Cloven-screen: Goat Simulator Adding Multiplayer

Goat Simulator is pretty much a dicking about simulator but oh, how lonely and pointless it is to dick about by yourself! Perhaps that's the entire reason the goat is acting up. Why, put it in a pen with another real goat and perhaps they'd happily amble about and chew the cud all day long. I suppose we'll find out in May, as developers Coffee Stain Studios are planning to add split-screen co-op with the first big patch and a new map t'boot.

As essentially an elaborate house of cards to flick at with a goat-shaped finger, Goat Simulator is certainly a game best enjoyed with others in some form, whether that's crowding around a computer or streaming online. Multiplayer's a natural addition.

But why only split-screen? Goat Simulator throwing around squillions of physics objects with Nvidia's PhysX and Apex tech "would synchronise terribly in multiplayer," Coffee Stain explain, and they "would have to rewrite most of the game code from scratch" to make it work online. Given how wonky the physics are with only one goat on one computer, one dreads to imagine how weird it'd end up online.

Update 1.1's new level is said to be about the same size as the game's original map. Coffee Stain's Armin Ibrisagic said in today's announcement, "A lot of people have been asking for DLC with new maps for Goat Simulator, but we would feel bad charging people for DLC content when people can just download new stuff for free from the Steam Workshop, so we decided to do a free update instead." Which is hard to quibble with.