Evri Blog

This post about my current favorite gaming obsession, The World Of Goo, is a bit off topic. Luckily, I read this post. In the review, on the blog Experience Points, was the line “To put it simply, it is a game about forming connections.” Well then. That’s what we’re about - forming connections! So, I could write about the World of Goo and Evri at the same time. The EXP blog suggests that the game is “about industrialization, alienation in the modern world, post-modern commentaries on consumer culture, and the downfall of technologically advanced societies”.  I thought it was a construction game where you try to get little balls of Goo to enter a pipe, but what do I know? The balls of goo, and the structures, follow physical laws so keeping your Gooey towers structurally sound provides lots of challenge. It reminds me most of the classic game Lemmings.

There is a lot of variation within this theme. As the levels progress, you get different types of Goo balls to work with — some that provide flotation, some that can be detached from their structures and reattached elsewhere, and others I have seen in screenshots but haven’t reached yet. The game is pretty charming, but there is enough of a snarky voice in the graphics and text in the game to avoid it being to sickly sweet. The forthcoming “profanity pack” may add a little more spice — I assume that will be left out of the family-friendly Wii version.

The game is really lovely to look at, in beautiful 2-D. The art reminds me of Dr Seuss with a Tim Burton hangover. It’s really hard to believe that this is an “indie” game written by two guys using a hotspot as their network. Or maybe it isn’t that hard to believe -  even the best big company games lack the innovation and personality packed into WoG.

WoG is really about how individual nodes are useful, but it’s much more powerful to build a network. And, if a network of goo balls is fun, how much more fun is the network or all of the people, places, and things we all care about. So, if you like World Of Goo, you will love Evri.

World of Goo is DRM free, available for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and the Wii, and it’s only $20.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Evri, games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.