By Kieron Gillen on September 2nd, 2008 at 10:43 am.
Yes you can! If only for five minutes. After our recent lovely experiences with playing German demos and computer gaming simulations of pretty tedious jobs involving heavy machinery, when “Bill” pointed us in the direction of the Deutsch-only demo of Bagger Simulator 2008 we took one look at the video of enormous sand-moving machines and had to immediately pull on our hard hats and have a crack.
Sadly, you don’t get a chance to drive the monstrous pictured machine in the demo (Or maybe you do – it is in German, after all, so it could be hiding in the coils of their Teutonic tongue). Instead, you get a chance to drive what I’m going to call a digger, if only to give someone in the comments thread to have a chance to chip in and tell me it’s actually called Her Majesty’s Holy Soil Shunter or something.
Anyway – here’s my little baby.
As you see with the vehicles crossed out on the left, there’s other things to drive, but I’m stuck with this chap. He’s got two sets of controls – movement and the shovel-thing (Which can be lifted and tilted). I Immediately set to work playing with the sand to discover it’s got some kind of (er) sand modeling physics, so you can move the stuff around. Which is handy in a game based around enormous earth moving machines.
So starts my quest to find something to do. Sadly, there’s not actually anything.
I’m actually relatively experienced with building sites – the word “relatively” being key, as it’s in comparison with the rest of the weak-limbed RPS-team. My Dad’s a builder, so I spent a fair chunk of time working summer holidays hefting hods and applying grout, which taught me valuable life lessons like “Do anything to avoid a job that actually involves real work”. However, I never really had a proper crack at any of the machinery. Clearly, this grated somewhat – diggers are kinda awesome. I suspect it’s these fantasies which Bagger 2008 exists to fulfil, so as I’m playing I’m trying to show my Dad exactly how great I’d have been if I’d been put in charge of several tons of metal.
I do this by working out how much havoc I can cause. So I pick up a mass of sand, and trundle off to a the nearest machine, which I’m going to call an Ostrich-Head Digger. At which point I discover there doesn’t appear to be any collision detection with the vehicles, as pictured above. This means my plan of burying the other machines under piles of sand is ruined.
Man!
Instead, I dump the sand through it and go zooming off the ramp on the right.
Since I can’t do anything here, all is left is escape. I work out how to accelerate and speed off to try and break through the exit. No collision detection, alas, only works on vehicles, so I come to a halt. I petulantly dump my sand there and wonder what to do next.
At which point my five minutes is up. Which is appropriate, as five minutes is about as long as I worked on a site before slacking off for tea anyway.
As far as I can work out, all you can do in Bagger 2008 is move sand around, with no discernible purpose. Well, maybe there’s sophisticated Role-playing elements I’ve missed or something.
Anyway – here’s a video of it in action, enlivened with some impressively inappropriate eurohouse.
You can download it from here.
I have no idea what “Bagger” means.
02/09/2008 at 10:50 Meat Circus says:
Bagger is a Teutonic manufacturer of bucket wheel excavators. It’s a niche business.
02/09/2008 at 10:55 Jonas says:
I’m not an expert on sims, but surely even they need to present you with some sort of challenge or at the very least a purpose, eh? What exactly is the point of this?
I like the behaviour of the sand though. Eh…
02/09/2008 at 10:55 The Sombrero Kid says:
i call them mecha tyranosaurs and imagine them rampaging the country side as a Giant weapon platform of death!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
is that just me?
02/09/2008 at 10:56 Okami says:
http://dict.leo.org/?lp=ende&from=fx3&search=bagger
EDIT: The music really is awesomly bad. What’s the deal with german gamers and really bad techno music?
02/09/2008 at 10:56 jamscones says:
Unlocking the Bagger 288 Gran Turismo was a real let-down. 0.6km/h races are not very exciting.
02/09/2008 at 11:21 Simes says:
This is why I love this site.
