GoatPunks

I'm sorry if this isn't how everybody feels about this game, but I cannot currently recommend it in it's state. It is currently lacking in content, but it is cleary making a lot of progress. My friends and I found the king of the hill mode to be very boring and too easy. If you knock one goat down from the top to save yourself from getting hit with a rocket, another goat right behind you can knock you off without a problem because there is physically not enough time to react to it. It's a great concept and I look forward to seeing this turn into something more.

I've been waiting for this game for a bit since a friend of mine told me about it. I was really excited and as soon as it came out on early access, I bought it and tried it. I think it's already really promising, the esthetics are cute and very stylized, the concept of the game itself is simple but really lovely. It's sometimes the most simple things that are the best. I need to hop back into it and play more, I am very excited to try the other modes and I'm hoping to see more possibilities of customization for characters, it's always a plus on my end! I might have encountered little bugs with the controller where it sometimes switched to keyboard controls but that could be my own device that does that. But that's not gonna stop me from playing. Overall, I'd recommend to try it out, it's very fun and playing with friends definitely will add to it!

There are a few staples of the 4-player versus multi-player that consistently surface when playing with my friends, among them Samurai Gunn and Duck Game. Whether or not they want it, I will make GoatPunks one of the new pillars of our multi-player sessions. Climbing to the top is the aim of our Goat Punks. Whether they are Hipster Punk, Steam Punk or Candy Punk, they battle across several beautiful and varied vertical levels. Whoever reaches the top of the mountain has to stay there for a specific amount of time (classic King of The Hill game mode, but with an actual hill to climb) while raining down bombs on the Punks below that are not behaving. Puny goats that have been stomped over or exploded will fall down with a cute scream that remins me of Worms, and while sometimes they are ejected back to the beginning sometimes it is possible to press a button with a good timing to grip a platform and go back to the fight. Being ejected back to the beginning several times in a row and scaling the mountain over and over can be frustrating. Each level has its own quirks in terms of shortcuts. The mill has birds that you can ride, the factory has steam geysers that can propel you. Some shortcuts require good timing to be used correctly and climb faster. Visually, they are all a treat, very different and yet all cute with a good sense of colors. Moving is a bit weird but it works just fine. I will attempt to describe the system… because unlike any other game, you don’t actually move and jump on the touch of your buttons. Here you just point in the general direction in which you want to go, and your tiny goat will automatically move towards there if there is a platform to jump on. While this seems counter-intuitive at first, in practice you don’t think about it. I believe that this is done to make the climb more fun and accessible to anyone rather than centering the game on basic movement skills. Thus, everyone can focus on the real meat of the game. My only gripe with this movement system is that if there are no platforms in the direction you want to move, the cursor switches to red and your goat stops moving. I would have liked to see maybe some basic automatic path-finding to avoid these moments when your brain just goes “uh?” and you lose a few precious seconds. It’s not always obvious when a platform is too far for your cute goat to reach. Alright, let’s finally talk about the core game mechanic. Each adorable goat has a few actions at its disposition. There is a charge that takes a little bit of time (without moving) before launching a deadly dash. There is a shield that can counter a bomb or another delinquent goat trying to get the jump on you. And finally, there is a specific skill unique to each character that boils down to a stun or a mine. Oh wait, we are not done yet. You can also pick up power-ups, including a chainsaw or a hammer. Add to this the (different kind of) bombs when you reach the top that require to anticipate trajectories, and the battle for the highest point becomes particularly fierce. Will my opponent try to jump on me or bomb me? Should I prepare a mine in case they jump? Should I shield or should I attack? Should I run in this direction or the other? Should I surprise with a shortcut or not take the risk and climb normally? And so on. What this amounts to is a brilliant mind game. GoatPunks is a fast-paced mind game in which there are so many ways to tackle a problem that you are constantly having fun and putting your brain to contribution once you have mastered the basic game mechanics. So far, there is only one game mode which is King of The Hill, but in the menu it is clear that there are more to come such as 2v2, Treasure Hunt, Survival and Capture The Flag. This can all just add to the core experience, because as it is there is already plenty enough to have fun. Oh and if you are out of friends, there is an online ranked mode with weekly leaderboards. To be honest these indie games never get populated enough for the multi-player to garner enough momentum, but it’s there. I have encountered minor lags, but it can be forgiven easily as the multi-player is still in beta. You’re better off playing with friends, but there is still a more than decent single-player mode to keep you busy. Basically, playing against the AI while sometimes an extra AI starts at the top as the “boss”. Some specific requests (shoot 10 goats, charge 4 goats and so on) give some flavour to the matches and allow you to unlock new stuff. Despite everything, the game is not perfect. My main scapegoat is the options menu. You can’t rebind the keyboard controls, and they are awful. You should really play this with a controller. The default layout for the controllers is good, if you are not satisfied you can rebind it however I did not exactly understand how because that menu is not very easy to use. As a conclusion, I love GoatPunks. This will easily remain in my selection of fun multi-player games to play with friends. There is nothing quite like it! Very original and unique, with a brilliant focus on the mind game. A bit like playing Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock with split second decisions. Even though it freshly appeared on Early Access, the game is already worth it’s price and quite complete. Anything that will be added can only make the game more varied and replayable. Heartfelt recommendation on this one. Here is a video if you want to see it in action: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=873002917

