Chatting About Purgatory and Glitches Too Good to Remove in Goat Simulator

Goat Simulator hit Xbox One and Xbox 360 last week, bringing insane physics and caprine-based destruction to your consoles. In observance of the launch, we got the chance to speak with lead developer Armin Ibrisagic about the hows and whys of Goat Simulator… and the answers are just as crazy as the game itself.

Xbox Wire: Why a goat? Was there ever a time when the game featured a different animal as the catalyst for chaos?

Armin Ibrisagic: Basically, all animals are goats. Giraffes are just really tall goats; ostriches are just goats with feathers. And wouldn’t it be ridiculous if we made a game called Tall Goat Simulator? That wouldn’t make any sense.

Xbox Wire: For the unfamiliar, can you describe Goat Simulator in five words or less?

Armin Ibrisagic: If the two words in “Goat Simulator” don’t sell you on the game, no five-word description will. It’s a Goat Simulator. That’s it. You play as a goat. If that sounds appealing to you, then that’s PERFECT, we have EXACTLY what you’re looking for. If that doesn’t sound like something you want to do, then you’re bleating in the wrong tree.

Xbox Wire: Many people don’t realize that there’s an existential metaphor in Goatville. Can you talk about the balance of good and evil in this game?

Armin Ibrisagic: Hopefully this isn’t a spoiler for most people, but Goatville is our version of purgatory. With stuff like the Devil Goat and Angel Goat, along with Heaven (we use the Swedish word “Himlen”) and Hell (“Helvete”) road signs, we’re always surprised when people don’t notice. The world is a strange place; people should notice that something isn’t quite right. That’s the first part of our journey into goat existentialism, in that we always miss the most obvious things and interpret them in a way that makes sense to us, or that confirms our bias.

Xbox Wire: For people who have already enjoyed the game on Windows PC, is there anything new or unique to the Xbox One and Xbox 360 versions of Goat Simulator?

Armin Ibrisagic: What’s unique in these versions is that it doesn’t normally crash! The PC version melted the best gaming machines out there with its bugs, crashes, and sheer resources needed to power our goat simulation technology for just one goat. So the answer is, in short, that it actually works – and with more than one goat! It may “crash,” or you may “fall out of the world,” but that’s part of the fun. In the end, we got it to stop tinkering with the saved games of other titles installed on the same Xbox console, so that’s a win (This is a joke. Goat Simulator will not eat your saves). Thanks to some of the best technologists working on these Xbox editions, we managed to get two goats running at the same time on Xbox 360, and with the mighty power of Xbox One we were able to get four (quad) goats!

We’re not completely sure yet, but there might even be some Xbox-exclusive bugs in the Xbox One version! Try and find all of them!

Xbox Wire: Goat Simulator blew up thanks, in large part, to people sharing videos. What’s the most insane thing you’ve seen?

Armin Ibrisagic: The Devil Goat bugging out is something we never knew could happen before the game was released on PC. We added an ability to the Devil Goat called “vortex,” which basically spawns a black hole in your forehead that pulls ragdolls and props towards it when you press Y. Simple enough! However, if you press Y and then become a ragdoll yourself, it pulls you towards the vortex, which results in the vortex being pulled away from you (because it’s tied to your forehead), which pulls you towards the vortex and the vortex away from you and well… hopefully you get the picture. Stuff flips out. The first time we saw that bug was around two hours after the release of the game, when people would exploit the bug to fly around the world with a ball of 100 props following them while playing Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball.” Needless to say, the bug was too funny to remove, and we’ve made sure it’s still in the game!

Xbox Wire: Did you expect Goat Simulator to become an Internet cultural phenomenon? And has that changed your approach to games going forward?

Armin Ibrisagic: Not even remotely for a second, and yes.

Goat Simulator is out now for Xbox One and Xbox 360 via ID@Xbox – just $9.99 for all the goat insanity you can possibly handle!