Goat Simulator

When it comes to game-making, if a development element becomes popular, you can tell that you’re going to see more and more games using it. This ranges from styles to genres to game development softwares to gameplay elements and, even, experiments with physics. There’s a reason why so many goddamn games are trying to be the next Call of Duty. That’s also why so many games on Steam are made on the Unity engine – it has a free version out, so anyone could download it and start making games. Hence why Steam’s store is filled with Unity games, ranging from “great” or “amazing” to “so memorably shitty that everyone makes fun of them”. One trend, which is still going om, is ragdoll physics.

Simply said, ragdoll physics turn every character that gets hit into a wriggling messy mass that can barely move by itself, and overreacts to any other kind of stimuli such as being pushed away, carried around… or blown up. And of course, the term comes from ragdolls, boneless puppetlike toys whose limbs can be twisted in all directions. Games utilizing these physics for an effect will have almost every character capable of bending arms, legs, even the head in all the most unrealistic ways possible. Joint stiffness? Motion ranges? What’s that? Who cares, look at that guy, he looks like some sort of Eldritch monster forgot how its human body was supposed to work, and it’s twisting every limb like there’s no bones or muscles in that body! …that’s funny, right?

Even The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild made use
of ragdoll physics; although it usually means Link is about
to get hurt, badly. So, a darker example than most.

Point being, like every overused mechanic that has gained popularity in game development, it’s become a part of the worse games out there, mostly because some developers thought it would be funny. Other games downplay the use of ragdoll physics, using them in some situations but not making them a core element. That’s the thing: ragdoll physics, by themselves, are not funny. Sure, you get a kick out of them the first time you see what they do, but the joke wears thin fast.

Today’s title was an in-house experiment by Coffee Stain Studios that was eventually developed as a full-fledged, “bad on purpose” game that intentionally screws around with physics. Released on April 1^st, 2014, Goat Simulator has since achieved sort of a cult status, attracting mass interest upon release for its silly premise. Like the Flappy Birds of this world, the mere premise sent the Internet into a frenzy, with people both clamoring and denouncing how stupid the idea is. There wasn’t much to do at first, but the game grew and gained more and more modes, and Coffee Stain Studios even released a bunch of DLC to stick their Bovidae protagonist in even more silly situations.

Come to think of it, maybe I should have used this as my April 1^st review this year instead of Starbomb. Oh well! Shall we get into this?

Road vehicles explode when you ram into them.

The concept of Goat Simulator is simple: You’re a goat. Do what you want. Try to get the highest score. That’s… about it, really. You’re free to do anything a goat can do: Run around, lick things, drag stuff around, walk up or run towards and attack people at random. You’re not just a goat, you’re an indestructible goat. Thankfully, everyone else is just as indestructible, so you can go to town on any unsuspecting citizens and no one will bat an eye. Or you can be a nice goat, behave for 5 minutes, and become an angel. But seriously, who wants that?

Oh, I should add this to the concept of Goat Simulator. This was the motto at Coffee Stain: If it doesn’t utterly break and crash the game, don’t repair it. They want to keep their experiment as a bug-riddled mess… precisely because it’s funnier that way. Hell, they practically advertise it as having “More bugs than any other game!” Thankfully, while you can encounter a ton of glitches that could make the name nearly unplayable, there’s a nifty Respawn option to get your goat out of any inescapable situation. It happened to my goat, once, it got stuck under the floor of a house being constructed. Yeah, respawning is easy as a click of a button, so if your plan is to utterly break the game without crashing it, you can still get out of trouble quickly. (You can actually crash the game; there’s an achievement for it.)

These explosions sure send that goat flying. In normal circumstances,
there wouldn't be enough goat left to stick in a Ziploc bag.

This also means that normal physics are utterly broken in this game. Sure, there’s gravity, but you goat can be sent flying in so many ways that it’s like one of the main forces of the universe has chosen to go on a coffee break.

I would gladly party and dance, except, goats aren't
exactly renowned for sick dance moves.

Of course, you can’t walk around and act like a goat without having worlds in which to walk around and act like a goat. And Goat Simulator offers, from the get-goat, three areas in which to let loose your silliness. First is Goatville, a suburban zone with houses, a cornfield, forests and mountains. It’s moderately-populated, so there are quite a few humans around to headbutt and kick. Then there’s Goat City Bay, an extension of the former, closer to the sea and more closely resembling a city. You can go into the water and meet a whale, you can run around the city part and discover secrets, you can go on the top floor of the nearby Put-In Hotel and steal Deadmau5’s DJ spot at the party going on there (not even kidding; Deadmau5 is in this game!), you can visit the dam and possibly find a UFO, or you can just go to the amusement park to have fun and kick carnival-goers around. The third open area is called Goat MMO Simulator, and it’s simply your goat in an MMO fantasy world. Go to town, rack up a score (it’s like experience), level up, and find the dozens of secrets around.

"Look, my goat; everything the light touches is our kin...
Oh, you don't care."

Yes, that's an ostrich. Wearing the Deadmau5 head.
With a guy on its back. On top of a UFO.
With an alien laying nearby.

I think I made it clear: Every location in this game has a TON of secrets. So many, in fact, that you can go around these areas for hours and never discover most of them. On Steam in particular, a lot of achievements that can be earned in this game are all about discovering these secrets. The achievements’ descriptions don’t say much, but there are many helpful community guides to help you find them all. You pretty much need these guides in most cases, unless you stumble on these secrets by accident (though for some, it’s impossible since they may require long chains of actions, like seeking multiple items scattered across the world you’re currently in). Your goat can carry around almost anything. Just lick it and run away. Yes, that includes people and other animals – and that’s how you complete many objectives for achievements.

