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Bagger Simulator 2008: Can you dig it?
Written by Kieron Gillen on September 2, 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.
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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…
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:55 am
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?
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:55 am
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?
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 am
jamscones says:
Unlocking the Bagger 288 Gran Turismo was a real let-down. 0.6km/h races are not very exciting.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 am
aldo says:
Presumably as opposed to Halo: Tea Bagger simulator 2003
September 2nd, 2008 at 11:25 am
suchchoices says:
this music makes me ill
September 2nd, 2008 at 11:29 am
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..
September 2nd, 2008 at 11:44 am
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′
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
AbyssUK says:
When will it end…
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:23 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
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).
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Arnulf says:
Interesting sidenote: you pronounce “bagger” exactly like the english “bugger”.
Go figure.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Ragnar says:
@Jonas
I suggest a telephone sanitizer simulator.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Flint says:
I first read it as “Badger Simulator”. The truth was disappointing.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:45 pm
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”
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:49 pm
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 
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:51 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Biff says:
It’s the logical evolution of sandbox gaming.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Yann Best says:
Eurohouse is /never/ inappropriate.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Feet says:
That music really is impressively inappropriate.
I’m quite charmed by it!
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Rudolf says:
and here I was thinking that the authors of this blog were all a&b’s
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:22 pm
hydra9 says:
@Ben Abraham:
I actually think it’s ‘the vomit you adore.’ Seriously.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:23 pm
phuzz says:
@biff
you win the internets.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:25 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:27 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:38 pm
_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!
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:43 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:46 pm
cliffski says:
And people say MY games are boring or directionless. I have been outdone. This makes ship simulator look like Call of Duty.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Meat Circus says:
@Cliffski:
I hope you’re viewing this as a direct challenge.
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:08 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:12 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Lake says:
When do the Constructicons form Devastor?
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Arnulf says:
Hmm.
c) hardcore gamer (finished WoW on 3-6 servers already)
I want to meet the person that “finished” WoW.
Seriously. That must be a deranged individual.
On second thoughts, maybe not…
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:20 pm
antonymous says:
Everyone knows the Brits have no miners anymore and thats the source of all the obvious envy, they can’t dig 
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:47 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
The Sombrero Kid says:
IMAGINE THE DESTRUCTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:56 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
MeestaNob! says:
This is so pointless I want it. Am I broken, or just amongst friends?
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:35 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:40 pm
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.
September 2nd, 2008 at 6:51 pm
knijk says:
In Dutch, bagger can also mean “crap”, which fits really well with the music in the video.
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Chris Evans says:
This sounds interesting in a ‘oh gawd I must see how awful this game really is!’ kind of way.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:44 pm
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.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:05 am
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)
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:36 am
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.)
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:13 am
Valentin Galea says:
God I really hope that’s the actual music from the game!
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:33 am
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
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Scandalon says:
Oddbob - If there’s the ability to mod Borderlands, you may just get your wish. (See the header graphic.)
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Cizzin says:
This game could be improved if you could attack people with the machines.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:40 am
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.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
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Bagger is a Teutonic manufacturer of bucket wheel excavators. It’s a niche business.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:50 am