02/09/2008 at 11:25 aldo says:
Presumably as opposed to Halo: Tea Bagger simulator 2003
02/09/2008 at 11:29 suchchoices says:
this music makes me ill
02/09/2008 at 11:44 AbyssUK says:
What will they do next! A tunnelling machine simulator? Deep Sea Mining Hero ? A Mars Rover Sim with real-time delay ? VR Paint drying? Seriously… they can’t be any money in this surely..
02/09/2008 at 11:56 Jim Rossignol says:
A tunneling machine sim would be awesome.
02/09/2008 at 12:06 MartinG says:
The user comments at the Gamesload.de site are not encouraging. Btw, this company also has published a garbage disposal simulator called ‘Müllabfuhr-Simulator 2008′
02/09/2008 at 12:23 AbyssUK says:
When will it end…
02/09/2008 at 12:27 Leelad says:
Please bear inmind that when mocking german techno that it’s not properly “german” if there is no 8foot tall bleach blonde 50 year old man shouting over it.
02/09/2008 at 12:27 Jonas says:
I was just about to suggest a telephone salesman simulator, but I think that might actually be a pretty hilarious dialogue tree based game.
02/09/2008 at 12:32 Taximan says:
Admittedly, I think the sand physics look pretty nice. Now Why doesn’t someone make a meteorite-impact/Doomsday/Tunguska event indie game using that? Or just use that for some WWI game for creating dynamic crater-shelter in No Man’s Land.
Spent some time last summer with (semi) heavy machinery as a groundskeeper at Helsinki’s Linnanmäki themepark. One of these actually. Was great fun. Rain or shine, get up before dawn, get to the park, drive a tractor with a dozer/scoop thingie, spend several hours while most of the city sleeps schleping stuff around, chicaning around confined spaces at high speeds, blasting Wolfmother/Clutch/Amon Tobin/Squarepusher/Pete Tosh/Radio Helsinki/Basso Radio from the in-tractor radio at loud volumes.
So the streaming video is a pretty realistic indication of the work. It should just include great impact pranging physics when you bump into *anything* you thought would be solid, and should make you sweat bucketloads during fine weather since you’re basically stuck in a poorly ventilated greenhouse from the driver’s cabin. Still, maybe its more fun when you get paid for it.
Strange then. Some games’ subjects are fun when you do them in real life (err… piloting heavy machinery), while others are things no-one would want to do in real life (err… anything involving violence basically).
02/09/2008 at 12:40 Arnulf says:
Interesting sidenote: you pronounce “bagger” exactly like the english “bugger”.
Go figure.
02/09/2008 at 12:40 Surgeon says:
Okami says:
EDIT: The music really is awesomly bad. What’s the deal with german gamers and really bad techno music?
Please don’t say that Okami, I fear for your safety.
If you call that nonsense Techno, you suffer the wrath of the Belleville Three smashing down your door and forcing you listen to that Euro cheese fest until your head explodes.
02/09/2008 at 12:40 Ragnar says:
@Jonas
I suggest a telephone sanitizer simulator.
02/09/2008 at 12:45 Flint says:
I first read it as “Badger Simulator”. The truth was disappointing.
02/09/2008 at 12:49 davidalpha says:
bagger (in dutch) means: “slick, the stuff on the bottom of a lake or pond”
Theres also a verb Bagger, which means “to remove bottom of lake stuff”
02/09/2008 at 12:51 Rudolf says:
whoever has enough time on their hands to play stuff like this is either of the following, check which applies:
a) masochist
b) lottery winner, nothing better to do
c) hardcore gamer (finished WoW on 3-6 servers already)
d) stupid
Seriously, this “game” was reviewed in this month’s “PC Games”. They mocked it through half a page, hillarious read ;)
02/09/2008 at 12:56 Kieron Gillen says:
I’m d.
