World of Goo 2 (Switch)
World of Goo getting a sequel was not a thought that ever really crossed my mind. The game about building large structures by connecting little goo balls was the first title introduced to me as an indie game, so it felt like a follow-up from an independent developer was not really a given. The creators had even moved on to work on other projects like Little Inferno and Human Resource Machine, so it just seemed like they were happy to move on to brand new game ideas. It seems being a sequel that came out 16 years after the original was something on the developers’ mind too, as World of Goo 2 doesn’t just aim to iterate on the game’s original puzzle designs, but it spends a good deal of time contemplating what being a sequel could even mean.
World of Goo 2 sees the little goo balls that spread across the land in the first game reappearing suddenly and with no one really sure why, but the World of Goo Corporation is all too happy to pick up where they left off in using them in various products. They do rebrand as the World of Goo Organization to cater to more modern ideas of sustainability, although it does seem like they’re doing the same old goo harvesting just with a new PR angle. In some ways this feels like it’s deliberately lining up with some of the early game’s levels, World of Goo 2 no doubt trying to help players starting with the second entry learn the ropes while acclimating players who had spent some time away from the format with simpler building tasks. It makes some reverent looks to the past with set pieces that evoke memorable levels from the original, but eventually the plot goes quite off the rails as the game goes from making coy references to its nature as a follow-up to toying with the format itself.
In most stages of World of Goo 2 you are contending with the basic building mechanics. Structures can be built out of living goo balls you drag around with your joy-con aimed like the Wii Remote was so many years ago, the player needing to figure out how to use the available goo to build a structure to reach an end of level pipe that sucks up the goo balls you didn’t use. A level can only be cleared if a certain amount of goo balls make it to the goal, so you need to be smart in how you build the towers and bridges to reach the pipes while the limitations deliberately aim to make your structures precariously wobble in ways that threaten their stability. World of Goo 2 will iterate on the types of goo balls, level layouts, and dangers presented here, but in Chapter 4, it begins to get a bit introspective about what can even constitute a sequel. The game actually features some pretty big shifts away from the fundamental building mechanics, literally feeling like its entered brand new genres at times. The strongest story elements are found here as a result, because rather than levels focused on puzzles where you sometimes get a little lore or fun observations written on a nearby sign, you have actual voiced character dialogue and the story being put forth front and center in some of the experimental levels. Others go for puzzle solving in entirely different ways though, so it’s not a complete shift away from what the game is mostly known for, allowing the more wild departures to still be quick fun rather than a complete transformation away from what World of Goo 2 is.
Even the music of World of Goo 2 is often paying homage to the original, remixes, recompositions, and music with tonal or instrumental similarities more common than fully new tracks, but the original had a superb selection and it still does its job well here. A level where you have to somehow cross a large canyon with a bridge that has little support feels more grand with the music making it feel like you’re reaching the apex of some long journey. Music can sound a little somber in places where the goo flows like oil and is often calm enough to let you do the necessary thinking on how to arrange your goo balls to create a working structure. It’s whimsical at times and avoids feeling dour often by the little flourishes from lighter and more optimistic incursions to the tracks, urging you to push forward even after a potential collapse of a long-teetering structure.
The basic building in World of Goo 2 can feel close to a bridge building game at times, and a general sense of structural integrity that would serve you well in those games can transfer here. Goo can only connect to existing structures at a certain distance and at best can latch onto three junctions, but unlike in a bridge builder, goo is a much sturdier substance than wood or steel. It will wobble and bounce, but weight imbalance is often the bigger danger and using anchor points to your advantage is often crucial to building the structures that span larger gaps or wind around sets of danger. If you make a mistake or your structure breaks, you can undo things, although you’ll need to click on tiny white flies that buzz around your structure for each undo. The flies can unfortunately blend into the otherwise nice backgrounds and hunting them down feels a touch annoying at times, a bit of irritation also coming from the fact your goo balls like to move too. Most of the time they’ll travel along the structure you’re building so they’re easy to grab and use right away, fast building sometimes a way to overcome physics, and they won’t weigh it down either until they’re actually connected. However, later levels introduce special goo types like red balls that can be burnt away even when connected to structures with other color goo balls. If some balls are on the burning part of the structure they will die. The whistle from the original World of Goo wasn’t brought back, meaning you can sometimes struggle to lure the balls away from danger. The last goo ball you build with does draw the others towards it, but it is an inelegant solution that leads to certain levels being a bit fiddly.
