Every frame a finger painting.
World of Goo 2
Keaton’s world moves.
I think that’s it.
If he’s climbing a ladder, we know that the ladder itself will start sinking into the mud.
Keaton has to vamp - to make the moment work.
He has to over-engineer things to create a sense of new stability.
That’s where you get the gag, where you get the fun.
This is everywhere in World of Goo.
These games are bridge builders at their simplest.
(Granted, they never stay simple for very long.)
So build upwards in a tower to a pipe that’s lurking above you!
Build outward as a bridge across a nasty gap.
But Buster Keaton physics are waiting.
You’re not building with steel, remember.
You’re building with goo.
So those towers and bridges start to sway as they get more elaborate.
And then they start to properly swing back and forth.
You know the moment is coming, you know it’s almost like a sigh - there it is!
The whole thing ripples down through the air and sags to the ground.
Even in collapse it retains a sort of spirit of rigidity, though, so what do you do?
take a stab at boss the whole structure back to life?
Chuck on the appendages?
Reinforce the bridge and get it arcing back out over open air once again?
This is the game.
You’re building, but the world won’t stay still.
The ladder wants to sink into the mud, the ship’s wheel wants to keep on rotating.
This world, someone said, and I believe it was Melville, is a moving one.
This alone is why World of Goo can wait, what, more than a decade between installments.
Its playful brand of irritant will never go out of style, just like Buster Keaton.
This is the very basis of the game design, anyway.
From there,World of Goo 2adds special goos.
It did this in the first game, and it’s still doing it now.
It loves variation, it lives for the one-shot gimmick.
I loved the oil!
All that lubricating gunk to fling around and keep things moving.
And then how enduringly silly it all looks at the end.
A bridge held aloft by balloons.
This is all just from the first world of the game, mind.
Beyond that lie all manner of new ideas.
None of that stuff particularly edible.
An escort mission, but you’re escorting slime!
An entire world where the game seems to push through its own boundaries and achieve very different shapes.
It’s a bit like working on the RKO logo, except the whole thing rotates.
And this fits, because the first game brought this kind of mentality: physics, playfulness, gimmickry.
World of Goo 2 accessibility options
Touchscreen or pointer controls on Switch.
Non-boss levels can be skipped.
Levels that I have let run and run for minutes, hours even.
Is this the way you’re meant to play?
Only one way to find out.
A copy of World of Goo 2 was provided by Tomorrow Corporation.
