Y’All Want Some Goo Balls?*

October 28th, 2008

Bringing me back to the days of creating toothpick bridges and structures in my middle school industrial arts class, World of Goo is a game that straddles the line between education and fun while achieving great results. In a game that simply has you manipulating little gelatinous goo balls in an effort to transport them through a sprawling system of plumbing, World of Goo provides a game experience based on its superb core game mechanic of building structures with the balls.

Although this is not the first architectural and physics based puzzler, it is the first that has done it in such an attractive and polished manner. Games that have you constructing bridges in an effort to have them be structurally sound, while also limiting the number of pieces you can build with are a great, but World of Goo adds the character that has always been missing in this type of game. While the goo balls are merely that, other cues such as the visual design, as well as a loose story helps World of Goo feel like a complete game instead of just a simple brainteaser.

While I wouldn’t call the physics perfect, after a short time it is pretty easy to predict the integrity of your structure, which helps to decrease the amount of level restarts. The difficulty ramps up at a usual pace, but at some points I did get stuck for quite a bit making me wish there was a better hint system. While “hint” signs are placed throughout the level, they often provide nothing more then witty banter.

The story does simply have a tacked on feel, but still provides another level of polish over other games in the puzzle genre. The story portions are illustrated in a unique aesthetic evoking a style that is somewhere in between Psychonauts and the works of Lane Smith. Even though it doesn’t really provide a contextual reason to be playing, the story is interesting and provides a few laugh out loud moments, another convention not often found in puzzle game.

While World of Goo provides the first reason I would have to purchase a Wii-Ware title, I instead opted for the PC version, as the thought having to make super precise movements with a wiimote sounded like a daunting task. While I still don’t think it is a perfect game (it is sometimes difficult to select the goo ball that you want), the price is right and should garner space on any PC or Wii user’s hard rive.

-Eric Wall

*Although this really has nothing to do with World Of Goo, the title of this post is in relation to a trip I took in 2006 to the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester TN. After a day of listening to some fantastic music my friends and I headed back to our tent to relax. After chilling for a little while, a women walks by yelling into our tent “Y’all Want some goo balls?!” Being an intrigued party we inquired into the contents of these so called “Goo Balls,” finding out that they were made with a variety of foods such as oatmeal, cheerios, peanut butter, granola etc. After we got the run down, and all had a pretty blank stare on our faces the women then added, “Oh and they also have a whole ton of drugs in ‘em too.”