World of Goo

World of Goo is a 2D physics-based puzzle game made by 2D Boy, a small indie game studio made up of Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel. The game was released in mid 2008 for the PC and WiiWare, and has been praised for its innovative gameplay and style, winning numerous awards while at it.

In the game, players are given a variety of Goo balls. The Goo balls can be dragged around the screen and when they're near a structure (be it towers, trusses, bridges, or whatever), they attach themselves to the structure. In each level there exists a pipe, and the goal is to somehow extend the structure all the way to the pipe so it could suck up the remaining goos to a mysterious place for a mysterious purpose. Of course it won't be easy to reach the pipe, and there are many different types of Goo balls to be utilized. If you're going for an OCD, or "Obsessive Completion Distinction," they try to reach the pipe using as few goo ball as posssible, in as little time as possible, or in as few moves as possible.

On A Goo Filled Hill Somewhere

The idea behind World of Goo was first conceived when Kyle Gabler submitted a prototype game called Tower of Goo! to the Experimental Gameplay Project, a rapid game prototyping project started in 2005 by Kyle and his friends (then Carnegie Mellon University students). The goal of the game was to "Build a gooey tower higher and higher."

Tower of Goo was very popular (downloaded over 100,000 times within months of hitting the internet), so popular that Kyle later released Tower of Goo UNLIMITED!, which removed the boundaries that limited the size of a player's tower in the original game. The game was described as "Same game, but now infinite in all directions!" A few years later, Kyle and Ron Carmel, both former Electronic Arts employees, formed 2D Boys, and began working on World of Goo.

World of Goo entered the 10th Independent Gaming Festival in 2008 and was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Design Innovation Award and Technical Excellence. Eventually the game won the award for Design Innovation, losing the grand prize to its Experimental Gameplay Project cousin Crayon Physics Delux.

Although World of Goo was supposed to be released on Valentine's Day in 2008, it was delayed until October of that year, although a public Beta was released to those who preordered the game before the release. The game received very postive reviews, and went on to win numerous awards, including a Wii Game of the Year award from IGN (among a gazillion other awards from IGN) and the Best Game No One Played award from GameSpot, for a while the game was even the #2 top selling pc game on Amazon.com.

World of Goo uses Simple DirectMedia Layer and Open Dynamics Engine for its physics simulation, irrKlang for sound, TinyXML for configuration and animation files, and PopCap is used for font generation. Translation to other languages is being handled by the game's fan community.

The World of World of Goo

The story of World of Goo is split into five chapters, each revealing some information on the world of goo (no pun intended), the shadowy organization known as the World of Goo Corporation, and the brave adventures of countless Goo balls. Throughout each level there are many signs from a mysterious Sign painter, which gives hints as well as story tidbits.

	Chapter 1 - "The Goo Filled Hills" Many sleeping Goo balls are woken up by mysterious pipies that appeared throughout the land. The pipes sucks the Goo balls and transports them to the World of Goo Corporation, where they're made into various products, such as a drink. Later, a few Ivy Goo balls attaches themselves to some floating eyeballs and flies up into the sky in order to see new lands far away.
	Chapter 2 - "Little Miss World of Goo" In the past, a power plant running on "beauty" powered the world, but the plant has stopped producing energy and has long been forgotten. The World of Goo Corporation grounds Beautiful Goo balls into "beauty cream" and injects some of it into the power plant (which looks like a giant lady), allowing the power plant comes back into operation.
	Chapter 3 - "Cog in the Machine" The World of Goo Corporation is in the process of developing a new product called "Product Z," Many Goo balls are sacrificed to prepare for its launch. Product Z turns out to be the 3rd dimension (Z-axis, get it?), which turns the 2D world into a 3D world. Many residents of the world of goo are not comfortable with the new world, and are told to contact the Corporation's tech support, the Information Superhighway.
	Chapter 4 - "Information Superhighway" A vector world where the Goo balls make their way toward the mysterious "MOM," whicn turns out to be a spam bot. The Goo balls overloads Product Z by sending to the Corporation all the deleted spam from the "Recycle Bin," which causes the Corporation headquarter to explode and a layer of smog envelops the world.
	Epilogue - "End of the World" All the remaining Goo balls are sucked away to the World of Goo corporation's ruined headquarter. Some floating fish attaches themsevles to a telescope and brings it past the smog to see the remaining Goo balls at the Corporation headquarter building a giant tower of goo. No one knows what the Goo balls are building toward. At the end the Ivy Goo balls from Chapter 1 flies past a new planet.
	World of Goo Corporation Headquarter of the World of Goo Corporation. Leftover Goo balls are let outside the headquarter, where they start building a giant tower. No one knows where the Goo balls are building toward, though. After Chapter 3, the headquarter changes its appearance to look more Web 2.0, and after Chapter 4, the headquarter is left in ruins.

