Cobalt & Its Slow-Mo Rolls

Cobalt Launch Trailer. Taken from YouTube.

While Mojang Studios worked on multiple versions of Minecraft & Scrolls/Caller's Bane, they've decided to take on another project. This one would be different as Mojang would serve only as co-developer and publisher of the game. Company's blocky success opened up many opportunities, including the ability to publisher games from other developers. In an interview to GamesIndustry, Daniel "Kappische" Kaplan talked about Mojang's plan to support fellow independent developers while expessing company's hope to "have something out this fall at least". That is, fall of 2011.

Cobalt was announced a few months later, but it would take a while before it gets a proper release. In fact, the story of this curious platformer created by Oxeye Game Studio turned out to be way longer and interesting than I anticipated. What you might consider a second obscure project from Mojang Studios actually had a major impact not only on the company, but even Minecraft itself. And that's probably not the only surprise that's instored for some of you.

Blueface's Journey.

It all started before Minecraft, in a certain way. Platformer Blueface was a simple project from Daniel "Thewreck" Brynolf that he decided to share with the world via The Daily Click at the beginning of May 2004. It was more of a concept that definitely had something going for it, which can be evident at least by the positive comments from site's users. A few years later, the latest comment on Blueface's page was made by Jens "Jeb" Bergensten:

"I love this game! Managed to beat it with only 5 lives. Posting to add rating!"

Two of them later were joined by Pontus "Kinten" Hammarberg (or rather, Kinten and Thewreck discovered one of Jeb's project at the time) and they formed Oxeye Game Studios. It took them a few years and working on other games to announce Project B on December 1, 2009. This was the beginning of Cobalt. Oxeye Game Studios presented this project at No More Sweden in July 2010. A couple of days before Cobalt got its current name with proper announcement, Jeb officially joined Mojang Studios and started working on Minecraft.

Since Cobalt was developed mainly by Thewreck & Kinten, no harm was done to Oxeye Game Studios' team. In fact, Jeb was still involved with two parties and this position resulted in collaboration with Mojang Studios as their first experimental attempt at helping out different team with their development endeavors. Similarly to other Mojang titles, Cobalt went through both Alpha & Beta testing with active updates from Oxeye Game Studios. Fatshark joined the party to help out Xbox 360 and Xbox One ports. When Microsoft purchased Mojang, Oxeye Game Studios informed their community that there's nothing to worry about when it comes to Cobalt. The game was finally released on aforementioned consoles and Windows on Steam on February 2, 2016. Although Mac & Linux versions were promised, Cobalt won't get released on those operating systems. 

Rolling Through Modes.

While Oxeye Game Studios were more focused on multiplayer experience, Cobalt does offer single-player in a form of typical story mode that can also be played with another player. There's also a tutorial in case you need help with learning game's mechanics & controls. If you're really sure about your skills, there're three types of challenges (combat, speed and puzzle) to test them. As for the story, there's not much to talk about: you're playing as cybort Metalface MK-1 named Agent Cobalt on a mission to investigate the disappearance of people on planet Trunkopia. Narrative seem to be very tongue in cheek from Cobalt's description on Steam alone, and I'm not complaining: after all, that's not what players are interested in here.

Cobalt Cape.
Taken from Minecraft Wiki.

As for the multiplayer modes (that support up to 8 players), Cobalt has a lot of variety going for it. Deathmatch and Survival are pretty self-explanatory, so you can be sure that there's always an option to either fight other people in free-for-all or team sessions or take a start against hordes of enemies as players take various upgrate along the way. Plug Slam is Cobalt's way to combine classic Capture The Flag with... rugby? I'm not an expert in sports, but I feel like going with football or "american soccer" would be a mistake. There're several rounds and no respawns in each for Team Strike mode. Two teams of four players fight each other and victory decided by a number of wins. Oxeye Game Studios prepared 80 maps in total for all these modes, which should help you enjoy this game even more.

Similarly to Caller's Bane, there was a way for Cobalt players to earn a code for special Minecraft cape. Not only you could participate in Cobalt League tournament in 2016, but winners and participants of multiple level creation competitions managed to grab this reward... Oh yeah, that's right! Windows version of Cobalt includes level editor and Steam Workshop support, where dedicated players release new maps to this very day!

Moving with WASD.

So yeah, Cobalt is technically still alive. It wasn't abandoned after its release, as evident by title's Steam News Hub page. Not only there were updates with changes and bug fixes, but developers also encouraged community's creativity via aforementioned Cobalt Workshop Challenges. Most recent update to Cobalt was released on February 13, 2018, and it was pretty big one! All versions of the game are still available for everyone, but it's been like five years since Cobalt was last seen as a participant of Steam sales. You can check out the demo though.

If you're not willing (or able) to purchase Cobalt, there's another way. While the game seems pretty solid and interesting, it didn't meet the expectations of Oxeye Game Studios. There's a lot of customization in Cobalt and developers view it as a strength of the game, but it can be very confusing for some new players. More significant problem comes from controls on PC as you can't use mouse to aim and not everyone has a gamepad or would like to use it in Cobalt specifically. It also costs $15/€15, so there's that.

Cobalt WASD Header from official Press Sheet thing.

While developers could've obviously just change original Cobalt, they decided to make a new standalone title in the same universe. That's how Cobalt WASD was born and released on Steam! Original games got Minecraft textures for its level editor, so Mojang Studios had an excuse to talk about new release on official website. This title was created with mouse & keyboard controls in mind (hence the name) with one gameplay mode you can play with other players and bots. It recieved a few updates over the course of a few months after release, but then was left alone. While there's no level editor for Cobalt WASD, it was made free-to-play in 2020. Previously, you had to either be an owner of the original or pay $7/€7 for it.

As for current state of Oxeye Game Studios... I think the company is still alive? Their website is up, but latest posts are about the release of Cobalt WASD. Thewreck & Kinten doesn't seem that active on Twitter, but Jeb took over lead position in Minecraft's development from Markus "Notch" Persson at the beginning of December 2011. Even though I previously stated that Jeb's role in Cobalt's development wasn't really major, just the way how everything seemingly worked out is pretty cool. Since then, he was involved with not only two main editions of Minecraft, Caller's Bane, Cobalt and Cobalt WASD, but also Minecraft Dungeons and currently upcoming Minecraft Legends. Perhaps, one day there will be another surprise announcement related to Metalfaces.