Gobliiins

The Gobliiins series consists of four puzzle adventure games developed and released by Coktel Vision (and later Sierra On-Line) for the Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Macintosh (and later iOS and Windows) platforms. The first three titles were released in the early 1990s, the fourth in 2009.

The games mix elements of adventure and puzzle gaming. In essence, the player must find the solution to each area (or level), consisting of one or more screens, in order to progress to the next. An original aspect of the series is that the player usually controls multiple goblins as player characters, each of whom has a unique set of abilities (the number of letter i's in the word 'Goblin' of the title indicates the number of characters that the player may control). The player may only control one character at a time but, depending on the specific scene, may switch characters at will. The original Gobliiins features a shared health system for all three characters, which meant that leaving characters in the wrong place could be detrimental, though this feature is not implemented in the sequels.

All games are available in CD format. The first three include voices instead of the 'goblinish' talk that featured on the floppy disk versions. The CD version also censors the nudity featured in the original game.

In Gobliiins the player controls a team of three different goblins each with a unique skill. The first goblin, Asgard (BoBo in the US release), is a warrior who is more brawn than brain, and whose skill is punching, causing various things to break or fall over. He is also the only one who can climb other objects than stairs and ladders. The second goblin, Ignatius (US: Hooter), is a magician who can 'zap' things with magic with a wide variety of usually unexpected effects, which include objects moving, growing, or coming alive. The third, Oups (US: Dwayne), is a technician and is the only one of the three that can pick up and use items.

The story follows the three goblins as they attempt to aid their king, who has gone insane under mysterious circumstances. They meet with the wizard Niak, who informs them he can cure the king's madness if they bring him three items. However, upon obtaining the items, Niak is revealed to be the one behind the king's insanity and he manipulated the goblins into performing his bidding. The goblins manage to escape from Niak's lair, save the king by destroying the voodoo doll used to drive him insane, and defeat Niak while he is creating deadly potions.

The game is linear and consists of 22 levels, each of which occupies a single screen. The puzzles on each level must be successfully solved in order to progress to the next. Several actions may harm the goblin involved, including leaving them in an unsafe place, using incorrect items, or interacting with items with the wrong characters, thus reducing their shared life meter. When the meter runs out, the game ends in defeat (though all levels can be completed without loss of life).