World Of Goo remastered in free update ahead of giveaway
I love you, 2D Boy!
That wonderful World Of Goo, a modern classic of a puzzle 'em up, gets polished up for the present day in a new free update. Coming over ten years after the game's release, the update brings support for modern widescreen resolutions, art reworked to look better at our shiny new high resolutions, less bugginess on modern operating systems, interface improvements borrowed from newer versions like the Nintendo Switch release, and other welcome tweaks. Loading it back up just now, gosh, World Of Goo really is still charming so I'm glad that returning is now less of a bother. Epic will be giving the game away free in a few days too.
"To be super clear, there are no new levels, no new characters, no new battle royale deathmatch mode," 2D Boy's Kyle Gabler says. "This is just a gentle remastering we did for fun."
Our former John (RPS in peace) still thought World Of Goo to be the best puzzle game as of 2015. Just booting it up today and hearing that music again, let alone starting to build structures from sticky goo balls, delighted me anew. It'll be great to have this comfortably playable for another few years.
The update lets World Of Goo run in high widescreen resolutions, rather than a small and boxy 800x600. So it doesn't look blurry, the devs have doubled the art's resolution using a combination of upscaling tools, hand-tweaking, and sometimes original source files they still had access to. If you don't dig how it looks, hey, it has an option to use the original art. The UI is refreshed based on more-modern ports, so it should feel less 2008 too. They've also removed encryption from asset and save files, with Gabler saying they "hope this makes the game more open and friendly to mod."
See the announcement for more details.
This update will roll out across different stores "in the next few days." Right now it's only available for people who bought World Of Goo directly from 2dboy.com before 2014; if that's you, get rummaging in your e-mail archives for your old download link. Otherwise, wait a bit.
If you can't remember where you bought it or if you somehow don't have it at all, hey, World Of Goo will soon be free for keepsies on the Epic Games Store. You'll have from this Thursday, May 2nd, through May 16th to grab it.
Tomorrow Corporation, the studio formed by 2D Boy artist and composer Kyle Gabler after co-founder Ron Carmel split, are currently working on Internet 'em up Welcome To The Information Superhighway.