World of Goo design tour
Whenever I play a game, I look for design lessons that I can learn and apply to my own games. Recently, I decided to show these lessons in the form of a video tour of games that make interesting design decisions. The first one is about World of Goo by 2Dboy. Please forgive the stiff narration; I am still getting used to talking to myself 
Be sure to watch this in HD!
Design Tour - World of Goo from David Rosen on Vimeo.
Just got a response from Kyle Gabler from 2Dboy!
“Wow thanks David! I laughed out loud at some of the very small, and embarrassingly correct, details you managed to pick up on. I remember the day we got the balls stretching and squishing along the velocity vector - an entirely cosmetic feature - but it instantly made the game more fun and tactile. Also, you noticed we used blurred foreground and background textures as a sneaky way to have higher image compression ratios. That’s completely right, which is funny, since that was a case of a technical limitation that actually caused the game to look better with more depth.
Very perceptive, thumbs up!”
Be sure to subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss our upcoming design tours! The next one (Knytt Stories), is already up here.
This was very interesting to watch, I’m looking forward to more! I don’t think the narration felt stiff, much better than I could do at least! *Goes off to practice*
It’s very good of you to share this with us, I learned a lot from this.
Thanks
This is an awesome video showing off world of goo. There are so many things World of Goo does right and David picks each and every one of them out. I mean, I just bought World of Goo just now because of this video. Good stuff David, I hope you keep doing these videos. Very informative, very easy on the ears even with your first time narration, not bad at all. I can’t imagine how these videos will be when you really start to get the hang of it!
Well as the others said, pretty awesome how you picked out every small detail.
This had to help yourself more than it did any of us, lol. It sounds like it’s important for a game developer to sort of pick apart other games, and realize not just how they can be beat, but how they make a person feel, and how it was put together to achieve this. Really fun video to watch, can’t wait for teh next one.
I am soooo glad to see you guys taking inspiration from games like this.
I am a casual gamer i love lugaru and peggle and geometry wars. They provide 10 minutes of intense distracttion at a time.
I don’t feel that lugaru has got the whole thing down yet, but its so enjoyable in those very intense moments, if that was wrapped up into nice little levels, with some updated graphics i’d be ecstatic.
I’ve been worried that too much time would be spent in blood, and frilly flashy features at the expense of simple immersive game play. But now i feel better.
Wow!, I have never heard you talk.
Nice Job! Very Interesting.
You better make more of these. This was extremely informative and enlightening
That was really very interesting. This is my favorite blog right now; keep up the good work.
I was not aware that World of Goo was that cool. I may just have to get it now….
Wow I loved this video. I’m trying to get better at game interfaces and telling stories implicitly- Thanks for this series, I’ll look forward to the next one.
That was great. I’ve played Goo through three times and you still managed to point out things I’d never noticed before, and explain how they’d been contributing to my fun without me realising it.
[...] David Rosen of Wolfire Games has made a video analyzing some of the design aspects of World of Goo. He brings up some sneaky little tricks we did that I didn’t think anyone would ever notice. This might be what it’s like posing as a nude model, but less chilly. David’s full article here: World of Goo Design Tour [...]
[...] you boot World of Goo up, it is clear that care was taken in every aspect of it’s design. This video covers a good amount of that care, and those lovely details. [...]
[...] Wolfire Blog has a neat analysis of the design of World of Goo (which, if you haven’t played it, is a rather fun game.) [...]
Very nice. I look forward to seeing more (if you can find more games with 8 minutes worth of good design decisions to comment on!).
David, you give deserving praise of the art style and skill progression. However, aren’t you overlooking significant interface problems in WoG?
For instance, picking one type of goo from amidst a cluster of free goo is a frustrating tossup. For ivy goo, the interface regularly confuses your attempts to grab free go as a command to pull apart the existing structure. Similar ambiguous clicks plague timebug use, as we can see in this video when David clicks a time bug and it takes him back a trivial drag move rather than a building step.
Further, while David is lauding the game for not telling you what to do, the video essentially spoils several levels by showing you just what to do.
It’s great to look at good games to hone your own interface design skills, even good games need a critical eye to really learn from.
I did have that problem grabbing from clusters of different goo balls, but I forgot about that; thanks for the tip! I should probably also add disclaimers this video and any future videos will probably contain spoilers, since they are not really meant to be standard reviews for prospective buyers.
