Developer: MagicalTimeBean
Steam Release: June 2012
Hours Played: 6.5
Similar To: Back To Bed / Life Goes On / Thomas Was Alone / Toki Tori
Rating: 4/5 Parsnips
Most platform puzzlers are of the side-scrolling variety but this little number presents you with a single-screen puzzle that has you assuming the role of a purple goat with a little mouse as a helper. You are invited to mull over how to escape to the awaiting tunnel at your leisue. Standing between you and the exit are a variety of obstacles such as: rotating blades, deadly fireballs, wizards who hurl more fireballs at you and blocks that try their best to fall on top of you. Much like The Adventures of Shuggy or Toki Tori it is a proper thinking-man's platform puzzler with ingenious level design. It comes packaged with conundrum after pitch-perfect conundrum that will put your grey matter to the right kind of test.
Initially, you're tasked with completing five linear levels which you must do in the order the game dictates and this is fine as they are essentially tutorial levels that guide you through the fundamentals. Here, you'll learn the basics of movement, double jump, charge and the USP of the game which is using your friendly mouse. Your mouse can be sent off to impossible to reach switches or under small gaps that are too big for your goat. It can also be tossed upwards or it can be made to lay at rest on a switch that needs to be held down while Mr.Goat can go off and do his thing. Levels require you to first reach a number of keys so that you can unlock the tunnel exit. There are no power-ups, just puzzle-solving with those bare essentials. Once you have completed the first five levels you then unlock The Gathering Place.
What Escape Goat lacks in the graphics department it makes up for in the gameplay. In other words although it doesn't really need to it is not going to wow you with its graphics. In good ol' fashioned 16-bit style and to the sound of a plain medieval tune to the keys of a plain electronic keyboard the home page features just the name of the game in large plain white lettering and a few pathways. On hitting Play, you're shown a very plain blue box with the choice to start a new game, enter your saved game or to go back to the home page. Then it takes you to the hub of the game known as The Gathering Place.
The Gathering Place allows you to leap about with your goat and to select one of eight chapters with ominous sounding names such as: The Darkest Pits, The Crypt and Engine of Insanity. Each chapter has six levels but the last of each is a formality and so doesn't really count. There are ten added levels when the eight chapters are completed. No chapter seems more difficult than another. The chapters unlock very soon into the game with the tunneled entrance getting sealed and a sheep standing outside when you complete all six in each. On entering a tunnel you are shown the number of the level you're on (eg. 3/6) and thrown into the level you were on in that chapter. You need to do the levels sequentially; in other words if you are stuck on the fourth level of The Darkest Pits you cannot skip it and go directly to the next.
CONCLUSION
Number of YouTube visits is a good barometer for evaluating degree of difficulty and once you go above half a dozen, immersion can take a bit of a hit. Thankfully, at over 75% through the game I have not had to resort to a single walkthrough and consider my brain has been given a thorough workout. That is clearly down to solid and varied level design. My only criticism would be that in a few levels, after working hard up to a certain point, the game then resorts to challenging you to make pixel-perfect jumps with split second timing and with no checkpoints and just ONE attempt to get it right, failure can seem quite punishing. Unfortunately rinsing and repeating this process can be a bit disheartening - especially if you cannot skip levels. Still, with a sequel to look forward to, let that not detract you from having a punt at this solid title.
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