By Anthony Swinnich on November 10th, 2008

Anyone familiar with toothpick bridge-building from their grade school days should feel right at home with the game’s core concept. The objective of each level is to get a certain amount of goo balls to a pipe. Doing so requires you to build bridges and other structures with the goo balls found in the level. Early levels have you building upward – a fine way to train players on the basic mechanics of the gameplay. If you’re building a tower and you don’t have the proper support , say if the tower is narrow and you have excessive weight on the right side, you can expect it to topple or collapse in a fairly realistic fashion, or at least as realistic as building things out of goo balls can be.

Players start with one basic type of goo to build with, but it’s not the only one they’ll work with. The game introduces several different types of balls, each with unique abilities. The different abilities allow the level design to creatively expand across the five worlds. Some are flammable, while others are unaffected by spikes. Balloon balls are usually the sign of a more challenging level, though, those are the most fulfilling to complete. The game does a good job of training the player as the game goes on and giving them clues on how to complete a challenge, but admirably stays away from hand-holding.

Of course, these clues are a big part of the game’s charm. Each level has several signs within it, with messages from the mysterious "Sign Painter." They usually contain helpful information and are comically written, but they also serve as a creative means to narrate the story. They also set the tone for each level in conjunction with the fantastic musical score and stylized look. It feels at times as though Tim Schafer and Tim Burton had a hand in this title.

The game’s only real flaw is that occasionally it’s difficult to select one specific goo ball when it’s in the midst of a large group. There were a few times I needed a balloon ball but couldn’t select one before my construct crashed down. This is only a minor flaw, since the point and click controls otherwise work like a dream. A gamer with OCD can try to complete each level with a ranking of the same name as their disorder, but most will be satisfied after the title’s four to five hours of gameplay.

If more developers channeled the creativity and energy found in titles like World of Goo, there’s no telling how far this medium could go. The fact that it was made by a team of only three people is impressive in and of itself, but it also serves to highlight that the industry may need to rethink the development process and diversify its approach, because this small-time game is bigger than many in terms of quality.