We love point-and-click games, especially the ones from the 90s. There’s something very cool and nostalgic about the engines that the devs used and the mechanics they designed. We remember many afternoons simply losing ourselves in amazing point-and-click games, our favorites being The Secret of Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit the Road, and, of course, the Broken Sword series. As much as we love games like these and as much as we have fond memories of them, they are pretty rough to revisit. Red Art Games just dropped the Gobliiins Collection out of nowhere, surprising us completely. There are five games in one download. We wanted to see if these weird little puzzles hold up. Turns out, the rules completely change. It depends on which sequel you open.
Health Bars and Werewolves
Back in 1991, the first Gobliiins gave us three characters. Each guy has one specific job. One punches, one uses magic, and only one of them can actually pick stuff up. Such were the rules of the 90s. Back then, we didn’t complain. We were just happy to click everything until the room cleared. Each of the characters, however, shared a health bar. So, clicking the wrong item or combining the wrong things hurts the team. Experimenting is not encouraged, and it’s quite possible to stumble across a Game Over just by experimenting with the puzzle. This, as you can imagine, was super stressful.
Gobliins 2 drops the roster down to two and lets you control them both at the same time. As a result, it’s possible to set up some genuinely clever timing puzzles. Back then, it felt like the peak of gaming achievement to try and distract a monster with one guy so the other can sneak by. You can do this here.
Goblins 3, on the other hand, is a game where only one goblin can be controlled. But as soon as Blount gets bitten by a werewolf, the puzzle solving turns into swapping between normal Blount and his werewolf alter-ego. These old DOS and CD-ROM games were and, to an extent, still are very fun games, mostly because the devs constantly experimented with new ideas, throwing them at us at a very measured pace.
3D Mistakes and Potato Logic
Gobliiins 4 originally came out in 2009 and switched to 3D. It sadly looks pretty rough today and the puzzle logic seems very strict here. We spent a lot of time just trying to get lucky with the items in our inventory. It was not fun.
Gobliiins 5 just came out in 2023. Due to how badly 4 was received, the devs decided to go back to 2D. That might have been a good thing, but the puzzle design was seen by many, us included, as very exhausting. We didn’t really feel smart when we solved a room. We only felt relieved we finally found the thing that was supposed to be clicked.
And the save system—don’t get us started on how it only saves when you finish a full level. If we got stuck in a room, which we always did (pixel hunting takes time) and had to quit to do something else, we lost a bunch of progress.
The French Connection
The French publisher Red Art Games put this port together. The collection hides multiple versions of the first three games. You can pick between the old MS-DOS, Mac, or CD-ROM ports depending on what you grew up with. They, bless their hearts, also mapped the old point-and-click stuff to modern controllers and threw in some quality-of-life tweaks. It plays better.
Make sure you check out the museum content. There’s a music player, galleries full of old design documents, and 3D models of the original PC boxes. There is even a new video interview with the series co-creator, Pierre Gilhodes. We love archives like these, and we deeply appreciated the possibility to explore this piece of history further.
A Stubborn Piece of History
The Gobliiins Collection is a collection of challenging games. It’s also a collection of those exact same games from the 90s. If you’re spoiled by modern games, the puzzle logic here is definitely an acquired taste. But having all five of them packed together with archival stuff makes for a pretty great package. It’s nice having them playable from the comfort of the couch.
ID Card
- Developer: Red Art Studios
- Publisher: Red Art Games
- Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch
- Release Date: May 27, 2026 (Digital) / September 24, 2026 (Physical PS5 Europe)
- Genre: Point-and-Click Puzzle Adventure
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