World of Goo

The second indie game I've been playing recently is World of Goo. I purchased World of Goo on Steam several weeks ago for a pittance during one of the weekend deals (quick aside - I love that Steam gives a heavy discount to a different game every weekend!). As with all the best indie games, World of Goo is a puzzle game (in my experience, the best indie games are generally in the puzzle genre where creativity can make up for less resources to spend on flashy graphics and special effects) based on physics and was highly rated according to metacritic.

The objective of the game is to guide your Goo balls through the level and, in most cases, to the waiting pipe at the end of the level. The difficulty is that between you and the waiting pipe are a host of hazardous traps which are instantly lethal to your Goo balls. Your only advantage is the uncanny ability of your Goo balls to shoot out strands of Goo which they can use to stick to each other. The end result is you trying to build gravity defying structures with your Goo balls in an attempt to get them to the waiting pipe.

After a couple of levels, the game starts to introduce special Goo balls with different abilities. Some Goo balls can be picked up and repositioned after you place them down while others can float. Some Goo balls will stick to surfaces like glue while others have a hard body and won't be destroyed by spikes.

To be honest, World of Goo is so unlike every other game that its hard to describe this game in words. If you really want to understand what this game is like, your best bet is to jump onto Youtube and scope out some videos of the game in action.

What really makes this game stand out is the incredibly creative situations and puzzles you find yourself facing over the course of the game. Unlike Braid, the game never feels too challenging in that you rarely ever get completely stuck. Very often, even when you fail and your Goo structure collapses upon its own weight, you learn enough to try again using a slightly different structure or technique. And even if you do get completely stuck, the game offers you 12 level skips so you can just keep going even if you do have trouble with the odd level.

A fantastic game which is well worth checking out if you like stretching your grey matter when you play games.