Goat Simulator 3: Making the stupidest game of the year is trickier than you’d think

Be the GOAT in the return of one of gaming's most ridiculously enjoyable success stories

Dolly Parton once said, It costs a lot of money to look this cheap." Likewise, making an intentionally janky game seems trickier than it looks. Working on the sequel to 2014's divisively meme-rich Goat Simulator, Stockholm-based studio Coffee Stain North has made a fine art out of looking shambolic. (There was no Goat Simulator 2, by the way. That's part of the joke.)

If you missed it back then, the premise of the sim is simple: you inhabit the least accurately simulated animal ever, causing caprine chaos in a sandbox world with no objectives, earning points along the way for damaging things, performing Tony Hawk-style tricks and licking stuff. Sometimes the goat rides around with a jetpack, sometimes it gets abducted by aliens; sometimes it becomes evil and sacrifices a fellow goat on a fiery pentagram. It's dumb. It makes no sense. And that's the point. So, how do you follow it up with something substantial?

Goat Simulator 3 is out 17 November on PlayStation 4/5, Xbox and PC.