If you wanted to make a case for bringing more games to Apple’s mobile platform, you could do worse than citing 2D Boy and its puzzler, World of Goo.
The cartoony, challenging structure-building title was originally an award-winning indie PC game, first released in 2008. World of Goo was warmly received on the PC, but seemed to have been the victim of heavy piracy. But the game saw some serious success once it made its way to iOS in the early portion of 2011.
In just over a year of being available on Apple’s devices, World of Goo has already notched more than 1 million downloads on Apple platforms, according to a story from Pocket Gamer. 2D Boy first released World of Goo as an iPad title for $4.99, and later made the iPad, HD version universal. It then released a slightly lower-priced version specifically designed for the iPhone for $2.99. It also released a $9.99 edition in the Mac App Store. According to 2D Boy’s blog, the $4.99 version has accounted for 69 percent of downloads and 79 percent of revenue; the $2.99 version, for 29 percent of downloads and 17 percent of revenue; and the $9.99 version, for 2 percent of downloads and 4 percent of revenue.
Since its release on iOS, World of Goo has been racking in accolades. It was one of the best-reviewed games of 2011 according to Quality Index, found its way onto our Best Games of 2011 list, and generally seems to have found a big audience on Apple’s platform. Touch controls, it seem, work well with building things out of goo.
World of Goo has also found a home on Google’s Android platform, where it has notched another 520,000 downloads since its release about a month ago. There are two World of Goo versions available in the Android Market: a free demo version and a $4.99 full version. The free download has seen the vast majority of downloads with 450,000, while the paid version has notched another 70,000.
Clearly, however, World of Goo has made a massive splash in the mobile market. 2D Boy’s 1 million sales of at least $2.99 each and as much as $9.99 each must have generated quite a bit of revenue for the developer, and while piracy might have made life hard on the PC platform, mobile has provided a place where a quality game like World of Goo can thrive.
Hopefully, success stories such as 2D Boy’s will encourage more indie game developers to port their titles from the PC sphere to the iPad and iPhone. We’ve seen quite a few games go this route, including titles such as Anomaly Warzone Earth and Defenders of Ardania, and it’d be great for even more impressive indie games to find a home, and an audience willing to pay, by making the jump to mobile.
