Teenage Blob is a rush of music and oddball challenges

3 years 8 months ago

There is so much energy in Teenage Blob that even the on-screen text seems to shake and shudder and tremble. Why wouldn't it? This is such a weird and brilliant project - half EP, half mini-game collection. The Superweaks (a band) recorded six new songs. Team Lazerbeam (a development team) made six new games. Then everything got flung together in a sketchy celebration of punk and the brilliant/terrible lost years between 16 and 19. Rotten jobs. Gigs. Set lists. The energy of it!

In a way it strikes me as a game/album about the similarities between games and albums. I'm guessing music gets pretty hard to pick apart in the studio - hard to know where an idea comes from and who exactly did what. There's a similar hectic sketchiness to the games here, a sense that loads of stuff was thrown in and the muddle sorts itself out only when you're playing.

There's a throughline - you're off to buy some new shoes and make it to a gig - but it's the thinnest of threads. Instead this is just a wonderful mass of chaos to mash through in half an hour, and emerge blinking on the other side.

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