Quick Review: World of Goo

Why did the goo cross the chasm?

How do you do, fellow gooballs?

Created by 2D BOY and released to Steam on October 13th, 2008, World of Goo has quite the backstory. Even on this blog! During my first two years writing this blog, I wrote quick articles (not so different from these Quick Reviews) on the fifty WiiWare demos that were once available on the Wii Shop Channel. That was so long ago. World of Goo was one of those. I got the full version on Steam thanks to a bundle on Humble Bundle. Time to test it once more, then!

Building up towards the pipe, while the world is literally
spinning around? Yeah, that's just one of the many examples
of crazy challenges in this game.

In World of Goo, we witness an island of living goo balls of various types, most of which can connect to each other to form structures, or move around the structures they built. The goal is generally to get to a pipe that’s out of reach, by building towards it. If the first challenge is to get there, the second is to make sure you get there while still having more than the requested number of goo balls. The third, affectionately dubbed the “Obsessive Completion Distinction (OCD)” mode and completely optional, is to do it in the fewest number of moves or in the shortest time. At the end of a level, the extra goo balls you rescued beyond the requested amount are taken to World of Goo Corporation, an endless area in which you’re told to build the highest goo tower possible.

The big differnce between this game and other bridge
builders is that this one doesn't shy away from having
all kinds of weird, wacky contraptions to build off of.

What types of goo balls? The black basic ones, which cannot be reused once connected onto a structure; the green ones, which can be reused at will, and which connect to more of the structure at once; balloons, which lift structures upwards; various balls that cannot be interacted with, and only need to get to the goal pipe; “water” balls that can only connect to one other ball, then drip downwards unless something keeps them up... And that’s only from the first two chapters of four (+ an epilogue). Things only get more complex over time. And that’s before the game adds a “whistle” allowing you to call goo balls towards your cursor!

The goo rescued at the end of the first island gets to explore. However, a story unravels across each new island, with major discoveries by the time of the final chapter... Yeah, that mysterious Sign Painter knows much more than they let on.

Build up to the skies!

So now I had to use literal skeleton goos in order to
cross a wide gap of spikes. Only getting weirder and
weirder with time!

World of Goo sets itself apart from other physics-based building puzzle games by being quirkier than other games in this very limited genre. Every level is something novel and weird, and with that every challenge is fresh and forces you to think outside the box. The types of goo balls, the weight of your construction, every hazard around you, everything comes into play towards the solution. Keep some time aside, as more than a few puzzles will have to be tried over and over. All split over four worlds and an epilogue with their own feel (the music is a surprising standout) and storyline, with a bonus “endless” mode to let you build freely.

In this level, we're basically building a fuse towards a bomb.
And then you still have to build the bridge across the chasm!

The game hasn’t stolen its reputation as one of the earliest successful indie titles, and it is very deserving of its awards and accolades. That said, as I played, I was reminded of how I first discovered this game, and how the PC version felt so much like a port of the WiiWare one, with the entirety of its controls involving the mouse and nothing else. And yet, at the same time, I kept having that nagging impression that this game would be so much more difficult to play while dealing with the imprecision of pointing at the screen with a remote from a distance. This idea works so much better on PC, with better control on what you do. Especially when you have a lot of goo balls to choose from, and speedy reaction time becomes just as necessary as figuring out the solution.

A sequel was released… yep, last month exactly, 16 years later, on Switch and on PC as an Epic Games exclusive (bleh). In the meantime, though, the original game is still available on Steam for 14.99$ USD.