Walking Simulator With A Gun: Ultimate Pâté

Ultimate Pâté is a free walking simulator with a gun. It's a big gun too, a double-barrelled shotgun. You can use it to kill exotic and whimsical animals like flamingos and unicorns. To process into cheap pâté. And yet... I do think it's a walking simulator rather than a hunting game. We wander around low-fi woods, follow skittish animals, and listen to soft music in sterotypical walking simulator ways, so I feel a giddy transgressive thrill whipping out a shotgun to blow away a magical horse.

It is a pretty valley we explore, crammed with trees turning red, lush grass flecked with flowers, giant spotted mushrooms, and flitting insects. The sun glares in a bright blue sky. The low-res filter makes it difficult to see far, but we can hear footsteps from far away and chase distant moving pixels hoping to find animals. Spotting these goofy creatures and crouching down to hide ourselves and watch them mosey about is lovely. And then we can shoot them. We shoot them real good.

Oh, it's a silly little joke, but as someone who plays a lot of walking simulators (you have no idea how many I've chosen not to post so I don't overwhelm y'all) I enjoyed it a lot. My understanding of hunting is that it's mostly an excuse to swan about in the woods anyway.

Marine Desmolin and Clément Duquesne made Ultimate Pâté for this past weekend's Ludum Dare 31 game jam, where the theme "entire game on one screen" inspired 2,637 games. Crumbs. I imagine we look at a more of those as we come across them.

It's free and short and playable in your browser, and I think might give you a few minutes of fun.