After reading KaiRo’s blog post about the game “World of Goo“, I had to give it a try. Its really addictive. I’ve worked through the entire demo level of the game on the flight from SFO->NRT, and really like it.
The game play is well designed, totally self-evident to play and I found it really compelling and humorous at the same time. Each level has the usual “do this to complete and move to next level”. But each level also had a 2nd, more complex, goal called an OCD goal – yes, that really is an “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder” Goal. Not sure what this says for my personality, but once I found those, it was no longer enough to complete a level and move on, now I had to obsessively complete the level.
The graphics and audio are outstanding – check out all the clips on YouTube for a quick glimpse. The characters are just cute enough to empathize with, and draw you into the game, yet not so cute as to be annoying. I quickly found myself caring when a ball-of-goo came to an untimely demise. Caring – you know, empathizing with a computer-graphic-image of a small ball of oily-looking-goo-with-eyeballs?!?! I liked Lemmings also and Kairo’s comparison is right-on-the-nail there.The choices of background music fit perfectly with each level, and set the tone perfectly for the challenge in the level each time. I found myself wanting to leave the computer running in levels I’d already completed, just for the music.
A lot of effort went into the design of the game, and user interface, to help keep the docs/instructions down to very brief humorous “signposts” within the game play. Looks like it should be a relatively easy game to localize, which is always a big win. Also, its a welcome change from the push-graphics-cards-to-the-limit intense first-person-shooter games, which are fun in a different way, but take large blocks of continuous time. I know the fluid-dynamics calcs are non-trivial, but given how simplistic the graphics and user interface are, I wonder if there is a Android or iPhone version in the works. (hint! hint!)
Overall, two-thumbs up from me. Here’s a more formal review that I thought was done in a interesting all-you-can-discover-over-lunch format.
But the best way is to download and try it. Go on – you know you want to!
tc
John.
ps: hey, Sean did you know there is a version for Wii?! π
FYI, OCD stands for “Obsessive Completion Distinction” π I remember getting plenty of them for the Wii version. Some stages you can get even more than what the OCD requirements — super hard but totally rewarding.
Yes, I also looked at it after KaiRo blogged about it. What can I say, it is a masterpiece. In fact, after playing through the demo level I decided to buy it – that’s the first time ever that I bought a computer game.
As to localizing, it might not be as easy as you think. Did you read sign painter’s messages? I can imagine those being pretty hard to translate without loosing some of their meaning. Also, there is a challenge towards the end of the game called “MOM’s computer” – the (very amusing) dialogue there should be quite a challenge for translators.
Welcome to the WoG secret society in Mozilla, mate…
Is the OCD goal to try and use (lose!) as few Goo as possible?
Nice to hear there are others who try it and find it as attractive as I. BTW, it actually is available with localizations, I never saw the English version (not even for the Demo) as it automatically detected I had a German system and used German texts instead. I’m pretty sure the English signs are even better than the German ones, though.
All in all, have fun with your goo! π
[…] My first impressions of World of Goo are still holding true. Its a great game. The soundtrack is so good, the company made it available as a separate download.ΓΒ All just wonderful […]