Wow, no way dudethat is totally crazy!
jess
http://www.anonymize.us.tc
Looks very cool. I’m gonna go look this game up, I want to play.
Regarding your narration though… Did you also invent the Dyson vacuum cleaner? Because you sound just like that guy. I’m not sure, but I think you even used some of his script
That was a nice tour of the innovative elements of that game, I am looking forward to more from you.
Brilliant game! The most fun I’ve had with a computer game in like 4evr
Quoting myself on the Reticule: “Brilliant video. There’s so many incidental design decisions throughout World of Goo that you don’t really notice; but combine together to create an utterly unique aesthetic, and a hyper-intuitive UI.”
Great design eye there David. I pride myself in my journalistic aspirations of being able to pick out such minor aspects that contribute to the whole, but that video was genuinely enlightening
[...] Game Design Tour of World of Goo Dec.02, 2008 in cool, indie developers, programming Wolfire Blog has a great game design tour of World of Goo [...]
Hey David,
Your narration wasn’t stiff at all. I enjoyed the video and you convinced me to buy the game. I had played the demo before, but after the first 2 levels figured it was going to be pretty boring. Very neat, I want to see more of this.
This video is rad and you should feel rad for making it. More please.
Fantastic review, David!
I really appreciate that you presented your observations with a lean towards the more technical audience. You did a wonderful job bringing to light the tiny details that make this game so great!
Please keep em’ coming!
[...] design, including menus and statistics. Menus should look professional and be easy to figure out. No manual should be needed. Also, only useful stats should be kept. I don’t need to know every detail, but I want to [...]
[...] thanks to the way your cursor blob stretches and squashes with velocity and inertia. Check out David Rosen’s tour of the game for a nice analysis of the game’s design [...]
Excellent idea, good execution as well. Like James, I’d appreciate more critical view, but I’ll be looking forward to your next video anyway because this sounds (or tries to sound and isn’t too stupid - makes little difference to me) more clever than anything I’ve seen before, regarding video games reviews.
By the way, you should also mention which version of the game you are reviewing next time - I suppose you took Windows version of World of Goo.
That’s a good idea! A lot of games have significant differences between platforms, so it is important to be clear which one I am showing.
Very nice video! I’ve passed this along to some members of my department and hopefully we’ll be able to work this into our Intro to Game Design class next semester. Even discarding that, the video hooked me on the blog and finally convinced me to preorder Overgrowth. I’ll definitely be checking back often.
Análisis del diseño del juego "World of Goo"…
David Rosen hace un análisis de diferentes partes del juego World of Goo, desde la jugabilidad hasta detalles gráficos. Merece la pena verlo, no solo por el análisis, si no por la calidad del juego. Como curiosidad hasta los creadores del juego se han …
I have to say I absolutely loved your design tour. It was brilliant, I like the way you exposed those little, unnoticed features of the game, that many would just not notice, and others even if noticed, wouldn’t get the emphasis they give to the game. I hope you make more of these videos about other great games
Thanks!!
I’m used to Developers commentary in Valve made games, and I kind of wished World of Goo had the same feature, I love hearing all that technical stuff, and then apply it in my own games, and You made that possible
[...] and posted in Game News Tags : No Tags Possibly a little technical for some people I find the World of Goo game design tour fascinating. It really shows how much the little touches add up to make a game a more complete [...]
Amazing video! It gave an inspirational look into the game and the minds behind it. I think you are on to something here.
I caught one item you missed, and I can only attribute it to entertainment value. While booting, the game blurs past a number of text lines. Read them some time, then read them again the next time. Quite amusing, and a fun social commentary in it-self.
I really enjoyed your design tour. World of Goo is a great game to start with. I can’t wait to see what you do in the future.
You did catch several things that I hadn’t noticed, and I had been looking for them. You have a good eye for game design.
I watched my sister play the game for a few hours, and noted some of the things she had trouble with. For example, she had a hard time understanding parts of the interface, like where the menu button was, and that she could skip levels. I encourage you, if you have the opportunity, to watch a non-gamer play a game, as it gives great insight into how apparently intuitive design choices don’t work as well as we would expect.
As for your voice: you sounded like someone giving a SIGGRAPH presentation. You clearly knew what you were talking about, but it -was- stiff. I’m sure this is something that will sort itself out before too long.
