Life Outside PLT1

Gaming: World of Goo

October 30, 2009 on 4:39 pm | In Reviews | | Balinor

World of Goo, developed by 2D Boy is a physic based game involving goo balls which you interconnect to reach a pipe. Essentially it is a puzzle game with that will test how well you know how things lean and what clever constructs you can build with these balls to reach the suction pipe. Yeah that’s right.

Pros:
Interesting gaming design
Colourful cartoony visuals
Un-intrusive music
Simple controls

Cons:
Game seems short
No save replay

There is not much to fault in this game. Everything was ‘keep it simple stupid’ or KISS if you will. The controls, visuals, music and concept of this game was great which goes to show that you can get a fun game, even on PC, without ultra realistic 3D people blowing off people’s heads and zombies and other pop culture exploits.

I love the visuals in this game. It seems to me cartoony graphics is a lost art in games these days or reserve only to the Nintendo. That shouldn’t be the case. Cel shaded graphics or proper 2D cartoony visual will always be better than crappy 3D textures mapped on a polygon with not enough vertices.

The music in this is always good in that it fits perfectly into the background. I don’t know how many games I’ve played where the music grinds on your nerves. Especially if it’s a game where you need to spend a lot of time on (like puzzle games).

The other good things about this game beyond just ‘in the game’ is that they have ported this to Mac, Linux and even the Wii. More platforms equals more avenues of income which means potentially more profits which will of course means more games being developed by these people. That is probably one of the problems with indie games at the moment is that there is not many cross platform compatibility. But of course that doesn’t matter these days as if you want to make an indie game to make money, the only platform you should be concerned with is the iPhone.

I said there weren’t many things to fault but there are a few. One thing that I’d like to have had in this game is having the ability to save replays of the structures I’ve built to get to the goal. You could upload your structures to a hall of fame for each level but, to my knowledge, they’re just flat images. You want to see what you did to make that construct and everything that was involved in getting to your goal.

Ball selection can be a problem at times when you have a mass of balls all cycling one area. When you’re at a level and there are multiple balls to choose from, it is very hard to select the one that you want. The other problem I had was when you’ve selected your goo ball to dragged to the place you want to place it, when that goo ball hits an obstacle sometimes it gets dislodged and falls away. Sometimes to their doom. It would be a lot better to have the object that you’re holding be ethereal until you’re ready to place it.

I wasn’t sure if it was just me but I found the game a little easy. There was only two or three levels that I found hard and because of this the game seems short to me. There is replay value in trying to complete each level within Obessive Completion Distinction (or OCD) criteria, which can be tough, but the main game seems short. All in all quite good. Lets hope that 2D Boy are not a one hit wonder and I look forward to see what they come up with next