World Of Goo 2 guide: 8 essential tips to know before playing
World of Goo 2 is with us! Just a mere 15 years since the original game changed the indie scene forever, 2D BOY and Tomorrow Corporation return with a whole new world of blob-based construction challenges, and it’s a complete joy.
But to ensure you have as much fun as humanly possible, we’ve put together a guide with top tips that you should know before you get started. No spoilers here, as ludicrously tempting as they might be to drop in—but trust me, you must get to Chapter 4.
If you played the first game…
The first thing to know is that World of Goo 2 is not some monumental step forward from the original game. This isn’t World of Goo 3D, nor does it desperately attempt to crowbar in zeitgeisty elements like making World of Goo into a card-based roguelite farming sim.
The original World of Goo was about as close to a perfect game as you could hope to get, and its sequel has the sense to stick very closely to that format.
That’s not to say World of Goo 2 isn't packed with surprises, bizarre twists, and entirely new challenges, but they’re all—or okay, not all, but we promised no spoilers—based around the same fundamental principles. You connect sentient balls of Goo together to form structures, then use those structures to help the rest of the Goo Balls reach a level’s exit-pipe.
If you played the original game, you’re likely good to go—except, hold on a second there buddy, did you play the original game well? Because we’ve got tips here that’ll aid you in that first game too. And if you didn’t play it…
Let's get up to speed
World of Goo 2 is all about construction—but this isn't some high-falutin mechanical sim. Instead, it's like trying to make a stepladder out of gelatin. Your basic starter ball, the regular black Goo Ball, rolls around independently until you pick it up with your mouse cursor and hold it near a structure. At this point, it'll make like an atom and try to create two covalent bonds, each linked to another nearby Goo Ball. Ta-da, you’ve made your first triangle!
Except Goo Balls aren’t rigid, because (and hold onto your hat) they’re made of goo. As such, the structures you build are wobbly. The higher you go, the more gravity will fight back, eventually pulling a precarious tower down to the ground. The game has intuitive physics, so the leans, the sways, and the eventual topples all feel understandable, though they might also frustrate. You need to think about integrity, about building a wider base that will withstand the bendy ways of gooey bonds. More on that in a bit.
Generally, the goal of a level is to get a specified number of Goo Balls to the exit-pipe by building a route along which the unused Goo can travel. Save the given number of balls, and a flush chain (like on an old toilet) will appear, letting you finish the level. Or you can ignore it and continue seeing how much more Goo can be rescued—because they are being rescued, right? We’re doing good here, aren’t we?
As you progress, World of Goo 2 introduces different Goo Ball types with their own unique properties. Perhaps they form different numbers of bonds, or are reusable, or (new to the sequel) can transport liquid.
It’s okay to make mistakes
This rule is true in life as well as World of Goo—unless perhaps you’re a heart surgeon. But in World of Goo 2, you don’t need to worry about everything suddenly going horribly wrong. It will, but levels have little white bugs flying about, known as Undo Bugs, that when clicked will take everything back a step.
If you just added a Goo Ball and it caused your entire structure to come crashing down, you don’t need to start over—just click the bug and try again. And unlike the first game, Undo Bugs are now unlimited, so you don’t need to worry about getting stuck in a bad state.
This leads into another useful tip: you can go fast and break things. Exit-pipes are like vacuum cleaners, and apply a hefty sucking force to nearby objects. Get your structure near enough and the pipe will hold it in place, meaning a tower that was about to fall down will now be safe.
This means that sometimes—and only sometimes—the right move is to build the last few stages of your plan ridiculously quickly, enlisting the pipe’s aid to keep it stable even though everything was about to fall down. And if it goes wrong, the Undo Bug has your back.
It’s getting better and wetter
The most immediately obvious change since 2009’s original World of Goo is the presence of liquid in the world. It’s integral to a lot of the puzzles—but in the manner of World of Goo 2, it's rarely used the same way twice. There are some puzzles where you need to build bridges across which liquid can travel. Others, you transport liquid using the new absorbent Goo Balls whose bonds work like pipes, creating routes through which a pool of goop can flow.
