This is mainly of use to the cynics (and the evangelists, of course). Anyone who’s even slightly vulnerable to purple-prose will have already worked out how to buy it and done exactly that. If you haven’t – well, what are you waiting for? A demo? Well, wait no more. It’s currently spreading across the net, but let’s point at Filefront for this 33Mb slice of splendidosity. It’s the whole of chapter one, which made me start ranting about it all those months ago. You will too.
Well, almost probably. A couple of tiny thoughts plus some more Goo-in-action-video-footage follows…
Here’s the footage…
It’s a fun period which World of Goo finds itself in. It’s absolutely the honeymoon period – I literally saw my first negative comment from someone who’s played it last night, and I had to go to NeoGaf to actually see that. Literally everyone else loves it which I haven’t seen since… well, the early days of Portal, but even then I saw downbeat stuff earlier.
Of course, that’s also inevitable. No cultural object appeals to everyone. The people more likely to like something are attracted to it initially – they’re the core audience, after all. The more they rave about it, people outside the core audience come in. And since some of them will find their experience differ from the initial crowd, they express their reservations. Or slag it, if they’re wired that way. It’s backlash cycle, and natural and unavoidable.
To be honest, I don’t think it’ll be a big backlash – partially because, like Portal, it’s immensely loveable and partially because as an indie game it’s unlikely to sell the multi-millions required to get a real backlash. But still, in the time before a single minor chord in the orchestra of public voices, it’s easy to smile. Pure joy and gaming. It’s why we formed RPS, y’know?
Join us. Play the bloody demo.
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the OCD’s sometimes ask you to save all but 1 of the goo balls – impossible!!!!!!
@ Hypocee:
Cheers. I groaned. The sign even hints it too. To think I built two towers right up to the skybox (and then had them collapse, trying to make them taller somehow)…..
UID: well, apparently they’re using Open Dynamics Engine for the physics layer, but that doesn’t appear to do deformable object physics in itself. If I were doing it, I’d do some real-time Finite Element stuff with it, but I guess they might just be modelling the goos as points with springs (modelled as ODE “Slider” joints?) attached.
@unique_identifier
don’t feel too bad i’m sure we all done that, i know i did
@Abyss – your train suggestion is so utterly awesome that I am strongly inclined to email 2dboy to pester them into adding it.
as a commercial venture physics you don’t want to pay for is a 3 way between ODE Bullit and Box2D, none of which are terribly good.
@Hypocee
Colthor – what made you buy the game then?
I bought it on the strength of the review and everybody’s unreserved raving about the game, on Monday, before the demo was out.
Chapter 1 isn’t the best one for a demo, but the best parts are spoilers to the story.
Regarding the difficulty curve:
I too started really figuring things out part way through chapter 2. I never got stuck on any of the levels though. I thought overall the game was a bit easy, especially the later levels which were supposed to be hard :P.
@Colthor Just play a bit further and it’ll click. It’s really intuitive, and I love that there’s no color marks or anything – it makes sense without, so they’d only distract from the gooy-ness…
@cyrenic I agree, the Epilogue levels were rather easy, I got them all on first try :) Not what I expected after the bin thingy that got me mulling for hours before I found the really simple solution…
In other news, I wrote a little review as well.
This game is AWESOME.
It’s a shame they saw it necessary to pull it down from Steam until next year here in the UK, but it is a great game.
Steam news:
“We have just been informed that World of Goo will not be available in Europe until Feb/March of 2009. Copies purchased yesterday in Europe will continue to work.”
WHAT THE HELL. WHY?
It say something that my biggest frustration so far (in the demo, and I’m playing at work so I can’t give it my full attention), is the propensity of the little buggers to come and investigate which ever new bit of structure you’re building, buggering up the weight distribution and breaking my lovely tower/bridge/funny C shaped thing, and yet all I feel is vague annoyance and I resolve to build quicker next time.
(I’m sure I’m doing it wrong somewhere :p)
These often consist of a lot of green goo. The pipe can hold a lot of them by suction, and you can gradually remove them from the structure one by one. The last one won’t make it though.
@phuzz
Try whistling.
@nakke
:D
@IcyBee
yeah i can usually get most of them this way but not all but one, that’s crazy
@nakkie
The contract 2d Boy signed with their distributors in Europe prohibts them from selling the game with any other parties in the European union until they put out the boxed copy in Feb ‘09.
From the way they described it apparently 2D Boy neglected to notice that provision in the contract.
I am firmly in the “UNATCO!” camp.
nabeel
See, demos can still sell a game. This was a really good one.
I refuse to play the demo, because I don’t wish for my want of this game to manifest as intense physical pain. I’ll wait until payday and just pick up the game, skipping the middle bit.
I got some of the OCDs unintentionally the first time round. So now I’m having to go through and get them all. :/
Incidentally, they’ve made me think about the game in a new way. Working out how to get the OCD on a level as early as level 3 “Hang Low” makes one feel smart.
