World of Goo

Sceadeau and an anonymous blog commenter (who was probably Sceadeau) urged me to play the game World of Goo that I'd picked up in a prior Steam sale. That someone I know says a game is worth playing is reason enough to give something a try, especially when I already own it! It also makes me feel less guilty about buying games during this Steam sale, so it's win-win!

Anyway, World of Goo is a physical based puzzle game. You have a bunch of goo balls which you can connect up with each other. The connection is a little like a girder would be, in that it provides some support to your structure. But it's goo, not steel, so it's bendier than steel would be. Gravity exists, and can drag your structure to the ground if it isn't secure enough. The goal varies by level, but it's mostly to build a structure from a starting point to an ending point on the level using as small an amount of time, moves, and balls as possible.

It reminded me a little of Lemmings. I like Lemmings a lot, and this game was pretty interesting.

Unfortunately, it isn't all sunshine and roses. My primary goal for a game most of the time now is a game I can stream that might be of interest to other people. World of Goo as a puzzle game actually felt like it would fit in pretty well there. People worse at the game than me might want to watch to pick up tips. People better than me might want to watch to provide tips and make themselves feel better. People around the same skill might want to tune in and feel like they could help out with suggestions some of the time. Hurray!

But then it turns out the game is pretty old, and was not coded with my computer in mind. It only runs in full screen mode. It only allows you to scroll the screen by positioning the mouse on the edge of the screen. It doesn't restrict the mouse to staying on the monitor. And it jams up the resolution of my second monitor. These issues combine to make it hard to navigate around in the game, really hard to make quick moves, and impossible to watch chat while streaming.

It was also set up to have internet leaderboards, but couldn't find my internet connection. I like leaderboards. But I can't use them, despite having an internet connection. Maybe their servers are down? Or they don't understand wireless connections? Regardless, it makes the game less fun for me to have a broken feature than it would for that feature to not exist at all.

I certainly won't be streaming the game again, and I suspect I won't play it again on this computer either. But I might well put it on my laptop to have a fun puzzle game to play. And it was worth a dollar.