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dkirschner's World of Goo (PC)

[May 2, 2012 12:29:23 AM]

Finished World of Goo just now. This game has some serious charm. I really didn't know what to expect when I began, just that I've been hearing about it for a few years now and it was some sort of cute puzzle game where you build structures out of goo balls. Didn't know how it worked or anything. Anyway, I very much enjoyed it.

There are a bunch of different species of goo balls that you get throughout that have different properties. Like some you can light on fire and explode, others you can place in a structure and move them later, others stick to surfaces...one thing I liked is that the game doesn't hold your hand in explaining what all the goo balls do. Any instructions the game gives are these somewhat random and silly messages from 'the sign painter.' Sometimes they have to do with what you need to do in a level, and other times not. So you more or less figure out how each type of goo ball works, you pretty much explore the levels on your own by building to reveal more of the map on the larger levels, and you do a good deal of trial and error. In this sense then there were a lot of 'a-ha!' moments, like when I figured out what the pink balloon goo balls did, or when I figured out in the last level just now that I needed to build up, not out, and then cause the rickety upwards tower to fall just right with a balloon attached. The game makes you feel pretty clever at times.

It was never too too hard, a good difficulty, except there was ONE level that I insist was a cheap trick. I remember vividly trying to move this big vertical bar out of the way of a big bomb so that the bomb would roll down and explode what I needed it to. I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to move the bar. Finally I googled it and the solution I never would have figured out. You had to toss a goo ball OFF THE SCREEN over the top of the bar to the other side where the bomb was, then make the goo ball slam against the bar from that side to knock it down. There wasn't any indication that (a) tossing goo balls offscreen was any kind of valid strategy; (b) using a goo ball to hit the bar was any kind of valid strategy; (c) any reason to believe that that strategy was possible, especially given the fact that it was totally a precision thing where even if you tried to toss a goo ball off screen, you have no idea how high the bar goes off the screen, and 90% of the goo balls you toss up don't come down where you need them, so it would seem like it wasn't working anyway. /rant I hated that level. Oh, and you NEVER have to toss anything off screen or hit anything with a goo ball in any level ever before or after that one.

So as you meet your goal for each level, which is always moving x number of goo balls to the pipe at the end, any excess goo balls you save go to this sandbox level where you just try to build as tall a goo tower as you can. It's neat because it keeps an up-to-date world ranking of everyone who has the game and how tall their towers are. And it shows other players' towers' heights as little clouds with their name and the flag of the country they're from. So I had messed around with it earlier in the game and continued my tower today when I was stuck in the story. As you build, you always see other players' clouds above your tower so it kind of gives you an aim to reach for. At the bottom, you are in over 5,000,000th place for tallest tower. I got mine up to like 20 meters and went all the way up to like 30,000. After I beat the game, I went back to the tower and got it up over 30 meters and up to 1,000-something place. Pretty cool how it updates it like that! Then I got too gung-ho and started just building straight up and my tower crumbled :-( I'll probably reset it and see how high I can go at some point! I wonder if I can get below 1,000 or 500 even. I figure since I got somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 on my first try, I can dip into the triple digits. But when the tower fell, my ranking went back down to 5 million, so it's like who knows how many people have gotten it as high as mine and their towers just fell down. It's like half of those 5 million people could have been trying to get higher than just one more person, but toppled their tower in the process! Anyway, fun way to do leaderboards.

Totally recommend this one. I think the game is also on iPad and some other devices besides PC and Wii too. Check it out!