It’s more than just being more efficient, but sometimes solving in new, exciting ways!
I’m also loving it, though I bought it for my Wii so that I could sprawl out on the couch all hungover-like whilst playing.
I’d been charmed by the review and thought “oh, that looks good to play.”
I enjoyed that little trailer and thought “aaaww, in’t that cute?”
I was enthralled by the demo, particularly the last level, and thought “oooh, that’s awesome!”
Then I checked the price at their website and upon seeing the delightful sum of only $20 found myself feverishly entering long-forgotten passwords to gain access to my dormant Paypal account, before manically refreshing my Hotmail for the download link. Currently I am heartily abusing adjectives in an attempt to pass the time while the file slowly ticks through the percent marks. Hurry, you fiend, hurry!
I too fell in love with this game right away – and it even has the best music i’ve EVER heard in a game!
I’m just not seeing what everyone else is seeing, apparently.
Of course this is compounded by me being an american idiot, if you’ll pardon the reference to a horrible song, but sometimes my goo bridge will just collapse and I’ll have no idea why. Is it too heavy? Too weak? Too big? too small?
I am incapable of completing the first chapter, and I honestly don’t feel I am missing out on much. Ooh, physics and goo. we’ve got some of that thar innovashun.
Is that because by the end of the first chapter, I merely liked the game a lot?
Let me be clear: the first chapter is charming, witty, beautifully drawn and scored, and altogether endearing. But gameplay-wise, it’s still more or less Bridge Builder with added cute.
My cynicism was with respect to the gameplay stepping up enough to warrant the hype. And it did. After chapter one.
To put it another way, if it had eventuated that all the subsequent chapters were identical in terms of gameplay to the first chapter, would the game still be getting such good reviews, and would you still love it as much as you do?
I find it hard to believe that the answer to either of those questions would come close to a “Yes”, and that is the basis of my worry about the demo being what it is.
I said “mixed feelings” because I also agree that to show very much of what comes after is to risk spoiling some of the experience. But personally I would have been a little hesitant to put down US$20 on the game if I believed I had already experienced the full range of gameplay mechanics on offer.
Does the game get more inventive as the chapters progress? I like some elements of it, but too many of the levels had a very simple theme made challenging by having to do the same action over and over and over. The last level was particularly bad in this regard, I just stopped playing, I had no more interest in slowly dragging the Goo up the tunnel.
Brokenbroll: Most definitely, yes.
Also, it sounds as if you must have been awfully close to finishing that level without knowing it. If you try again, you’ll see what I mean.
Yeah. I mean, it’s got to be far less than a minute to do what you have to do.
KG
Sorry man, I was just kidding.
I would have loved more wobbly structure building, and indeed in my comment on the RPS review I state that I don’t especially like the part of the game where it breaks with construction entirely. I would have dinged it if the whole thing were just Black and Green Goos, but when I finished the preorder chapter back in March I was hankering for more. Given the cleverness of the level design on display I could have waited, oh, probably another whole chapter for any more types of Goo to show up.
I’ve played and loved Bridge Builder too – I’ve played it to death; it’s what, like ten years old? It’s not in realtime for that breath-stopping dexterity challenge and it doesn’t have insane challenges where I have to ride massive machinery or blow up most of my structure or hang it from a rope to accomplish the goal.
Yeah… okay RPS, I’ll admit you were right, this is pretty decent. I’ll definitely buy it if 2Dboy can iron out the technical issues (resolution, volume control, proper mouse constraint for multi-monitor mode… windowed version would be ideal really).
@Hypocee:
Funny, my feelings were pretty much the opposite of yours.
I didn’t much like the Epilogue, mostly because I find it irritating and frustrating to try and get the goo to form cross-pieces properly. It seems like they really don’t want to. Maybe I’m just cag-handed or something, but it made the game end on a bum note for me, sadly.
@bobince
It can run in a window. Just Ctrl+Enter.
Oho! You’re right. OK then – sold.
(Windowed mode has the pointer constraint problem worse than multi-monitor, but at leas you can see the mouse wobble off the edge…)
ok, is there any way to switch from the “pleasant” 640×480 resolution in the demo?
whoops! a single look at the install directory and there’s my answer. Sorry guys!
fwiw:
WorldOfGooDemo\properties\config.txt
Yeah, that chapter closing level got me too – and got me really frustrated because of the interface not really being very good for working with green goo. I kept building up these towers and then accidentally scooping up a bit of structural goo instead of a bit of free-flowing goo and having big chunks come down around my ears. Which exacerbated the problem, because then I had free-flowing goo, structurally integral goo, and dangling bits of structure that I needed to pull off and get back somewhere useful, all within a few pixels of each other. And of course if you mouse over free-flowing goo, it pauses and waits for you to grab it. Which is good most of the time, but not when it’s in the way.
Of course then I discovered I didn’t actually need to be doing any of that. Oh well.