World of Goo 2 review: New world, same goo

I never got around to playing World of Goo, but you can bet I was keenly aware of it. The late 2000s were full of breakaway indie hits, and World of Goo was one of them. Between racking up a pile of rewards and ending up on every platform, it was impossible to miss. At the same time a sequel seemed inevitable, and yet ostensibly never going to happen. Until now, 15 years later, World of Goo 2 has emerged from the darkness. And it’s every bit as much of a heavy-hitter as the first, with a surprisingly dense story, brain-bendingly difficult puzzles, and a massive skill ceiling.

Stepping in the goo

Readers, I regret to inform you that I am terrible at this game. After the first few levels I found myself constantly challenged, sometimes even scratching my head from the start of a stage to even understand what World of Goo 2 was asking me to do. In most cases, that’s a testament to how well-designed the puzzles are. In other cases, it did feel like the game had a bit of a guidance problem. The signposting is very inconsistent, with the first level giving an illustration of the basic mechanics, but subsequent levels either giving cute hints of what to do or literally giving the player nothing to go on at all.

Still, I soldiered on as best I could given my own barriers and the relative lack of time between playing the game and doing the work part of reviewing it. Over time, my biggest takeaway is that World of Goo 2 has a striking inconsistency on how much it cares about you. Some stages are happy to give you time and ample resources, and the space to be creative or clumsy in your solution. Other levels are incredibly rigid, with hard limits to what you’re allowed to do and in some cases literal time limits. There isn’t really a sense of ramping up to the harder stuff, or a Super Meat Boy-like introduction and escalation of verbs and gimmicks. World of Goo 2 just seemed to throw stuff out to suit individual puzzle ideas.

Frustration is intensely subjective and personal, especially for games like this. But I did find myself appreciating the game’s offer to skip puzzles whenever I wanted. Every now and then I’d hit something that was going to be a war of attrition and restarting levels over and over, threatening to suck all the joy out of my life. Other times I’d have a lot of fun with a level despite its challenge, happy to plug along and figure it out. World of Goo 2 is incredibly challenging, but it’s a huge variety of challenges and the designers seemed very aware of that. So rather than coddle a player with tons of guardrails or other mechanics that may feel like compromises to a puzzle master, you just skip and move on. Fair enough!

Getting stuck in the goo

There were some annoyances that got in the way regardless of the challenge. For one, the screen is rather zoomed-in, and the stages can be quite large. The puzzles themselves could have multiple steps, requiring focus on specific parts of the stage or even more than one. And you can either drag the screen around or temporarily zoom out. Being unable to see the whole picture at once while you’re working on solving an elaborate puzzle is a weird limitation. There were also occasions when a level would have a bright background, making the little wispy, white lines indicating where a goo… ball(?) could be placed hard to see.

Narratively, World of Goo 2 is fascinating. Like I mentioned earlier I missed the first game, and had no idea I’d be walking into a puzzle game that had cutscenes and a story that escalates as much as it does. There’s capital-L Lore here, although it isn’t so bogged down in it that it comes off as self-indulgent. The general premise feels natural, since we’re talking about a bunch of levels centered around manipulating oil-like, black goo that is also sentient to some degree. And it turns out “World of Goo” is literally the name of an in-universe corporation.

Learning lessons from the goo

The environmentalist angle takes an interesting and comically relevant turn here, making an immediate commentary on the ways corporations have played with rebranding to make themselves more friendly to market-conscious liberal types. Going hands-on with a company that is entirely built around exploiting a living being as an energy source gets caught doing so, then (successfully) presenting itself as reformed and even sustainable is pretty funny. It’s weird that as the player you’re the one pushing the goo into the tubes though, making the cutscenes feel divorced from the gameplay in an awkward way.

World of Goo 2 is exactly as it presents itself. It’s a lot more World of Goo, with more levels, gameplay mechanics, fancier visuals, and a new/continued storyline. As cute (in a sinister way) as its style looks, this is as hardcore as physics-based puzzlers can get. The game does not hold your hand, often has really tight margins of error, and only offers the bare minimum of guidance when it feels like it. That said, there’s a surprising amount of variety, and you’re allowed to skip levels without being penalized. Even if you struggle, there’s a lot of cool, smart design and an interesting world to experience. For fans of the first game, of course, World of Goo 2 is a no-brainer.

World of Goo 2 is available on August 2, 2024 for PC and Nintendo Switch. A PC code was provided by the publisher for this review.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.