TOM FRANCIS
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World Of Goo Is Coming To Steam, Gentlepersons

Upupdatedate! Caleb points out that 2D Boy have now confirmed that pre-ordererers will be able to use their magic code to register the game on Steam and receive it there too. Fine job, Valve! I guess I forgot I got a magic code.

It’s also coming to Greenhouse and Direct2Drive – we care less about that here at James, but it’s great to hear they’re getting so much distribution-love.

Update: It’s coming to Steam, with eight achievements, and it only took ten months of me badgering them to sign it! Person-who-signs-things, Jason Holtman, notes in the announcement that “More people have told us to get World of Goo on Steam than any other title coming this year.” Possibly that IP-spoofing spam campaign was a step too far.

I’m buying it again. Direct from the developers is a good way to buy things, because they get all the money, but Steam is a good way to own things – on any PC, automatically updated, and nothing to lose.

Original post:

World of Goo (out Monday, £10/$20, 3-4 hours long, DRM free) is made by people for whom a level must have a point, and that’s strange to modern eyes and fingers. We’ve come to expect that games have a format, and a steady stream of content that fits it. This set of weapons, these possible enemies, plot delivered to you through this earpiece, progress implied by an increase in that stat, and all future experiences will be variations on those seen thus far.

World of Goo doesn’t have a fixed format; it is squishy. Whatever world it wants to take you to, the fundamentals of the game bend to realise it. Whatever engineering concept it wants to play with, old mechanics are plucked out and new ones glopped on to explore it. And whatever conceit of modern life the game chooses to mock, the entire visual grammar of the world inverts to caricature it with dreamlike brilliance.

It makes absolutely no sense that the art, writing, design, levels and music could all be done by the same guy.