You can’t stop progress.

World of Goo is the latest free game in the Epic Games store: a beautiful and surprising puzzle game published by indie game developer 2D Boy.

In this charming, gooey world, you’re tasked with building sticky structures against the forces of gravity and environmental complications such as hills, cliffs and chasms. These structures are made out of millions of Goo Balls who don’t know that they’re in a game, or that they are extremely delicious.

The World of Goo devs recently announced that the PC versions of the game would see updates for the first time since around 2008 or 2009.

Highlights Include:

• The game now runs at a high definition 16:9 aspect ratio by default (the original ran at a more square 4:3)

• The resolution of the graphics have been improved. While the original game ran at 800x600, the small graphic files didn’t scale well to larger modern monitors. If you’re looking for that original experience, there’s a setting to use the original graphics in-game.

• UI improvements from other platform releases were applied.

You can find details and more improvements in their recent update blog!

Q&A

We had a chance to talk with Kyle Gabler, co-founder of 2D BOY and Tomorrow Corporation, composer, enemy of jump buttons and the creative force behind World of Goo.

Q: How does the team feel about how well World of Goo has been received in the last ten years?
A: We're excited people still enjoy this game we made a long time ago! We get emails that say things like "I played this game when I was a kid, and now my kids are playing it!" which is wonderful and rewarding and makes us feel delightfully old, and a little unsure how the math works out. But for all the new people playing for the first time, we hope you have fun!

Q: Back in 2010, Kyle mentioned that a sequel to World of Goo is a possibility, and something the team would enjoy working on. Did updating the original game scratch that itch, or does World of Goo 2 still exist in the realm of possibilities?
A: It's always possible we might return again one day and build World of Goo 2. But for now, we're exploring other adventures. Players who made it to Chapter 4 in World of Goo might notice something about our next (but very different) game, "Welcome to the Information Superhighway".

Q: You’ve expressed hope that this newly updated World of Goo will be more open and friendly to mod. Do you have any favorite community mods?
A: If you ever want to do some modding, or browse stuff other players have built with the game, goofans.com is the place to start. They also have a much nicer leaderboard than we ever had.

Q: Where can we get the World of Goo Soundtrack?
A: Good question! You can download or stream the soundtrack here, for free: https://kylegabler.com/WorldOfGooSoundtrack/

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about the Experimental Gameplay Project?
A: The idea was that if you can make a game fast, like in only a week, without caring too much about it, you're more likely to stumble on unexpected and hopefully promising new kinds of gameplay. There are lots of game jams with similar philosophies these days - like Train Jam - if you ever want to try out something similar - it's fun and liberating! Tower of Goo - the original prototype for World of Goo - was one of the games that came out of EGP, and looks like it's still available freely online here. You can try out all of them here, if you're feeling brave!

Q: What draws you guys towards unconventional gameplay?
A: We're a small team of 3 people with no office, and we do all our own childcare too. So there's no way we can make the next sprawling World War 2 shooter or open world alien blaster or whatever better than big studios with big budgets and big teams. But we can totally make the best game about building stuff out of sentient balls of goo (World of Goo). Or the best existential mid-life crisis simulator (Little Inferno). Or the best game about giant computers made out of humans (Human Resource Machine and 7 Billion Humans).

Whatever it is we're building, we just want to give players (and ourselves) the chance to play with stuff that we haven't ever really played with before.

Q: What does Kyle Gabler have against jump buttons?
A: Oh no is the jump button lobby coming after me? There are like an infinite number of things you can do that aren't jumping. When is the last time you - you, the person with your fleshy human body - jumped? Did you jump today? Or yesterday? I haven't jumped in weeks. I could jump if I wanted, but I don't because nobody cares about jumping.  So why all the jumping in video games? A game controller has like 4 useful buttons on it - 4 things you can do - and each button can do anything you can imagine - anything at all in the whole universe - and we're like "how 'bout jumping?" Have you ever heard anyone say "man I wish I could be really good at jumping and do jumping a lot". So it's not even like it's a power fantasy that we're satisfying.

To be fair, our most recent game made you sort arrays of numbered cubes with teams of automated office workers, so I may not exactly have my finger on the pulse of what's hot in gaming, but I know we can probably give players more stimulating things to do than pressing a jump button!

If you love World of Goo as much as we do, we’ve got great news. More Tomorrow Corporation games are coming to the Epic Games store soon! (Very soon!)

Keep an eye out, and be sure to pick up your free copy of World of Goo, free in the store until May 16, 2019 at 10:59 AM EDT.