The iPad version of World of Goo was released on December 16, 2010. It can be purchased from the App Store for $9.99.

This page describes the changes between the desktop and iPad versions of the game. For further information about the iPad version, see the frequently asked questions.

Demo version

There is presumably a demo version that goes as far as Hanging Low. This is deduced by an additional signpost text SIGNPOST_HANGLOW_2 which reads "The Goo Balls had hoped their progress would be recorded!|But they knew that because of important World of Goo Corporation regulations...|...there was no SAVE feature in the DEMO version.|And that when the power turns off, everything will be lost.|...|-but the Sign Painter never forgets".

There is a new EndOfDemo movie.

A link is added, presumably to the title screen, called "get the full version".

World of Goo Corporation

In order to see other players' towers in the World of Goo Corporation, the player needs the Apple Game Centre installed. This is not available until iPad iOS version 4.2.

The number of balls in the Corporation is limited to 200.

Whistle

Tap and hold to use the whistle.

Performance Optimisations

Many particle effects have had their maxParticles value halved to improved performance. Some levels have had extra ambient particle effects removed.

World of Goo Corporation is limited to 200 balls.

Strings

As with Linux version 1.41, a new file "profanity.xml" has been added, containing only:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<strings>
  <string id="MOVIE_CHAPTER3END_1"
    text="WTF?" />
</strings>

In "text.xml" this string is defined as "what is it?". There seems to be no way to enable "profanity.xml".

In the strings, "GooBall" has been consistently replaced with "Goo Ball".

The credits have been updated to include the iOS programmers, and special thanks to DavidC and the GooFans.

A complete text diff from 1.40 to iPad 1.0 is here.

Japanese

A new file "text.jp.xml" has been added; this is of the same format as text.xml but only contains English and Japanese (jp).

Additionally, "resources.xml" has been extended. Whereas before a <font> had only attributes id and path, it now also has an attribute jp, the path to the Japanese font.

Profiles

While you can still have 3 profiles, you can't enter a name for them; they are all called Anonymous, unless you have Game Centre installed, they are all instead called by your Game Centre user name. Additionally, the currently selected profile now shows up in the title screen under the world.

The pers2.dat file has no online player key but has two new fields for Game Centre data, documented here.

Balls

The dragmarker and detachmarker images have been changed on all the balls; the word inv has been added. For example, instead of dragmarker_128_p1, there is now dragmarker_inv_128_p1. Could this mean invisible?

Shine parts have been removed from some balls.

ZBombMom now contains 37 ZBombs (down from 42). UndeletePills now contain only 2 Spam letters (down from 4).

A particle effect named "zBombBurn" has been added, and is used in ZBomb to replace fireBallBurn.

Levels

SuperFuseChallengeTime has been changed significantly. There seem to be fewer beauties on clouds, and the OCD has been reduced accordingly (was 32, now 18).

ImmigrationNaturalizationUnit also has fewer balls and the OCD has been reduced to 51 balls (down from 61).

Deliverance also has fewer balls.

Audio

Music is stored in AAC format with a .aac file extension (MPEG ADTS, AAC, v2 LC, stereo, mostly 44.1kHz but one file is 48 kHz).

Sounds (in both sounds/ and balls/) are stored in compressed AIFF format with a .aifc extension (IFF data, AIFF-C compressed audio).

Movies and Animation

Movie and animation binltl formats are the same as other 32-bit platforms.