At E3 2019, we played Luigi’s Mansion 3 and walked away with one thought: Luigi can poop out a slimy clone of himself called Googi, and I love him.

I love my gooey ghostbusting son.

He Hunts Ghosts And He Slime

Equipped with the new Poltergust G-00, Luigi can now fire a plunger with rope attached to it, pulling on it to break apart parts of the environment and rip armour off unfriendly ghosts, and summon a green slime boy clone of himself to explore places Luigi can’t.

Gooigi is a mysterious caffeine anxious gooey boy created after Professor E. Gadd spilled coffee on extracted paranormal energy. Whenever you summon him from your container of Flubba ooze, you can use him to go beyond cracks in the wall, barred entrances, bypass traps and spiky floors, but also have another player play as him in co-op.

That’s right folks, you can permanently become the ooze. You can also play up to eight players in a co-op mode for both local and online, where you and your friends are scattered on the floor and have to find each other. Four green overall wearing plumbers and the four slimes they found while cleaning the loo.

As producer Kensuke Tanabe told Game Informer, the idea of Luigi’s allegedly tasty jelly clone is inspired by the Nintendo Switch’s JoyCons.

“When I first saw the Nintendo Switch system, the fact that you can split the two JoyCons and share it with someone else to play together was such a great thing that we really wanted to take advantage of for this game,” he explained. “We began to think about how to create that second player [and] were kind of experimenting with different ways that we can have two people play at the same time, and one of them was to make a clone of Luigi.”

“While we were doing that, the team happened to be experimenting with using a goo-like material for ghosts. They were like, ‘What if we gave them a little more substance and made them out of goo?’ And then those two ideas came together.”

Who You Gonna Call?

After a lifetime of playing sidekick and hunting ghouls, Luigi is invited to a fabulously grand hotel with Mario, Peach and friends and ready to unwind before soon realising it’s haunted by paranormals on every floor. From there, it’s up to him to hunt down the ghosts possessing the stolen elevator buttons, allowing him to explore deeper into the hotel and restore it, all with the help of his slimy green clone.

leaked ending of luigi's mansion 3 pic.twitter.com/N7AwoMflfm

— Fully Automated Luxury NEET (@incelerationist) June 11, 2019

There are a greater variety of levels and environments for Luigi to anxiously explore here than in previous Luigi’s Mansion games, as the ghosts embodying parts of the hotel transform the floors drastically. In the ten minute demo we played set fairly early into the game, we explored a floor designed as a medieval castle.

Making his way through dungeons, wooden structures, storage cells and castle towers, Luigi sucked up fruit with his vacuum and could spit them out into crates and ghosts, vacuumed up rats, coins and hearts, shined lights on walls to reveal magical doors and anxiously fought his way through hordes of ghosts. Similar to previous Luigi’s Mansion games, the trick to combat is to flash lights on vulnerable ghosts, suck them up and point the joystick away from where they’re pulling, and then slamming them against the ground.

After exploring all of the floor’s secrets, Luigi ended up stumbling into a giant jousting tournament stadium packed with paranormal fans, facing a ghost cladded in jousting armour, a goofily villainous moustache and riding an undead horse.

This boss fight had two stages. Dodging arrows from holes in the wall and a charging floating lance, Luigi had to time his flash just before the knight’s lance struck, blinding him before plunging his armour off, sucking him up and smacking him around the ground. After that, the ghoul wielded a sword and span around, tiring himself out and providing Luigi with the perfect opportunity to plunge his sword and shield off and blind him before whacking him against the floor and vacuuming him up for good.

Also Luigi's Mansion 3 looks promising. pic.twitter.com/BPZVVtUpTM

— Potoo Brigham (@PotooBrigham) June 11, 2019

While the Nintendo Direct trailer teased a floor populated by carnivorous plants, in a Nintendo Treehouse Luigi’s Mansion 3 livestream during E3, Tanabe showcased a production studio level. In it, Luigi warped between retro TVs, explored behind the scene locations of film sets and met Morty, the pretentious ghost deluded into thinking he’s a movie director. By contrast to the demo’s phantom knight, Morty transformed into a Godzilla-like creature, battling Luigi as two giants in a tiny city, his tail sticking out of his big goofy suit.

“Initially we were considering a hotel that might exist in maybe Hollywood or something that has a rollercoaster inside of it, but as we were playing it, we felt like that be too competitive” producer Kensuke Tanabe explained. “Even though it’s haunted we wanted to make it look like a fun hotel to stay in.”

Unfortunately, Nintendo has yet to announce a release date for Luigi’s Mansion 3, confirming in their E3 Direct that it’s coming sometime this year. For now, we can simply enjoy the many great memes about our favourite slimy Nintendo hero and wonder whether Luigi’s ever had a proper vacation.

Julian Rizzo-Smith is a freelance pop culture and games writer. He thinks Luigi’s Mansion 3 might finally convince him to clean his room and vacuum up the ghosts that possess his bed. He tweets slimy thoughts @GayWeebDisaster