KG
02/09/2008 at 12:56 Ben Abraham says:
I keep hearing the lyrics to the song as “Get on the floor with the vomit shoes and more” or something… Pretty sure that’s not quite right.
02/09/2008 at 13:00 Forceflow says:
They should have dubbed it Sands and Time.
02/09/2008 at 13:07 Schtee says:
I fucking live for euro-thump.
02/09/2008 at 13:07 Biff says:
It’s the logical evolution of sandbox gaming.
02/09/2008 at 13:09 Yann Best says:
Eurohouse is /never/ inappropriate.
02/09/2008 at 13:15 Feet says:
That music really is impressively inappropriate.
I’m quite charmed by it!
02/09/2008 at 13:22 Rudolf says:
and here I was thinking that the authors of this blog were all a&b’s ;)
02/09/2008 at 13:23 hydra9 says:
@Ben Abraham:
I actually think it’s ‘the vomit you adore.’ Seriously.
02/09/2008 at 13:25 phuzz says:
@biff
you win the internets.
02/09/2008 at 13:27 Jochen Scheisse says:
“Bagger” actually translates as “mechanical digger”. Used as a verb (anbaggern) it’s also widely accepted slang for trying to hit on a member on the opposite sex in a blunt manner.
Also, this somewhat takes me back to a time where sandbox gaming was about making sand cakes and driving my Bagger to erect mighty sand castles…ah, good times. I wonder if you can build sand castles in the game.
02/09/2008 at 13:38 AndrewC says:
If I could put on my Paul Barnett hat for a moment (which is furry), aren’t most games tidy-ing simulators – where you go around an environment messy with discarded health and ammo packs and various pests and tidy it all up? And MMOs’ left-click grind-a-thon seems less involving, gameplay wise, than driving a tractor around.
And if I could stereotype all of you into the same strawman for a moment (thanks), you lot are bloody typical you are – harping on about how a good game can be about anything until such time as as you are faced with a game that doesn’t involve killing Orcs. You lot, I ask you.
02/09/2008 at 13:39 _Nocturnal says:
In my language (Bulgarian), taken from god knows where, “bagger” means precisely “excavator”, so… yeah, it fits.
In other news, I stick to my thesis that all of these ridiculous simulators could benefit a great deal from the inclusion of zombies in areas other than their target audience. In this case, for example: Sand – boring. Zombies – fun!
Instant win!
02/09/2008 at 13:43 Calabi says:
Why is it? when you think about these things they sound really cool, but when they build the games they are so crap and boring.
If you want to be a train driver, play Train sim and you’ll be cured of that aberation.
I guess that cant have the real fun stuff of dropping sand on peoples heads, and driving up a motorway backwards because it might encourage kids and cause anarchy.
02/09/2008 at 13:46 Kelwyn says:
Ich finde das Spiel richtig Mega-affen-titten-geil!!! Da kann ich mal so richtig die Sau rauslassen. Yippie.
Übrigens echt heftige Mucke ^^ ;D
For the not germans speakers: I LOVE THIS GAME AND MUSIC SO MUCH. ME HOPES THAT THERE CAN WILL BE A MULTIPLAYERS FUNCTIONING.
02/09/2008 at 13:53 cliffski says:
And people say MY games are boring or directionless. I have been outdone. This makes ship simulator look like Call of Duty.
02/09/2008 at 14:08 Meat Circus says:
@Cliffski:
I hope you’re viewing this as a direct challenge.
02/09/2008 at 14:12 TheBard says:
One of these giant Schaufelradbagger in the headline picture actually stands not far away from where I live. I went to such brown coal pit with a group last year. They mine brown coal to burn it in coal plants for energy. The scars in the earth left by this are enourmous, but they plant huge woodlands on areas where there is no more coal to be found, which makes really great recreational areas with lakes etc.
