World of Goo Update, 10 Years Later
Hey old friends, it’s been a long time! We no longer have a 2DBOY blog, so thought I’d post this here – we’ve just updated the Win / Mac / Linux versions of World of Goo for the first time since 2008 or 2009 – and hope you and your modern computers enjoy it!
We’re slowly updating the game everywhere it’s currently available over the course of this and next week. Some info on what’s new:
- To be super clear, there are no new levels, no new characters, no new battle royale deathmatch mode. This is just a gentle remastering we did for fun.
- The framework has been replaced. This is the thing that draws all the graphics onto your screen, and sends all the audio to your speakers, etc. This means the Win / Mac / Linux version should work on modern computers again without freaking out, and you can run the game on modern displays at whatever resolution you want.
- Game now runs at a hi-def widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio by default. The original ran at a squarer 4:3 ratio.
- Resolution of graphics is doubled. The original game ran at 800×600, and the tiny graphic files didn’t scale to huge monitors very gracefully. We used a few different high quality upscaling tools to start, and then went over each image by hand, tweaking each image further as needed. In a few lucky cases, we still had the original source files and were able to use those. But if you still really want the original flavor, there’s a setting to use the original graphics, also included with the game.
- Fabulous joke about looking good in hi-def has remained unchanged.
- Brought over graphical and UI improvements from releases on other platforms, like Nintendo Switch.
- No more encrypted assets or save files. We hope this makes the game more open and friendly to mod.
- The config.user.txt file is now located wherever your save file is stored. So no more editing that file in your Program Files folder. It has a bunch of new config vars exposed as well.
- We’ll be updating the game everywhere Win / Mac / Linux versions are available in the next few days.
Want to try it right now? If you got the game directly from 2dboy.com sometime before 2014 or so, and if you can still find your old download link, dust it off and give it a click. The new Win and Mac versions should be there waiting for you, Linux coming soon. Let us know (here in the comments or at 2dboy.com) how they work for you, and especially if you find any bugs! You can also try to look up your download link here if you can’t find your original receipt.
It was fun returning to World of Goo again, and hope you enjoy this small update!
Kyle (the one from 2DBOY & Tomorrow Corporation)