According to an interview, there was supposed to be a Chapter 6:

TR - You have made some mention to a couple of people regarding the mysterious 6th "Moon" Chapter; will this ever be released and what was it all about?

Ron: Originally, there was a plan to release World of Goo as a retail game for both Wii and PC in Europe, and to support the higher price needed for a retail release we were going to add a 6th chapter, called "The Moon". There was an outcry about the price difference and the release schedule from European gamers and we decided to change course by releasing the game sooner, at a lower price, and without the 6th chapter.

Kyle: The Moon was a prequel to World of Goo, taking place "one year ago" when World of Goo Corporation was a brand new Web 2.0 startup company, and they decided to monetize the Moon by making it ad-supported with community features. Eventually they detonate the moon, and replace it with M.O.O.N. 2.0, a giant ball of homogenized glowing/flickering Goo balls, to create a giant hi-definition LCD panel in the sky for displaying important animated marketing messages to the World of Goo down below. The plot is told through a love story, involving "The Architect" who changes jobs at the end, and becomes one of the characters we meet in World of Goo.

Meet the Goo balls

There are different kinds of Goo balls and creatures reside in the world of goo, many of them undisturbed and sleeping. Below are just some of the more common Goo balls that have been discovered so far.

	Black Goo The most common goo ball, they're everywhere, you lift up a rock, and you see Goo alls scramble.		Green Goo These Goo balls can be detached from structures to be re-used, very, very useful. The downside is they're not as strong.
	Balloon Goo Feeling down? Just attach one of these little guys and it'll left you right up! Attach more for maximum effect.		White Goo The ancient albino Goos sleep deep within caves. They are more flexible and can form longer links.
	Water Goo Watery Goo balls that can only make one link between structures.		Eye Goo They're like the Balloon Goo, when attached to something, they bring that something up.
	Skull Goo These undead Goos are not afraid of spikes or poison, meaning they can be used as a stepping stone.		Beauty Goo Pretty goo. Once crushed, it splits into countless little Beauty Goo balls.
	Ugly Goo The opposite of Beauty Goo. Splits into countless little Ugly Goos when crushed.		Spike Goo A rare Goo that likes to sticks to other goos when it gets close to them. Kind of like a blowfish.
	Bomb Goo Attach them to an object, and they'll blow up after some time, use with caution!		Red Goo Extremely flamable Goo! Keep them away from fire.
	Launch Goo Digital Goo, these little things shoots across the screen, leaving a trail of 1's and 0's.		Infected Goo The infected version of Launch Goo, during flight they will connect themselves to a structure if it gets too close.
	Block Goo Not really a Goo of any kind. These things are usually used in building stuff, they don't seem to weigh much.		Time Bug These little bugs are the masters of time! When clicked, they turn the clock back a few seconds.

Misc

Feel free to give some feedback on this small fan site! Note that all images here are from the game World of Goo, meaning they're copyright of 2D Boys. I just hope they don't sue the living goo out of me for take some images straight from the game.

Links

World of Goo - World of Goo's official site.
2D Boy - 2D Boy's official site.
WoG Art Material - A secret place where you can get a lot of design material, keep it a secret though.
GooFans - A community website to download new levels, mods and tools.
WOG editor - A fan-made World of Goo map editor.

Got Goo?

While at it, why not check out World of Goo's predecessors? See how far the little Goo balls have come!

Note that the Wii version is available on WiiWare. PC versions are also available on Steam, Direct2Drive, Beanstalk, Greenhouse, and Impulse.