Wow, this is such a fun party game! Four player on the couch is an absolute blast, even my four year old son was able to knock me off the top spot a couple of times. This game really is fun for the whole family, but also has a great competitive "smash bros" feel to it when you have a group of lads/gals over for a few drinks. It plays great as a single player game as well. The CPU/Ai goats are pretty smart and enough of a challange to keep you playing for hours alone. Like all well designed games, GoatPunks is easy to pick up and start playing, but there are layers of complexity and tactics that take time to master. The various power-ups are imaginative and add a really fun element, plus each goat has it's own special ability and individual playing style, so it's fun to experiment and find the one that works for you. The level design is really great. Each "mountain" has it's own unique feel and the level of detail in the artwork is amazing. I particularly like the steam punk inspired level with the moving cogs and plaforms, the lava/volcano level is beautiful as well. In short, this is a great game and well worth the megre $10!

Online doesn't work at all, which is why I wanted it in the first place. It's also apparent from the Discussions that the developer has abandoned the game in favor of porting it to other consoles. Update: It seems like all of the achievements are not obtainable. I had to download an older version to obtain the "beginner" achievements, as that difficulty level was apparently removed from the game. Even then, I can't obtain everything. There are around 10 that I have no idea how to unlock. Only 0.4% of players have them (which leads me to believe they used SAM). This may not be a huge deal to a lot of people, but I really enjoy getting 100% in games so this has definitely soured my view.

I've had this in my wishlist for a while now. First played it at PAX a couple of years ago and it's a fun party game to have running on the TV, very little time to learn the controls and lots of laughs.

Ok, so this game is a great game I received for free a Blizz con. The soundtrack is amazing but this is a very new game with little to no online players. This would be ok except this game is 90% online based. I think once this game gets a following and more online players it will be a very fun online game. Thank You :)

Eh. It's a bit overcomplicated and really hard to pickup. Great art, great controls and stability, but I don't think it's worth the price tag and it's not for a quick party game.

BE CAREFUL Shaddy developer first abandoned the game for 2 years then he suddenly SILENTLY REMOVED EARLY ACCESS from store page to make the game look like it was a full release The game is still the same beta version from 2 years ago with 80% of game modes unavailable with the same Coming soon sign they were for the last 2 years AVOID being scammed by this

Goat Punks was featured on my Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dVVl_BNdcE and now onto a short FIRST IMPRESSIONS (NOTE THIS IS MORE OF A FIRST IMPRESSIONS THAN A REVIEW, MY THOUGHTS CAN CHANGE FROM HERE AND RELEASE) Goat Punks is heading in the right direction, it's what a party game is suppose to be. It's fast paced, it's competitive, it's just a ton of fun. All while being HEAVILY unfinished, while most people are skeptical about EA games, and admittedly I was not going to originally give a positive review because of multiple game modes missing. I reconsidered after I saw how much fun everyone had on my Lets Play. There is custimization, plenty of levels and innovative "BOSS MODE" where the four players also play against a Boss. It's just great and can't wait to see Goat Punks in its finished state. IN ITS CURRENT STATE at 9.99 USD, I can say I recommend it. The devs seem like they are going to be regularly updating the game and I'll be checking back from time to time to see the game also because it's just so much fun.