In the UK, 'the Blob' has recently become a term of abuse used by right-wing politicians to refer to civil servants and 'the Establishment' who they accuse of trying to frustrate their policy agenda. No matter that those same politicians are themselves currently very much at the core of that Establishment. The derogatory references to 'The Blob' by the right has therefore simultaneously become a cause of mockery and derision from those on the left. None of this has anything whatsoever to do with this party game from WizKids but we mention it only because the name of the game triggered this 'Blob' word association when members of the Board's Eye View team first played the game.
And word association is what Blob Party is all about. Designed by Pam Walls, it's a cooperative game for 4-8 players. If you've played Just One (Repos Production) then you'll be familiar with the idea of players writing down a word that they associate with the word on the card. In Just One, one player has to guess the word on the card from the clues given by all the other players, except that the clues must all be unique - if two or more players give the same clue, then their clues are eliminated and unavailable to the player who is guessing. The requirement therefore in Just One is that players' word association clues must all be different. Blob Party requires the exact opposite: think of it as Just One in reverse...
In Blob Party, there's a category card and a word card. These are generated from their separate decks. There's no guesser: players all respond to the category and word by writing on their individual dry-wipe boards a word that they associate with the category and word. Rather than unique responses, players are trying to get on the same wavelength as each other.
Players all start with a small Blob of soft modelling compound: if it's not actually Play-Doh, it's very similar. The game comes with a google-eye piece for each player colour and you can use that to decorate your Blob. When two or more players have written down the same word, they join their Blobs together and continue from then on to play as a team, agreeing between themselves the word they will write. The game ends when all the players are united in a single Blob, and players want to try to achieve that in as few a rounds as possible.
We've enjoyed Blob Party most at higher player counts (6+). You'll often find that players end up grouped in two or more united Blobs but it can then take two or three more rounds before the two 'teams' coincide with the same word. That can be frustrating for some, but if you're prone to such annoyance at least you have the Play-Doh Blob to fidget with. Blob Party is a light party game and even with a full complement of eight players it's unlikely to run for more than around 10 minutes. It hasn't replaced Just One as our 'go to' filler-length word game but it's great to have it on hand to play by way of variation on the theme.