World of Goo

Some years ago I spotted a site called experimental gameplay (the site still exists in roughly the same form thought it is now open to others http://www.experimentalgameplay.com), it was a student project from some people at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. They produced small prototype games in a short space of time that toyed with different types of gameplay. These were typically 2d games often with a touch of physics or some such and they were usually quirky and sometimes the ideas worked and sometimes they didn't.

One of these games was called tower of goo (it is still available to download from the site http://www.experimentalgameplay.com/game.php?g=1) it was a simple 2d game that involved using the mouse to position blobs of goo which when placed near enough to existing structures would form links to make a tower as high as possible. It employed quirky 2d graphics some fun physics and a generally simple premise for an enjoyable attempt to make a tower that reached higher than anyone else's without it failing or toppling over (which happens a lot in my towers).

Fast forward some years and the guy behind tower of goo and another chap formed a indie dev studio called 2Dboy and they begin to develop on the concepts of tower of goo, the result is World of Goo. They took the core mechanics of tower of goo, making structures out of blobs of goo and extended it into a fun little puzzle game.

At it's core World of Goo is very reminiscent of Armadillo run, you use a series of construction materials with differing properties to achieve some goal, in this case getting a required amount of goo to a pipe. It is carried off with much more flair than armadillo run's more conservative and functional graphics with quirky sprites colourful levels and the goo itself is animated as if living.

The various types of goo are introduced steadily and their properties exploited from the balloon goo that can be used to make otherwise impossible bridges, to flameable goo that can be used as fuses or and even serves as a timer on one level, each type has its own quirks and ways of use that change how you can go about achieving the goal.

Each of the games worlds has a different theme and visual style and at some points even different properties the game play progresses from simple tower building to more complex tasks requiring quite a bit of thought to work it out. All throughout there is a touch of dark humour and fun. At one point I was building the tongue of a giant frog, then next I was escaping from a monster stomach by building a tower (that had to cope with floating in liquid) to climb up to his throat. It's a very inventive game offering challenges and puzzles that are fun and sometimes quite taxing given limited resource, more than once I built a stable structure to convey the goo to a pipe only to discover that I didn't have enough left to complete the level.

It also has the original concept game as part of it where any additional goo balls you collect above and beyond the target get allocated to pool you can used to build the biggest tower, except in this case it is against the rest of the world and little clouds show you where other people have got to. I managed 140th highest in the world before it all came crashing down.

It's one of those simple concepts delightfully executed that I started playing at about 8 or so and, when I finally stopped, found I had been declared legally dead and my house boarded up from the the outside.

If you enjoyed Armadillo run and fancy something similar with more varied puzzles and a quirky sense of humour I'd heartily recommend it. It is available on Steam for a modest sum of $19.99 or if you wait there is a version coming out for WiiWare in the near future (it's out in the states but not yet in europe). Now I need to see a man about getting some boards removed ... although it does discourage visitors so not completely a bad thing.