If there’s one thing you can trust the team behind the Goat Simulator series to do, it’s dedicate entirely to irreverence. The first game made a splash as a PC hit of the most absurd design, giving players a game that offers up goat-shaped madness on a platter as a bleating anarchist, headbutting and licking an unstable world into further chaos.
The game’s charms have never truly worn off, and as Goat Simulator 3 skipped the “2” and brought even more absurdity, and now as GamesHorizon got a sneak peek at the game’s long-awaited first DLC pack, Coffee Stain North proved that their dominion over the carnage simulator genre wasn’t over yet.
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The Capybara At The Center Of The Universe
Coffee Stain North has revealed the Multiverse of Nonsense, the latest chapter in the anti-story of Goat Simulator 3 that pits players against an interdimensional capybara in search of the mythical expansion stones in order to put the newly-jumbled multiverse back together.
The first thing you’ll notice about the world of the DLC is that it’s a beast of many parts – Ancient Greece, a topsy-turvy goat-led urban jungle and cartoonish playground have all smashed together in dramatic fashion, giving players a sprawling world to explore.
The attention to detail of Goat Simulator is rarely considered by fans on the search for a mere goof, but the sheer number of things to do across Goattroit, Olympus and Goofville is impressive, with any given view offering a smorgasbord of instincts, missions and even boss battles to engage in.
Multiverse of Nonsense delivers on every key facet of the fun that one has come to expect from Goat Simulator – daft activities, worlds packed with silly moments, and the chance to headbutt your friends from the top of mountains (an opportunity that the Coffee Stain North team didn’t squander in our preview).
The DLC maintains a great deal of the jank that the core game does, continuing to follow the ethos that Ludwig Sjöstedt, lead designer for Goat Simulator 3, reinforces with his attitude that “fun is more important than bug-free in most cases,” with the early build of the expansion leading to a couple of crashes and hysterical framerate dips.
These are issues that are likely to be addressed in Multiverse of Nonsense’s full release, but in the meantime, as the team erupts in raucous laughter when two goats in a cartoon car are crushed by an anvil and electrocuted at the same time and drag the game itself to a crawl, it’s clear that once again, Goat Simulator will find a way to be fun no matter the technical cost.
Across the Mining-Verse
What’s most compelling about the game’s dedication to a “Multiverse,” though, is the current cultural understanding of what the concept does for a property, leading to crossovers that weren’t before possible. Mentioning this to the team led to an exciting proposal – “It’s funny you should say that,” says Johanna Röjås, the game’s Technical Artist says. “Maybe we should go to the MiningVerse?”
Knowing the connections of Coffee Stain made us suspicious as to what the game’s team meant, but seeing it unfold before us confirmed what we’d hoped – the first of an implied few crossovers present in Multiverse of Nonsense confirms a collab with Deep Rock Galactic, and features a mission that sees goats loading gems and rocks into the M.O.L.L.Y transport system.
“They were super good sports about it,” Röjås says of Ghost Ship Games, the team behind the mining romp under the Coffee Stain publishing banner. “[They] lent us assets and stuff to work with on this collab. It’s an homage, everything we reference or spoof is out of love.”
This swings a proverbial door open – could this lead to wider collaborations? Could the team finally pursue their dream crossover? It’s possible, but it’s going to take some more consideration from Coffee Stain.
“I don’t have any specific [collab] in mind,” says Sjöstedt. “but it would be fun to do something that is completely ‘un-goat.’ Something that’s super mysterious. Something like ‘how could you possibly turn this into something funny?’ but then we somehow… magically… do turn it into something funny.” So, something like The Last of Us?
“Oh no, emotional damage!” laughs Röjås, launching into theories. “Pilgar gets a baby goat that she needs to nurture and protect and mentor. Making moral choices…”
Cuddly carnage
The wider DLC, even devoid of the crossovers that may lie further in the shattered multiverse, perfectly reflects what Goat Simulator is about, and the game’s team remain immensely excited about taking the silliest course of action at every turn.
The most impressive displays of team involvement lay in the little things, like Sjöstedt providing Metal growls in the soundtrack for a boss battle with a chameleon Hydra, and Röjås rattling off names of team members who lent their voices to a Dr Phil-inspired advice show in Goattroit. Everything is immensely stupid, and far better for it.
The greatest moment of our brief look at the DLC came as Röjås stepped to the front of a Goat preschool, bleating and dancing to watch a tribe of goat kids bleat and dance in response. Everyone playing is so enamoured with the work they’ve created, squealing with delight and excitement, and it’s an incredibly inspiring showcase not just of the quality of the game’s first DLC, but of the working environment that Coffee Stain North has created in the process.
Tough To Bleat
Feel free to call Multiverse of Nonsense just more Goat Simulator 3. After all, the ceiling of absurdity can only reach so far into originality, something that even Coffee Stain North themselves have acknowledged in poking fun at how many multiverses we’ve seen in pop culture recently.
But frankly, asking for anything more might miss the point of Goat Simulator 3 – if it’s a one-trick goat, that’s okay, because that one trick is effortlessly hilarious every single time, and getting friends involved in the carnage only makes the violence more delicious.
“I’ve got three humans, a menu sign, a traffic sign and a piece of wood on a leash and I’m walking them,” says Röjås, dragging her miscellaneous items across Goattroit. “This is Hot Girl Summer right here. What else do you need in life?”
Multiverse of Nonsense isn’t trying to be anything it isn’t. But we’d never ask Coffee Stain North to pack their ethos and approach to game design up, because if we ever found ourselves in a multiverse without horrific goat-people, anvils that make you entirely two-dimensional, and the chance to bleat “rock and stone!” into a cavernous cave, then we’d be far, far worse off.
Goat Simulator 3 : Multiverse of Nonsense releases today on Xbox Series, PlayStation 5, Android, iOS, GeForce Now, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.
