We're only a month into the year of our Lord, 2014, and there's already some pretty stiff competition for game of the year with gems like...well, I doubt Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition will make the final cut, but I'm sure the new Super Smash Bros. and Metal Gear Solid V will put up a fight. Still, I'm calling it right here, right now. The game you can't afford to miss this year is Goat Simulator. Watch the video below to see why.
At first glance, it's hard to tell if this is a gag, or an actual game in development. While the amount of videos on the developer's YouTube channel might lead you to think the latter, it's just a creative exercise. For one thing, note the following portion from the video description that reads, "We're just playing around a bit with programming stuff, this is not our next big IP, calm yourselves journalists."
But if you're looking for more of a backstory, here's a blog post from the company in late January, which has the bizarre concept as the result of a 1 month gaming session so that the Coffee Stain staff could get its "creative juices flowing, to relax a little bit from all the crunching, and for the lols." Behold:
"This is Goat Simulator, a game where you will try to do as much damage as you possibly can as a goat. The elevator-pitch for Goat Simulator is 'Imagine a skating game, except instead of being a skater, you're a goat, and instead of doing tricks, you wreck stuff.' So...Billy Goat Gruff's Underground?
As tends to happen, the footage found its way over to Reddit, and viewership blew up, bringing in 200,000 views in the last 24 hours to the delight of capraphiles the world over.
In all serious, despite the truly bizarre concept that is Goat Simulator, Coffee Stain studios actually has some talent behind it, being the studio that introduced the FPS and Tower Defense genre mish-mosh series, Sanctum. And while we may never get the chance to climb neither mountains or ladders in a full game as a goat, you can keep abreast of any developments on this "baaaaaaaaaad" ass game over at the designer's Twitter.
