Kyle Gabler—grizzled and haggard but still managing a boyish smirk—approaches a podium set up in a suite at San Francisco’s Clift Hotel. He hasn’t slept recently and fumbles while hooking his laptop up to the video system.

He’s debuting his baby, the videogame “World of Goo,” before a horde of critical journalists who have packed the room for a look at an upcoming series of games that will run on Nintendo’s Wii platform. Gabler plays the trailer, which he spent all night editing, and starts “Goo”—delving straight into a grassy world filled with cute blobs aching to reach a mysterious black pipe.

That first run goes smoothly, but Gabler spends the rest of the day praying the prototype of his game won’t crash as the journalists try it out. “I was terrified the whole time,” he recalls. The future of his two-person studio, 2D Boy, rides on the success of “World of Goo.”