Good catch, Bill J! Those text snippets are amazing, but Fraps had a bit of lag in recording, so I couldn’t catch them on camera. I am using a different technique now that will let me record things like that in other videos
10Neon: I agree about watching non-gamers try it; that is a big part of what made Portal so successful. I am definitely going to do that for Overgrowth, but I don’t know yet if i will have time to do it for design tours… I will have to make some non-gamer friends
About presentation stiffness: I hope that goes away with more practice!
[...] there was this great little video from the guys at Wolfire. It’s a dissection of the design elements of World of Goo, part of a planned series of Design Tour videos. Embedded [...]
Very good article. Interesting, and you even mentioned stuff I didn’t notice myself (like the shadow masked).
Keep up this intelligent, great work.
Cheers.
Nice job. It was interesting to hear you pick out the details and symbolism of World of Goo. I thought it was great to hear you talk about the red carpet level: I picked up on most of the symbolism in the game but completly missed this level! Thanks alot, if I didn’t already have the game I think you would have sold me on it!
David, I Loved your video, it explained a lot of stuff for me.
I am legally blind, and I dont play a lot of games, just because it is too hard to see what is going on in the game and I miss a lot of what I’m supposed to do in a lot of games…Visually that is…sound wise I’m pretty good at getting hints, I play a lot of old games where the 3-D aspect of the game is not that meaningful.
I LOVE WOG, I’m absolutely hooked, it takes me a few tries to get a level sometimes, like the third level with the saw blade in the middle, that level I’ve tried a bunch of times and I just dont get how to get around it, I nearly did it once, but I’d lost too many goo to proceed, oh well, I’ll try it later…
Take Care and have a great day..
THis is absolutely great. This is the kind of analysis Games Journalists should be able to provide. It’s quite sad that a designer has to do it, but i am thankful that you do. I’ll be watching these in the future.
Dude! I liked the analysis. Great stuff. Looking forward to more…
[...] miss our upcoming design tours! If you missed the first design tour (World of Goo), check it out here! SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Knytt Stories design tour”, url: [...]
[...] Wolfire Blog - World of Goo design tour ase forgive the stiff narration (tags: blog.wolfire.com 2008 mes11 dia9 game_design World_of_Goo video *****) [...]
That was great! Really enjoyed watching it. Keep up the good work! =)
[...] a Game Design Video Tour series on his blog. Great stuff! So far there is a game design tour for World of Goo and Knytt Stories. If you are interested in game design, you really need to check out these [...]
[...] miss our next video! If you missed the first two, you can check them out here: Knytt Stories and World of Goo. SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Gish design tour”, url: [...]
[...] I really don’t care! Nobody can tell us what to do. If, one day, I decide I want to make a video deconstructing the design of a game I like, I can take a day off and do [...]
[...] Read more about the video at Wolfire Blog. [...]
[...] game kicks ass. For an in-depth look at what makes it great, check out David’s design tour. World of Goo is available for Mac, Windows, and (almost) Linux, but the Nintendo Wii version is [...]
[...] Complimentary, David over at Wolfire analyzed the game in an in-depth video review World of Goo [...]
[...] thanks to the way your cursor blob stretches and squashes with velocity and inertia. Check out David Rosen’s tour of the game for a nice analysis of the game’s design [...]
[...] A physics-based puzzle game for all ages, World of Goo is filled with varying species of dynamic goo balls that form the building blocks of bridges, towers, and constructions, the whole point being to navigate around obstacles and reach an exit pipe. Sounds simple enough. But some levels will leave you frustrated and determined to create (or, in my case, recreate) a goo structure that might actually hold up. The game environment, including the music produced by Gabler, definitely has a dark, Tim Burton-esque feel to it that contrasts well against the quirky, upbeat goo balls. Whether it’s the actual science of building towers or figuring out the mystery behind the odd semi-involved characters (e.g. the painter, MOM, the Goo Corporation) that interests you, this game will definitely make you wonder. (Here’s a video description of it). [...]
Awesome analysis David, I enjoyed it immensely.
World of Goo is amazingly different! it’s like someone designed it with Tim Burton in mind.
I hyped it on Everhype.com and gave it 99% which I think is fairly accurate.
http://www.everhype.com/hyper/thebitch?X=G508
If you get on there rate me a 5 and request friendship.