Perhaps the most striking thing about the WiiWare puzzle game World of Goo is the end credits, when you discover the entire game was made with a staff of four people. It is stunning, because I have sat through ten minutes of credits for games developed by game studios large enough to fill sports arenas that seemed no grander than Goo does. True, the game is just a simple physics-based puzzle game, but it somehow manages to feel bigger and more epic than it actually is.
Varied, Ingenious Gameplay
Developed by 2D Boy, which is comprised of a couple of game designers and whoever they hire to help them out, Goo is built around one simple concept: goo balls. These are little balls that can stick to certain objects by stretching out their gooey tentacles. Once a ball is attached to something, other balls can attach to it. Much of the game involves creating elaborate trellis bridges by sticking goo balls together. The goal is to build a structure that reaches a pipe that will suck up unused goo balls that glide along your trellis. You want to get as many balls in the pipe as you can, so you are always working to use as few balls as possible in your structures.
What makes this tricky is that goo ball structures are affected by gravity, and that the trellises are soft and rubbery. If you try to build a bridge across a chasm, the bridge can easily collapse if you don’t carefully brace it and shore it up.
There are various types of balls. While a basic ball can be placed only once, green balls can be pulled out and put some place else, and pink balls can become balloons that hold your structures aloft.
The game finds a lot to do with this concept. There are many levels, each containing a unique puzzle that forces the player to deal with a very specific problems. You’ll have to build trellises off of rope-like structures while avoiding spiky walls, or run giant goo balls through machinery to turn them into little goo balls or build while contending with windmills that blow your structures away from their target pipe.
Stylish Presentation
The windmill level is probably the best looking level in the entire game. The sky pink from the setting sun, windmills whir and trees blow as you carefully connect your goo balls to an increasingly precarious structure waving in the wind.
In general, the game has a really cool look. The goo balls have little blinking eyes, and the land they inhabit is filled with odd machinery and strange, giant statues. The sound is also quite, with an atmospheric score that gives a sense of drama to the simple gameplay.
There isn’t a story per se in Goo, yet the game manages to create a sort of narrative arc. In each level there are signs that give puzzle hints while suggesting some sort of tragic past and ominous present. I was never sure exactly what the game was about, but I knew it was about something. One wildly enthusiastic review says the game is about “industrialization, alienation in the modern world, post-modern commentaries on consumer culture, and the downfall of technologically advanced societies,” and that’s as likely as anything.
A Game Some People Fall Madly in Love With
I really liked World of Goo, but honestly I don’t feel the almost religious fervor for the game seen in other reviews and evidenced in the game’s many awards. It is the best puzzle game I’ve played on the Wii, but it not my favorite puzzle game of 2008 (that's the Incredible Machines-influenced DS game Mechanic Master) nor would it make my list of all-time favorite puzzle games (Portal, Crush, Lemmings and others). I’m not saying World of Goo is inferior to my favorites, but simply that I do not have enough of the engineer or the architect in me to fall in love with a game that is essentially about creating bridges out of globs of rubber.
I might have been a little closer to loving the game if some levels weren’t just annoying. Towards the end, puzzles can be a massive amount of work, as you must build very elaborate structures in very difficult circumstances that are very likely to collapse over and over again. I fervently wish Goo would let players save their progress in the middle of levels; it is frustrating when you finally get the first part of a puzzle worked out but then have to tedious rebuild your structure each time it collapses on the puzzle’s second leg. (On the bright side, if you get fed up the game allows you to skip to the next level.)
In Conclusion
In spite of my quibbles, Goo is certainly an original, innovative and beautifully designed game. By the game’s end, you feel as though you’ve gone on a journey through a mysterious alternate reality; a wondrous, unimaginable place where balls of goo build bridges and a game studio does not have enough staff to form a company basketball team.
