I like the idea of independent and fun games. I don’t really have much time to play games, and I am horrible at 3-d things. I get lost in the real world, and I don’t want to emulate that within a sandboxed virtual 3-d environment. With monsters running after me. Trying to kill me. That is not fun, that is stressful. Two years ago I started to play the First Person Shooter “F.E.A.R.” but it was too scary for me. I never got very far in it. I got a bit farther in Half Life 2, but I still keep getting lost, and it becomes not very fun. And I hate those ceiling hanging things.

Anyway, the other day I heard about the high piracy rate for World of Goo (over 80%?) I had vaguely heard of the game before, and I think played the entry into one of the Independent Games Festivals that started the seeds for making the real game.

Since the game is reasonably priced, only $20!, and the bit that I played before was fun and interesting, and there were no monsters chasing me and trying to kill me, I bought the game. You should too: World of Goo. It is a really good game. I’ve played the first two levels (I know, I should really play more and get a real review out, but I just don’t have the time!)

But the coolest thing so far is that when I bought the game and payed with PayPal, things didn’t go well for me. I got a reply from PayPal, but not from 2d-boy. So I went to their site and went through the automatic tools for saying “I paid, but didn’t get my download link”. That didn’t work either, so I sent an email off, and then thought, “well, that will take a few days, so I’ll just go to bed.”

Before I could finish up with other net stuff though, withing five or ten minutes, I got a reply from Kyle Gabler at 2-d Boy who told me that PayPal was doing some server mantainence, and passed on the download link. I was amazed. You are lucky to get a real human at most companies, and I would never expect a message from one of the founders!

One of the other nice things is that you can download both the Windows and Mac versions (and Linux soon!) That is nice for me because I have about 5 computers laying around, and end up using different ones for different things (based on what jobs I’m working on usually.) Also, a great thing about the game is that there is no DRM. It is easy to install, and doesn’t treat me like a theif. I’m glad I bought it. It is a fun and cute game, totally recommended.