In the spirit of chaotic fun, the developers have intentionally left bugs that don’t crash the game in place. Achievements and points provide a loose structure to the chaos, but Goat Simulator is ultimately much more of a playground than a structured game. You play a goat, set loose in a joke-filled, ragdoll sandbox to wreak as much havoc as possible. Footage posted to YouTube exploded in popularity, prompting the developers to create a full, retail version. Goat Simulator initially came out of an internal game jam at Coffee Stain Studios as a riff on the strangely popular, prosaic Simulator games like Euro Truck Simulator. (Mac, PC, Linux) What began as a joke has quickly become one of the most delightful parodies of recent open world games. Each game lasts about 50 hours and supposedly has a definitive ending. The game features no active controls, but rather lets you passively influence your little biome by inputting melodies. Described as an “art horror,” “relax-’em-up,” and “mountain simulator,” Mountain starts by prompting you to create three drawings which then seed the procedural generation of your unique mountain, replete with interconnected systems of flora, fauna, and dynamic weather.
Thus begins the first actual game from digital artist David O’Reilly, most recently notable for designing the holographic video game in Spike Jonze’s Her.
