Who'd have thought building goo scaffolds could be so much fun? 2D Boy's masterful puzzle game, which made indie history on Wii and PC in 2008, is now available on iPad. It's an unadulterated port of the full game, and I'm happy to say that its transition to iPad has made for an almost perfect game. It's actually far more suited to multitouch than a Wii remote or mouse, and can even be easier to play on more challenging levels, thanks to the speed of touch input over peripheral-wagging for this style of game.
Gameplay
The premise of World of Goo is simple. Each level starts with a bunch of itchy-looking goo balls who want to go home. There's a little more to the story than that, but I won't spoil those few great twists here. For now, their home is a glass canister which they can only reach through a pipe. That pipe is the target for each level, and its location and the obstacles you must conquer to reach it*change every time. The goo balls have a handy tendency to stick together and make great building blocks, so that if you manipulate them correctly to reach the pipe (by building towers and other structures towards it), the goo which wasn't used up in construction can run along your created path and pass through the pipe to go home. There's a target number of goo balls to collect in the vat/vial for each level, so you have to be thrifty with the number you use in construction, lest you find yourself short on goo in the end (only the goo you
don't use up are able to pass though the pipe and count toward your score).
[caption id="attachment_12294" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="The first few levels are easily conquered"]
