World of Goo was the first indie game we ever came across – it hit the Nintendo Wii in 2008 and we picked it up a year later. Simply put, we were completely blown away by its staggering brilliance. It’s a masterpiece of an indie puzzle game, but it’s since become perfectly adaptable to the demands of smartphones the world over.

A decade on from its release (we edited this post on 13/01/2018!), World of Goo has made its way to Steam, multiple games consoles (most recently it was bundled as a launch game on the Nintendo Switch), mobile, tablet, and everything else you can imagine. It’s brilliant – it hasn’t aged a bit and its ingenious nature has ensured it’s a total classic.

World of Goo

What you do in this game is manipulate, through gestures, the little blobs of goo all over your screen. You construct bridges to traverse weird environments, guiding the little gits towards salvation. As you progress, a really rather witty satire on capitalism and consumerism plays out in cut scenes, with everything made all surprisingly dramatic with a clever and brilliant soundtrack.

This is, definitely, one of the best puzzle games in recent memory. It’s addictive, gosh darned fun to play, adorable, and excellent. You can get it on pretty much anything these days so hunt it down – you’ll be able to pick it up for a small fee. Of about £3 or something. Christ, even a tramp could afford that!

Be warned, however, when you fail to get every goo through to the end of a level you will feel the following: guilt, horror, shame, more guilt, and a genuine sense of existential despair. However, you’ll like spend most of your time wracking your brains training to work out some of the deviously clever stages. This one is for the ages, no doubt – an indie game triumph that refuses to let ageing spoil its genius.

Soundtrack

Indie games have a habit of throwing up stunning soundtracks, it really is quite impressive! Kyle Gabler’s famous work here has been particularly celebrated and he applied clever techniques in order to ensure the end result was extra impressive. The above track, Brave Adventurers, we’re particularly fond of and you get a sense of adventure as you get your goo balls ready for a new stage. Ahem.

Some of the music is particularly dramatic, too, even reminding us of David Wise‘s work for games such as Donkey Kong Country 2. Gabler, however, also designed, wrote, and illustrated the game, so his multi-talents came into great use here with moments of choral beauty. With Burning Man above, for example, he had two friends singing single notes, but then used some computer wizardry to give the impression a full choir was involved.