Game Thoughts: Completing My Oobledex
When I want to turn off my brain, one of my favorite activities is settling into bed or posting up at my desk to play a mellow, cozy sim game. Animal Crossing: New Horizons kept me sane during the first year of the pandemic and the newly-released Mail Time was a balm when it hit Steam. Disney Dreamlight Valley gives me the serotonin of farming, decorating, and completing small quests, and it also gives me the ability to hang out with characters like Wall-E and Stitch, which sort of scratches the itch to visit a Disney park.
And then there’s Ooblets, which I love for its mechanics and its bizarre, titular creatures.
When Ooblets was released last fall, I played it obsessively until I reached the mini-game requirement in one of its towns, then put it down. I didn’t have the patience to try and get the scores I needed to advance the story, nor did I have the wherewithal to resource grind until I could pay the fee to get out of the mini-game challenge. In March, I jumped back into the game with a renewed sense of purpose and have since become obsessed with completing my Oobledex (which isn’t an official game term, just one I’ve been using to refer to my collection of weird little creatures).
In Ooblets, you collect creatures by beating them in dance battles, collecting seeds, then growing them on your farm. Battles are card-based, and every Ooblet has its own set of special moves. There are multiple Ooblets to collect in each town, and each one has three colorways: common, uncommon, and gleamy. Gleamy Ooblets literally sparkle, and they’re most often the prettiest color of each type. I’ve collected the majority of Ooblets in every color, but a few Gleamies continue to evade me. To be honest, completing my Oobledex feels like a lower stakes, less intense version of completing a Pokédex.
It also feels like something I can accomplish even when I’m feeling particularly unwell or exhausted or sore. There’s a repetition to initiating dance battles, collecting resources, purchasing one-time use cards to make random Gleamies appear wherever I am, then going to sleep in my adorable in-game house and doing it all over again the next morning.
Given how unstable many parts of my life have become as I’ve learned how to deal with being chronically ill and disabled, the reliability of a cozy, creature-filled game in which I can explore new areas, meet and befriend NPCs, and shake up my “follow babies” to level up various Ooblets helps keep me on track. When my life lacks inertia, it’s easy for me to fall into depressive episodes that can be difficult to claw my way out of—but completing tasks large or small in cozy games like this at least gives me some sense of purpose, which often makes it easier to show up for myself and my loved ones in real life.
Ooblets has a linear storyline that you can finish as fast or as slow as you want, and then you can keep playing even after the story concludes. After arriving in Badgetown, where everyone has at least one Ooblet who travels everywhere with them, you discover that the town has been locked out of the Ooblet network (Oobnet) and in order to restore service, you’ll have to do dance battles in several other towns and turn on the Oobnet towers in each before returning to Badgetown to restore the tower there. The mayor of Badgetown is worried about how the Ooblet High Council is acting, and everyone is being affected by the Oobnet going down. As you progress, you meet more NPCs and more Ooblets, and you discover what’s really going on with the Ooblet High Council and the Oobnet towers.
The story itself is genuinely delightful, and it’s simple enough that you can leave the game and come back to it without feeling too lost. Likewise, the actual game mechanics are easy to learn (or re-learn), and once you figure out your preferred routine (much like in Stardew Valley), you can accomplish a lot on any given in-game day.
Beyond the actual story, I find a ton of joy in completing daily goals, exploring towns to find hidden treasures, and organizing my farm for maximum Ooblet housing. It’s a really lovely game that feels full despite having a relatively short story, and each time I open it I experience the same warm, cozy feeling as when I first started playing. Once I complete my Oobledex, I might even start a new playthrough and do it all over again.
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