This new element also offers a new way to increase the amount of Goo you can save from a level. Strange bird-like head-things, attached to the pipes, will transform the liquid into individual (although seemingly non-sentient) balls, and then spit them in a direction of your choosing. You’ll encounter a bunch of puzzles that involve getting liquid from its starting point to one such bird-spitter (as I’ve just named them), then aiming toward another structure that reaches an exit-pipe.
And that’s just the start. As you progress through World of Goo 2, there are new twists on how you handle the gloopy puddles, or even deliberately create them. But the entire point of the game is to encounter new things and then experiment to work out what they do, so we’re not telling you any more.
Go easy on yourself
Like many modern puzzle games, World of Goo 2 has added extra (optional) challenges to its levels. These are bonus targets for how quickly you can complete a level, how few moves you can make, and how many Goo Balls you can rescue—the latter a much higher (and therefore tougher) goal than the number needed to simply finish the level and move on.
The most important thing to do with these when you first play World of Goo 2 is ignore them entirely.
These extra challenges are super-fun to try to achieve later. Some are seemingly impossible and force you to rethink your whole approach to a level, and it's great they're included—but don’t worry about them yet.
If you dwell on them too much as you’re playing, it’ll taint your experience and cause you to think you didn’t do well enough. You did! If the flush chain appeared, you absolutely entirely succeeded at the level! You needed to save a set number of Goo Balls, and you hit it. Be proud, take the win, and move on to the next challenge. The extra goals are something to come back to, not a judgement on your initial performance.
How to build the sturdiest towers
Right, let’s get to the most important skill for World of Goo 2: structural integrity. And to ensure these are the best tips possible, we went straight to the source and asked the game’s co-creator and "Creative Dictator" Kyle Gabler for his advice.
The first thing Gabler says is, “Build the biggest triangles you can.” When you hold a Goo Ball near a structure, white lines will appear to show you where the bonds will form. The further away the ball, the thinner the line—but don’t be fooled into thinking this will make your structure weaker.
“Each Goo Ball arm is the same strength, regardless of length,” says Gabler, “but every Goo Ball adds weight to the structure, so try to use fewer.” You want to place those balls where the white lines are so thin as to be almost invisible, meaning you’ll get the longest arm possible, but it's just as strong as any other.
Gabler’s second tip is to spot your weak points. “Watch where your structure is buckling,” the developer advises. “Structures often fail somewhere near the base. Look for this failure point, then use your Undo Bug to go back in time, and strengthen that bit. Real world engineers don't have the luxury of going back in time, but you do!”
How to build the strongest bridges
Once again, why listen to us bozos when one of the people who created the game has the details? Much of the same advice applies when building horizontally, although obviously now gravity offers a whole new set of challenges—especially when you’re trying to traverse a large gap but can only build from one side.
“Build towards a point higher than your intended destination,” says Gabler. “Your bridge will naturally settle down lower.”
If you want to take this to the next level, you can even build your bridge straight up and then deliberately let it fall. “It's often helpful to build a tower up, and then topple it over like a drawbridge to span your cliffs,” says Gabler. “This especially applies to shorter bridges, as in the two Hot Slinky levels. For longer bridges, it is typically best to just build a bridge the old-fashioned way.”
Regarding that old-fashioned way, another top tip for stopping bridges from collapsing too soon is to build a triangular strut beneath where your bridge first stretches over a chasm. Plop an extra Goo Ball so its lower point touches the inside of the wall. The rest of the bridge will push against this, making it harder for it to immediately bend downward and fall.
Accessibility and challenge
World of Goo 2 doesn't sacrifice challenge, but it's a far more forgiving game than the first, primarily in the name of accessibility. If you reach a level you simply cannot complete, you can now pick “Skip” from the pause menu and simply move on. It’s worth saying that the levels in World of Goo 2 are all eminently fair and designed to be completed, and much of the difficulty resides in the optional Challenges. But it still sucks to reach a dead end, and World of Goo 2 removes that obstacle for everyone.
There are also a few extra-tough levels here and there—but World of Goo 2 even calls out that you should keep moving if they’re too hard. They’re designed to be optional, and the progression path skirts around them. Still, they’re all a lot of fun, and worth a try anyway.
World of Goo 2 is available now on the Epic Games Store.