Playing dirty

It doesn't happen often that I preorder a game. When demod told me about this soon-to-be-released physics-based puzzle-indiegame based on the freeware tech-demo thingy "Tower of Goo" called "World of Goo" though I immediately fell in love and preordered it for a mere $20. That was back in mid-August and I almost forgot about it again until I got the download link from 2D Boy via email on October 8th. Since then, I've been hooked, and for a reason.

World of Goo not only did win both the Design Innovation Award and the Technical Excellence Award at the 11th Independent Games Festival, it has also been getting awesome reviews left and right. And it deserves all that: It is intelligent, addictive, has wonderful lovely graphics, an awesome soundtrack and is damn cute!

So, what do you do in World of Goo? You control small little gooey creatures called “gooballs” of 8 or so different types (with different abilities) that you lead to freedom (or rather a pipe at each level's exit). To do this, you attach them to each other to form structures suitable for reaching high up or over chasms or to achieve whatever else the level designer intended. There are 5 chapters in the game, with each chapter divided into several unique levels which make you really use your brain. The following trailer gives you a hint at what fun all this can be

The game currently is available on Windows and the North-American WiiWare channel. In Europe it will be available in retail from early 2009 onward both as boxed Windows and standard retail-only Wii title with some additional content compared to the already released North-American version. 2D Boy has also promised to release versions for both the Mac and Linux (in that order), which will be available to anyone who already bought the windows version as well. And – a major plus in my book – World of Goo has absolutely no DRM.

I can definitely recommend buying this to everyone, you'll get hooked instantly. And for me, it's for sure one of the best games of 2008¹⁾.

Edit: I just came across a level named “Alice and Bob and the Third Party” … fellow geeks, rejoice

Edit 2: Just saw that there's now also a demo available.

Edit 3, Nov 13th 2008: Release plans on european Wiis changed: the game is now actually coming as a WiiWare title here as well.