Gribbly's Day Out Commodore 64 Andrew Braybrook 1985

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Gribbly's Day Out

Andrew Braybrook released Gribbly's Day Out for the Commodore 64 in July of 1985. An update with minor bugfixes was released in 1986. Published by Hewson Consultants, Gribbly's Day Out was designed, programmed and drawn by Andrew Braybrook, and composed by Steve Turner.

Gribbly's Day Out is a charming and technically gobsmacking puzzle-platform game. Indeed, in terms of design and technical prowess Gribbly's Day Out is a historically significant game and predates Creatures of 1990 by half a decade.

Gribbly's Day Out was famous in the U.K. and Europe by 1986 and had achieved cult status in 8-bit circles by 1987. Andrew Braybrook was widely regarded as one of the best C64 programmers in the world by 1985 and one of the best ST/Amiga programmers in the world by 1990.

Gribbly's Day Out features silky-smooth 50 or 60 Hz multi-directional variable rate screen-scrolling of playfields that feature a mix of hires and character screens. In addition, the controls are precise, the sprite-shifting is super-smooth and the Gribbly sprite features context-sensitive facial animations. As well, Gribbly's Day Out employs gravity and momentum physics.

In Gribbly's Day Out players control Gribbly Grobbly, a green Blabgorian blob-like creature with innate psionic powers. Gribbly is armless, one-footed, big-mouthed and bulging-eyed. Gribbly can hover in mid-air (levitation) and float about in eight directions, hop about on land and fire bubbles from his mouth at enemies. Note that Gribbly's Day Out of 1985 came out before Taito's Bubble Bobble coinop of 1986.

Gribbly's Day Out playfields consist of surface and subterranean landscapes shaped by platforms and obstructed by psionic webs. The object of Gribbly's Day Out is to navigate the levels and herd a number of Blabgorian Gribblets to safe ledges. The Gribblets need to be found, picked up and transported to safety before Seon's mundane minions mutate and carry them off, but Gribbly can release an already-captured Gribblet by firing a bubble at the minion carrying the Gribblet. Often, the safe ledges need to be found as well. Six to eight Gribblets can be saved in each of 16 levels. The route between Gribblet and safe ledge is blocked by triangular clusters of psi web and Seon's minions. Luckily, sections of the psi web can be toggled by Gribbly via switches. Level progression is dependent on the number of Gribblets saved. It is Game Over when Gribbly's psi bank is depleted.

Gribbly's psi power is drained when he collides with sections of the landscape or psi web. In addition, colliding with objects or actors drains psi.

Gribbly's Day Out allies include Psi Grubs that increase psi energy when collected, and the Gribblets that need to be saved. Gribbly's Day Out enemies include the Chrysalis, Green Topsy, Stomper, Seed Pod, Seon (black crab-like creature) and Winged Creature.

Note that Andrew Braybrook also developed Paradroid of 1985 and Uridium of 1986 (two GOAT games) and ported Rainbow Islands to ST/Amiga in 1990 (cf. GOAT ports).

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