Goat Simulator: Remastered preview – buggier than ever in the best possible way

Producer Joel Rydholm wants you to try and break it

Goat Simulator: Remastered / Coffee Stain Studios

Goat Simulator: Remastered might be the buggiest game of 2024. That’s not a criticism - that’s one of its biggest selling points.

Developer Coffee Stain Studios’ return to the world of Goat Simulator features every single DLC released for the slapstick sandbox game since it launched in 2014. This includes MMO satire Goat Simulator MMO, a send-up of zombie shooter DayZ titled GoatZ, and a Payday parody where you do pranks instead of crimes. There’s also the previously mobile-only DLC, Buck to School, where you enroll at Goatville High to beat up book thieves, win the hurdles, and replace the prom queen.

Goat Simulator: Remastered / Coffee Stain Studios

As you can imagine, combining all of these DLC packs into a single game that was already unstable at the best of times is anarchy. Goat Simulator: Remastered is literally marketed on Steam as having “more bugs that you can shake a goat at.” That’s accurate.

The bugs, however, are as hilarious as they are occasionally game-breaking (there is a button to instantly reset your goat should you get stuck). Many of them come as a result of Mutators. They’re in a dedicated menu where you can customize your character with shark fins, wings, jetpacks, and much more, and there’s virtually no limit to your Frankensteinian monstrosities.

You can, for instance, opt to turn your goat into a whale. Now, whales don’t have legs, so you’ll just lie there motionless as a big, physics-enabled pile of blubber, spraying water at passers-by through your blow hole. That is unless you strap on a paraglider and soar limply through the streets, crashing into cars and sending pedestrians flying. It’s a unique sight.

Goat Simulator: Remastered / Coffee Stain Studios

You could turn yourself into a gimp and scoot along in your leather jumpsuit, become a giraffe, then whack on a space helmet that definitely was not modified to fit a giraffe’s head or give yourself Spider-Man-like web-swinging controls (they don’t really latch onto things properly, but it’s fun to try).

Mutators are deep enough to give you hours of fun alone. According to publishing producer Joel Rydholm, there are an infinite amount of combinations. “It’s impossible to test for bugs,” he says. “I think there are more combinations than particles in the universe. There are like 50 mutators and you can combine them in all sorts of ways. The combinations are endless.”

Make your goat giant and give them rocket skates. Turn them into a microwave with legs, then spit out globs of slippery oil. Become an egg then add the tornado Mutator to unleash mini cyclones. Be a dolphin in a wheelchair or a flamingo with a laser gun. It’s ridiculously entertaining to go through the list mashing several Mutators together.

Goat Simulator: Remastered / Coffee Stain Studios

“The mobile version had a bit of a similar system, but it didn’t allow for mixing and matching as much,” says Rydholm. “The first one did on PC, but you had to reload back into the main menu.” The new quick menu is there for one purpose: to “totally break the game, of course.”

You can also switch between DLC whenever you want by pressing Tab in the menu, or by choosing from an overworld map. Goat Simulator MMO, for instance, sees you explore a feudal fantasy land doing menial quests for NPC villagers, like dragging wooden carts or battering demons. There’s even a simulated MMO-style group chat in the bottom left corner.

Goat Simulator: PAYDAY, meanwhile, sees you pick and choose pranks from the PRANKNET database, like leaving a flaming bag of chocolate on someone’s doorstep or stealing a drill from the local DIY shop and using it to break into a bank vault and steal a block of cheese. If you’re looking for a game to challenge your reflexes or broaden your horizons, look elsewhere, but what’s here is quick, frivolous fun. 

Goat Simulator: Remastered / Coffee Stain Studios

Added to that is general performance polish. Previously made on Unreal Engine 3, Goat Simulator: Remastered is now ported to Unreal Engine 4. This comes with improved visuals, updated textures, better lighting, and a new foliage system. Glitches have been fixed, but only the boring ones.

There’s a lot of love for Goat Simulator at Coffee Stain Studios. This remaster is its way of paying homage to the last ten years. As Rydholm says, without Goat Simulator, his company wouldn’t exist. “We didn’t have a lot of runway left. The studio did Sanctum and Sanctum 2. They did OK, but we had maybe like a year left on salaries.”

Then in 2014, the company had a game jam. A developer banged together a quick concept of a goat running around causing mischief, then posted it to YouTube. The video, titled Goat Simulator 1st Alpha Gameplay, quickly went viral, amassing millions of views. “2014 was really the year of the goat,” says Rydholm

“That just made us decide like, OK, let’s just make this game. Let’s make it fast when it’s still hot. That turned out to be a very successful gamble.” And now, ten years on, you can run around a fake high school as a goat crossed with the Xenomorph Queen from Aliens throwing dynamite at students.