It’s exhausting: all this chatter and grumbling about a possible GTA V PC port, just so that we can populate Los Santos with anthropomorphic elephants and YouTube with more ragdoll madness. Why bother, when we can just settle for Goat Simulator?
Goat Simulator, I’m deeply saddened to say, is not destined for full release. It’s a prototype built as part of a month-long game jam at Coffee Stain Studios-the Sanctum lot.
“We’re just playing around a bit with programming stuff,” deadpan its developers. “This is not our next big IP.”
Even so, it’s intensely watchable stuff. Accepted developer logic has it that ragdolls only take effect at the moment of player death. But GTA V and Goat Simulator both prove that the potential for pratfalls – and therefore entertainment – is much higher if you trigger the flailing whenever the player comes into contact with an object.
Coffee Stain have attached a point system to their prototype which rewards ludicrous ragdolling accordingly – making it the Tony Hawks of human-griefing (and what are goats, really, if not griefers?).
You’ll notice the familiar purple-and-white battenburg placeholder art of Unreal Engine 3, which gives me an idea: how feasible would it be to introduce Goat Simulator as a sort of instant fun plug-in for lacklustre Unreal shooters?
Call me, Epic.
Thanks, Kotaku.