Hm... Steve Works... with apples all around.
Gotta wonder if this is a reference to something...

As an example, in Goat City Bay, there’s an achievement for licking the roller coaster and going on a joyride. Only thing is, to activate the elevator going to the top of the coaster, you need six batteries scattered around the map. Some are very well-hidden. Same if you want to buy every hat from the hat shop; for each hat, you need to lick a wad of dollar bills somewhere in the Bay and bring it to the store’s owner. Goats understand basic economics: Who knew? The game also has its own brand of odd humor, with puns and references all over the place. One achievement simply says “Hit the Jackpot”. Do you have to go to a casino? No, just go in a house, find a pot written Jack on it, and lick it. Another achievement involves getting to the top of the skyscraper without using the elevator. You can’t, unless you know about the whale in the water and its ultra-powerful blowhole that will send your goat flying in ragdoll mode, with enough power to be flung over said building. Just control your goat to land there! Among the other secrets, you can lick a towel with 42 written on it, and bring it to the spaceship in order to make a whale fall from the sky. And then you can drag that whale around. Have I mentioned that physics in this game were on vacation? Unless you extensively visit every single area to find every secret and actually think about combining the most unlikely of items, you might simply be unable to get most of those achievements.

Including special goat forms for the Goat MMO Simulator!

Granted, getting them is usually awesome. After goofing around for a bit, you might start completing the requirements to get these achievements, because it leads to things you might not see otherwise. Speaking of, many achievements unlock new playable characters. Yep! New goats to play as. There’s of course a bunch of goats with special abilities, like the Devil Goat which can unleash demonic telekinesis powers, the angel goat which can float for a period of time, the Goat Queen which can summon goats from the sky… Most other unlockable goats come with special abilities. There are modifiers that can be applied to any goat, these will give the goat something additional that will impact gameplay; these include a jetpack, various hats, a Deadmau5 head that will give your goat more spasms, a ghost, a double jump ability… I won’t list them all because there are many. Oh, but if you want something more exotic, you can unlock a TON of additional playable goats… which aren’t goats. A giraffe? A robot? A T-Rex? A penguin? A whale? (Yep, there’s a whale too.) A Minecraft goat construct? A ghost? A SLICE OF BREAD?

Literal bread... and a toaster too!

Yeah, I wasn’t kidding about that one. Either way, you have options, and while it can be tough to unlock them all, you can make Goat Simulator, an idea that was silly in the first place, a game built with silly in mind, even weirder than it had any right to be. Walking bread…

Ender's Goat. Armaggoatdon. In space, no one can
hear you bleat.

And of course, since it’s so popular, DLCs have been made for it, each being a new themed environment to walk around in. There’s a goat zombie game titled GoatZ (“The first survival game not in Early Access!” they proudly proclaim – yep, say what you want about this gimmick game, at least they’re self-aware). There’s a DLC based on Payday, with focus on robberies and crimes, something your goat should already be an expert at doing already if you spent any length of time in the game. The last DLC brings us IN SPAAAAAAAAACE! Titled “Waste of Space” (heh), this is all about the goat wreaking havoc on a space colony, because that’s totally what the future is about: Goats breaking stuff in space. Forget the robots, the discovery of new worlds, the interstellar exploration. Goats smashing space stations is where it's at.

And that’s about it. It’s just a funny game that doesn’t take itself seriously on any aspect, and should be considered as such. It’s not about completion (outside of the achievements, anyway), it’s not about venturing and exploring (well, a little, but not that much)… It’s just about doing fucking crazy stuff because you can, because you’ve got a goat with hooves that can kick and a tongue that can lick, physics that are undergoing seizures, and no limits to the silliness.

Odd reason to be walking down the street.
But hey, at least they're not neo-nazis.

Now, I wouldn’t say that it’s flawless. It was made to have as many flaws as possible, after all. Can I criticize the wonky physics when the game was designed that way on purpose, and every gamer knows that going in? Can I say that there’s no real goal outside of getting all of the achievements? Well, I could definitely say that most achievements are practically impossible unless you visit areas in their entirety, find all of the secrets, and think of combining things that don’t even seem like they had anything to do together. A lot of things that I could criticize actually make an awful lot of sense; of course Jetpack Goat can’t control its jetpack flight. It has no thumbs to control it. And as it turns out, the “giant goat” (actually a whale) is pretty damn impractical to use and maneuver. I mean, it's a frikkin' beached whale, what else did you expect? The entire game just breathes “developers having fun”, and who cares what the market thinks? If it’s “so bad it’s good”, it’ll catch on like The Room, or Birdemic. And if it’s so appreciated by the fans, they’ll buy the DLC alright.

You can even play as a penguin!
It's called "Classy Goat".

I can say, though, that some goat modifiers aren’t very clear in what they do, and some tend to make the game more difficult (for achievements, anyway). The Deadmau5 head would give my goat spasms and would randomize some of its movements, something that could have been voluntary, or not. And as I said, many achievements cannot be earned unless you follow guides – they’re just that hard to get sometimes. And, of course, Coffee Stain Studio added achievements for each DLC environment… meaning that if you thrive for 100% completion, you’ll have to shill out an extra 10$ for modes you might not even have that much of an interest in.

If you want games with clear goals, games that take themselves seriously and are free of bugs… well, obviously, skip this one. This is really just for fun and you should buy it for its current price of 10$ only if you’re looking for something silly and fun between rounds of other, more competitive games. The price tag may be a little high, in fact. But yeah, I enjoy this one.

Alright then, see you next week!