The lead developer of World Of Goo, Kyle Gabler, has shared some news for fans of the quirky puzzle game, ten years after release. Since 2DBOY, the studio that developed World Of Goo, no longer has a blog, Gabler shared it through the website of his other studio, Tomorrow Corporation. The news consists of a free World Of Goo update that delivers a World of Goo remaster to the Windows, MacOS and Linux versions of the game, enhancing the experience for modern hardware and systems.
He emphasized that there are no new levels, no new characters, and no new battle royale deathmatch mode in the World of Goo remaster. "This is just a gentle remastering we did for fun." They replaced the game's framework, smoothing out the graphics and audio. It is now possible to run World Of Goo on high definition widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio by default, whereas the original was stuck at a "squarer 4:3 ratio." The game's resolution has also doubled from the original 800x600, on which the tiny graphic files "didn’t scale to huge monitors very gracefully." By using some high quality upscaling tools, they were able to overhaul each image, tweaking wherever necessary. However, it's still possible to keep the original graphics in case players get nostalgic.
There are other graphical and UI improvements, which were lent from releases on other platforms, such as the Nintendo Switch re-release. The game files are no longer encrypted, which opens more room for fans to mod and experiment with it. The update will be out on all three operating systems within the next few days, which is a timely date, as the game will also be freely available from Epic Games Store from May 2nd to May 16th.
Those who are in a rush to try it out, Gabler says they can still get the game from 2DBOY's official website, but only if they purchased it "before 2014 or so," where they can use their old download link and dust it off, taking the remaster for a spin. And if you can't find your original receipt, you can still figure out a way through this page.
Are you interested in checking out the World Of Goo update? Will you pick it up for free from the Epic Games Store on May 2nd? Do you think more developers should do updates like the World of Goo remaster? Let us know in comments below!