World of Goo is one of the most innovative puzzlers to hit the PC in a long time. Your goal is to guide these goo balls to extraction point by basically turning goo balls into scaffolding. Each stage gives you a required number of balls to save and if you fail, you need to start from the beginning. Core gameplay depends heavily on physics and gravity as you combine goo balls together in a towering structure, you will quickly realize gravity is not your friend. Since the structure is made of, well, goo, it is very jiggly and unstable. It is up to you to determine how much risk you’re willing to take vs. building a pretty stable structure in order to save an extra goo. A goo ball that you use for construction probably won’t be saved at the end of the stage.
There are other types of goo balls apart from the regular black goo: green goos can be moved and detached from built structure, white goos drip down, red goos can float, yellow goos can stick to vertical surfaces as well as horizontal, and skull goos are impervious to spikes. At later missions, it becomes a challenge to quickly and properly use all these different goos in order to reach the end. The game requires a lot of trials and errors if you do not plan your structure properly.
Unfortunately, the game is marred by control issues: you click on a goo, and drag it to where you want to place it. However this becomes infuriating when the time is running out, your structure is toppling, and you grab the wrong goo as they scurry about on the structure you’ve just built. The game also has an undo function when you click on a time fly that’s buzzing around your structure. It is sometimes too easy to click on them by mistake instead of selecting a goo.
In the end, the charming visuals and physics-based puzzles will give you a very different experience. You’ll soon fall in love with those goos.
Rating: 80%
