeleton in Sorcerer Niak's mansion and a more peaceful one inside the cave prison.
• Demonic Possession: Prince Buffoon gets possessed by a demon when the Gobliins return to the village.
• Dream Land: Twice in Gobliins 2 do the protagonists have to eat some kind of hallucinatory mushroom and enter a colorful dream level.
  • One level in Goblins 3 involves waking Blount up after he is left unconscious after an attack.
• Eek! A Mouse!: One of the puzzles in Goblins 3 consists of putting a rat in front of a Queen in a chess game to scare her off.
• Everything's Better with Chickens: A chicken appears in Gobliins 2. If Fingus tries to mess with it, it will bite them with its teeth.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: In Gobliiins... Ooh, boy. Too many examples to tell.
• Everything's Even Worse with Sharks: Subverted. The Gobliiins ride a friendly shark in the end of the game to fight the Big Bad.
• Evil Overlord: Amoniak from Gobliins 2.
• Floating Platforms: Justified for the dream sequences, but there is a floating platform near the end of Gobliins 2 that is referred as "!!!".
• Fearless Fool: Winkle in Gobliins 2, meaning he can complete some tasks Fingus is too shy or prudent to do.
• Fridge Logic: Why do the Gobliiins have different names in the fourth game?
• Game Breaking Bug: The Save feature in the Goblins series is questionable at best. Giving Goblins 3 (Amiga) the incorrect disk during a disc select will bring the game to a complete crashing halt.
• Giant Spider: A screen-stage in Gobliiins contains three different giant spiders.
• God Save Us From the Queen: Queen Xina in Goblins 3. Of course, she is just as mean as her enemy, King Bodd, but we see more of the violence of her soldiers.
• Good Hurts Evil: Amoniak is apparently so evil that drinking Kindness Elixir sends him to the Land of the Dead instead of turning him "nice" like his two henchmen.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Amoniak's guards are mostly just sleeping around.
  • Bodd's men are not any better. Even though they aren't asleep, they have no problem shaking a fake hand with a stranger. Two of them don't even know how to defend themselves or raise an alarm when the said stranger is going to put them off with a golf club.
• Guide Dang It: Oh boy, where do we start...?
• Hollywood Voodoo: King Angoulafre is insane because he is being tortured with a voodoo doll (this is not a spoiler, as it is shown in the game's introduction).
• I Can't Reach It: Several times could the goblins just jump and/or stretch their arms to pick up objects lying just a few centimers away from them... but this doesn't always work. Especially when in the first game, Dwayne can only pick up items that are right under him on the ground. Made worse in the second game, where, often for no reason, the heroes will inexplicably shake their heads and fingers by saying "No, no" when attempting to do some actions.
  • In Goblins 3, Blount and most sidekicks reply "No, I cannot reach it directly". Frustrating when said location can be reached indirectly, through a point-to-point same screen door.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: In Gobliins 2, a scientist is forced by Amoniak to make a shrinking ray and use it on King Domenic. The heroes then use the ray on themselves to be able to use a magic map. In Goblins 3, Blount and Chump are reduced to miniature size when recovering from their giant size as they enter a city.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: The heroes cannot climb. One of the worst cases is when Blount and Chump are turned into giants, they are still hindered by obstacles that should normally be no problem for them to pass. They could simply climb on the castle instead of using the giant mousetrap, and could simply reach out an arm to help Knight Bayar who is stucked behind a thorn patch.
• Intrepid Reporter: Blount in Goblins 3.
• Jack and the Beanstalk: When the Gobliins and Prince Buffoon are reduced in size, they have to use a magical bean seed in a magic map which makes a giant beanstalk grow out of it, allowing them to climb down and this leads them back to the village in the beginning.
• Jerkass: Winkle in Gobliins 2.
• Large and In Charge: Amoniak.
• Magitek: As the manual puts it, to go back home in Gobliins 2, you will need to join science and magic.
• Non Goblin Sidekick: Chump the parrot and Fulbert the snake.
• Talking Animal
  • Aliens Speaking English
• The Load: The Prince Buffoon, in Gobliins 2.
• Love At First Sight: Blount meeting Wynnona.
• The Odd Couple: Fingus and Winkle.
• Oddly-Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Removing an "i" for the second and third installments to make it the same number as the goblin protagonists, and yet naming the fourth installment Gobliiins 4.
  • Although this is justified as Gobliiins 4 returns to the original line up of having the 3 goblins as the protagonists.
    • And Goblns 4 wouldn't have been very entertaining.
• One-Winged Angel: Niak's three different forms when the Gobliiins fight him in the end.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Gemellor, a two-headed dragon in Gobliins who lives underground, and a dragon in Goblins 3 who can be picked up as an object by Blount when he has become a giant.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The Gobliins meet a friendly blacksmith dwarf when they enter Amoniak's castle.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: Meliagante in the first game is huge and can block the gobliiins' path with just his finger, and two other giants appear in Gobliins 2. One just stays still and seems to be a statue, the other is an obstacle to the heroes and he can punch them out even when asleep. And in Goblins 3, Blount and Chump drink a potion that turn them into even bigger giants. They become extremely tiny when entering a city, though. When Blount flies around above the clouds, there is a giant peeking his head behind a rock.
• Our Goblins Are Wickeder: They just look like small humans with pointy ears, or are purple-skinned and have heads like pterodactyles!
• Our Mermaids Are Different: They are green-skinned and literally have gems for eyes!
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Carbonek in Gobliiins is a novelist who writes depressive stories for Meliagante since he had become a werewolf. Making him laugh enough will turn him back to a human and write humorous stories.
  • And Blount temporaly becomes one.
• Pirate Parrot: Chump the parrot in Goblins 3. Not really a pirate one, but it is dressed up as a sailor and is found on a ship.
• Power Trio: Gobliiins 1 & 4
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Subverted with Fulbert the snake in Goblins 3, a friendly reptile who becomes a sidekick to Blount.
• Rock Me, Asmodeus: Last level of Goblins 3, there is a devil with an electric guitar and an amp.
• The Reveal: Blount is Prince Buffon from the prequel.
• Spiritual Successor: Woodruff And The Schnibble Of Azimuth, also featuring art and character design by Pierre Gilhodes.
• Swiss Army Tears: Meliagante's tears of laughter in Gobliiins are needed to destroy a monster that is hiding inside his castle.
• Those Two Bad Guys: Glotziok and Oumpkapok, Amoniak's two main henchmen.
• Toothy Bird: The chicken.
• Three Amigos: Dwayne, Hooter and Bobo in the original Gobliiins.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Amoniak only eats ladybugs and his henchmen Glotziok and Oumkapok eat cockroaches and "gloubagoulbi" balls, respectively (the latter is a French cultural in-joke, based on the "gloubigoulba" balls that are the trademark favorite food of Casimir the Dinosaur, a children French TV icon from the late 70's).
• Ugly Cute: Everybody.
• Water Is Air: When the Gobliins get in the underwater stage, they never swim and they keep walking on the floor.
• Winged Humanoid: Blount can turn into one by drinking a special elixir.
• Wolf Man: Blount gets turned into a werewolf after his encounter with King Bodd.