One of the brown coal Tagebauten (mining areas) can be seen here:
http://maps.google.de/?ie=UTF8&ll=50.913208,6.502533&spn=0.059311,0.148487&t=h&z=13
you can actually zoom in and see several of these Schaufelradbagger there, though the most of them only push sand around. The ones on the coal are attached to a huge transportation network which brings the coal directly to the power plants in the vicinity.
02/09/2008 at 14:15 affront says:
No no no Jonas, you have it all wrong:
A telephone salesman simulator…
MMORPG!
Using Voice over IP.
Or even better using the players’ real mobile phone numbers, so that you can annoy them to buy your stuff during real life.
I’d play that.
02/09/2008 at 14:16 Lake says:
When do the Constructicons form Devastor?
02/09/2008 at 14:20 Arnulf says:
Hmm.
I want to meet the person that “finished” WoW.
Seriously. That must be a deranged individual.
On second thoughts, maybe not…
02/09/2008 at 14:47 antonymous says:
Everyone knows the Brits have no miners anymore and thats the source of all the obvious envy, they can’t dig :)
02/09/2008 at 15:27 James says:
“i call them mecha tyranosaurs and imagine them rampaging the country side as a Giant weapon platform of death!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
is that just me?”
I can say with some authority that it isn’t. They have quite a menacing roar when provoked by smaller earthmovers.
EDIT: And I think that this is possibly the most funny comments thread I’ve seen on RPS. Well done.
02/09/2008 at 15:44 sbs says:
This is not even the worst of all concepts. They make busdriving sims, subway sims, frickin’ waste disposal sims! It’s just… disgraceful.
02/09/2008 at 15:56 The Sombrero Kid says:
IMAGINE THE DESTRUCTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
02/09/2008 at 15:59 Oddbob says:
I really want a game that looks awesome and you get to play a bucket wheel excavator tearing up the land.
Someone make it happen, please.
02/09/2008 at 16:35 MeestaNob! says:
This is so pointless I want it. Am I broken, or just amongst friends?
02/09/2008 at 16:40 Noc says:
So I read the article.
And I thought to myself “So this is a . . . sandbox game!” And I felt all clever, and resolved to put it in a comment. Then some jerk (cough) did it first.
Now I just need to think of a way to mod this into Dwarf Fortress.
02/09/2008 at 18:51 Little Green Man says:
Um can the guys who run this site PLEASE help me!!! Whenever I look at the three latest posts by you guys it thinks I am logged in as you. On the latest one it asks me whether I want to mark comments as spam and thinks I am Alec Meer, and won’t let me comment.
02/09/2008 at 20:46 knijk says:
In Dutch, bagger can also mean “crap”, which fits really well with the music in the video.
02/09/2008 at 22:44 Chris Evans says:
This sounds interesting in a ‘oh gawd I must see how awful this game really is!’ kind of way.
03/09/2008 at 00:05 jamuel scones says:
Rossignol: “A tunneling machine sim would be awesome.”
If “Advanced Chunnel Simulator” isn’t released this decade, the world will be poorer for it.
03/09/2008 at 03:36 Snook says:
As a person who enjoys Trainz, Ship Simulator and Bus Simulator… I have to say that this actually looks like a lot of fun.
(no, really)
03/09/2008 at 06:13 malkav11 says:
If you want a real game on this subject, you need the awesomely Japanese Playstation game Power Shovel. It simulates exactly this sort of machinery, only, you know…Japanese. By which I mean, absolutely insane. There are lovely challenges like using your Power Shovel to serve some sort of Japanese noodle soup from an immense bowl. And the sound effects are wondrous.
Yes, I know, it’s a PC site, but it runs fine in Playstation emulators. That’s how I fiddled with it. (I probably shouldn’t say “played”. I’m more interested in how bonkers it is than actually seriously going through the whole thing.)
03/09/2008 at 09:33 Valentin Galea says:
God I really hope that’s the actual music from the game! :)
03/09/2008 at 15:31 Batolemaeus says:
The german magazine “Gamestar” were so staggered by this incredible game, that they made a “simulatoren spezial” on their dvd, featuring Bagger Simulator, Müllabfuhr Simulator, Bus Simulator and Farm Simulator.
