World Of Goo has a bit of history behind it. It’s an extension – although it might be more accurate to call it an explosion – of an idea that first found expression in 2D Boy’s Tower Of Goo. And that idea’s simple – elastic gooballs that can bind to each other and be formed into shapes. Thanks to the intuitive controls and excellent physics, it’s a hugely tactile interface and fun to simply mess around with. But can those basics stretch to something more fully formed?

They most certainly can. The most inspired thing about World Of Goo is that it keeps those basics simple. While the desire to tinker and add abilities to the gooballs may has lost some of the subtle magic of their interplay, World Of Goo concentrates on its holy trinity of stretching, binding and physics. So while there are some new types of gooball, they’re variations of the standard black model: a green gooball, for example, can be disconnected from the goo scaffold and re-positioned (black ones stay in place permanently) but is otherwise identical; that tiny change fundamentally alters your approach to the challenges.

And the levels are what World Of Goo is really all about. Tower Of Goo had the basics, but the aim was to simply build your goo scaffold as high as possible – that was the game. Those tools now have to be used to negotiate environments: obstacles, outcrops and gaps stand between your gooballs and the pipe that acts as the level’s goal (you have to get a certain number of gooballs in to pass the level). Your constructions thus have to be all the more elaborate, maximizing distance and strength with as few gooballs as possible, frequently ending up all the wobblier, and within touching distance of the goal while teetering on the precipice of total collapse.

It’s this urge to maximize your resources that gives many of the game’s levels a depth that belies first appearances. Bridging a short gap isn’t a new type of problem, but doing it with a waving mass of goo that develops a mind of its own as it gets larger is something different. Similarly, building around buzzsaws or through narrow gaps of spikes (using balloons to keep your structure afloat) develops into a dynamic, animated challenge once the goo starts growing.

It hardly needs to be pointed out how distinctive the art direction is (though it should be noted that it runs perfectly well on creaky PCs), and in combination with the infectious music, World Of Goo is as much of an aesthetic achievement as a technical one. The humor in the world’s incidentals and signposts bodes well, as do player-sensitive tools like ‘time bugs’ that let you reverse moves. The only caveat with World Of Goo is that only one chapter of five is currently playable, and whether the standard of invention can be escalated beyond that has yet to be seen. But even going on the limited amount seen thus far, it’s definitely something to watch out for.

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