Generally though, World of Goo 2 does have a good range of ideas for how to vary up your construction options as well as what the level puts forth to help or hurt you. The red goo balls were already described, their use as kindling even letting you ignite explosives to open up more of a level, but there are also green balls that can be disconnected and reconnected freely so you can make temporary structures or alter your tower’s shape when you’ve made some better connecting points to nearby terrain. Fluids play a big part in World of Goo 2 to try and make it a bit more noticeably different from its predecessor. Some end of level pipes only accept the specific type of goo balls formed in liquid goo, meaning you need to find ways to make channels for it, figure out ways to juice giant goo balls, and even extract it like oil with special goo balls that make pipes. More interesting is that special objects in levels start serving as goo spouts; you feed the liquid goo into them, and they can spray them out across gaps or even use them for jet propulsion. Later levels even introduce burning liquid goo where you need to build structures specifically to protect your more flammable balls elsewhere.
There are certainly a good deal of ideals for new goo types and how liquid can factor into construction, although it often spends more time bringing in new mechanics than iterating on what it has already presented. Timing can play a pretty strong part in some levels, like a ticking clock before a pipe releases flaming goo, and that seems to be more about placing pressure on the player than drawing out unique puzzle solving solutions. Most of the levels do have some strong enough ideas guiding them to make them enjoyable, and there are even a few optional levels that focus on being difficult building tasks without any wild strings attached where the difficulty comes from your fundamental understanding of how the physics and goo balls work. For people wanting a bit more out of the game, most stages also offer 3 optional challenges. The weakest is the time challenge where you need to clear a level quickly, often requiring you to understand the level very well and throw structures together at lightning speed despite how often you need to place a goo ball just so to connect it in the way you desire. The others are more cerebral challenges. “OCD” will reward you for finding solutions that let even more goo balls into the pipe than the game required, often requiring more economical construction. Clearing a level in only a certain amount of moves can often go hand in hand with hitting above the expected goo quota, although there are levels where it can sometimes be easier to save extra goo balls by constantly manipulating your green balls or building towards a stash of extra goo balls that might be hard to reach with less moves. They do feel more like extra goals for people who would probably try to optimize the levels anyway rather than strong reasons to return to the game, but their existence can at least make you attempt to go the extra mile in a stage if you think you have a clever route to victory in mind.
THE VERDICT: World of Goo 2 feels like more of World of Goo 1 at points, bringing over the excellent music and retaining a lot of the basic structure building mechanics. At times World of Goo 2 feels more like a pack of extra levels for that first game, but it also spends so much time pondering its nature as a sequel that we get some very strange and interesting departures from what this puzzle game normally is. That adventurous genre-hopping spirit doesn’t always dig as deep as it should, but the main goo connecting stages at least move through so many unique ideas with special pieces and the various liquids that you’re getting a good amount of what you came for in between reflecting on the game’s nature as a follow-up released so long after the original.
And so, I give World of Goo 2 for Nintendo Switch…
A GOOD rating. I’m not one to dock points for a sequel not evolving enough from the original, and it’s been so long since I played the original World of Goo that on some level it was nice to just play what felt like more of it. Chapter 4 has seemingly been controversial for some fans as it starts playing in entirely different ways, but it was also the moment the game got me to sit up and take notice the most since it was starting to pontificate more on its thoughts about video game sequels while also making much larger changes to the format. The basics of World of Goo’s structure building are enjoyable and sound before and after that unusual chapter, the different goo types keep the game diverse and the liquids and their related objects also give you reason to do more than just find your way to the pipe in some levels. The music can be powerful and oppressive based on a level’s context or try to elevate the emotions of gradually building towards a goal, although sometimes the difficulty isn’t so much from figuring out what to do and more about gradually feeling out how to counterbalance a pretty obvious structure for the task at hand.
World of Goo 2 doesn’t disappoint, and while it could do with more levels that push you to build smarter or in more unique ways, you’re still being shown a range of creative iterations on the concept that do make for consistently unique stages. Some greater depth could help it flourish even more, but there is still some joy to be found in putting your plan into action and seeing how it holds up under the game’s range of pressures. The controls on Switch could be cleaner, but for the most part, World of Goo 2 does feel like more of a good thing. The introspection on returning to the game so many years later is a fun throughline to connect the stages, and while it feels like more could have been done with the puzzles to make it feel more like a sequel rather than a level pack, it does still have much of that imagination and charm that made my formal introduction to indie games so captivating all those years ago.