Together with a really ironic voice about how interesting all of this is. I really need to find that gem somewhere, it was so fitting.
(The bus simulator has hdr btw..which brings even crossfire system to its knees)
There it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AMJQOgJ0Sc
03/09/2008 at 18:25 Scandalon says:
Oddbob – If there’s the ability to mod Borderlands, you may just get your wish. (See the header graphic.)
04/09/2008 at 02:40 Cizzin says:
This game could be improved if you could attack people with the machines.
04/09/2008 at 13:35 jagermo says:
To be fair, every normal german gaming magazin wrote something like: “why the fu** should I waste my precious gaming time on crap like this?” Munich-based GameStar even made a video, containg not only the Bagger Simulator and the above mentioned Müllabfuhr Simulater (you drive a waste-truck, but can’t kill anyone with it, worse, you can’t even dump pedestrians into the back of the truck), but also two other boring simulators (there – they were so boring, my brain didn’t even bother to remember the names). But I guess the publisher will complain about illegal downloads and how much money they could have made, if the people only had bought their crap.
08/12/2008 at 19:12 loxus says:
The controls for these machines are just like CRAP. You have to chose between 2, 3 or even 4 different “systems” to control. On real machinery you can control them all together. You can driver forwards while controlling the “bucket” on your showel. Here you have to drive to the pile of sand, stop, use your showel to dig something up, and then drive again.
This makes the process very slow and boring.
I also tried to make a road with the sand, but it was impossible to drive on top of it. My machinery always just followed the ground, so there is some bugs with the physics.
Good idea, but it needs some tuning :P
09/03/2009 at 16:56 Richard says:
Hi everyone. I recently played the demo of Bagger Sim and really enjoyed it lol .. I want to but it but I have only seen it on sale wriiten is German. Does anyone know an English site where I may buy from? Regards Rich
16/11/2009 at 18:21 Koen Witters says:
Simulators are boring. Just wait until I finish my Big Bulldozer game, now that’s going to be fun! ;)
01/12/2009 at 01:14 rex says:
if iny 1 knows waer i can finde a site to donlod the digger simulator post the site name
14/12/2009 at 01:27 Anonymous says:
14/12/2009 at 18:11 Anonymous says:
15/12/2009 at 07:19 Seamless Steel pipe says:
Seamless Steel pipe;Seamless Steel pipe;Seamless Steel pipe;
15/12/2009 at 07:38 Seamless Steel pipe says:
Seamless Steel pipe;Seamless Steel pipe;Seamless Steel pipe;
15/12/2009 at 08:02 Anonymous says:
˼
17/12/2009 at 07:41 Anonymous says:
17/12/2009 at 07:41 Anonymous says:
19/12/2009 at 20:04 ball valve says:
ball valve
19/12/2009 at 20:11 hydra9 says:
This is hilarious. Knockoff Handbags and Ball Valve! What delightful names :)
19/12/2009 at 20:28 pp says:
20/12/2009 at 03:53 Anonymous says:
20/12/2009 at 07:20 Anonymous says:
20/12/2009 at 10:05 غ says:
20/12/2009 at 13:20 Anonymous says:
20/12/2009 at 14:49 CFD says:
18/01/2010 at 04:56 Nicole Thompsen says:
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28/01/2010 at 02:48 fgasdfg says:
骨折
骨科
28/01/2010 at 02:55 Oak says:
Apparently construction equipment simulators are spambot catnip.
09/07/2010 at 20:29 ryyycooo_SBȘ says:
ma numesc Bogdan …
Dar vreau sa vă întreb cum pot downloada Simulator Bagger 2008 …vă rog spuneți-mi cum !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) :) :) >:d:d:d< …………………………………………………………… .
02/09/2010 at 10:12 cody says:
love