If you've been watching our coverage of Goat Simulator, you know how amazing being a goat can be. You can become King of the Goats, fly with a jetpack, ruin parties, become demonic, and generally create mayhem and destruction wherever you go. It's pretty great to be a goat!
That said, there are other animals out there that could be even more amazing. In that vein, we've rounded up some of the goofiest animal sims currently out there, and thrown a few of our favorite animals into the mix.
Bear Simulator is an ongoing Kickstarter described as "It's like a mini Skyrim but you're a bear." It is a FPB (first-peson-bear) game, where you roam around the forest finding berries, eating fish, and discovering the mysteries of your home.
It also features a melee fighting system and mountain goats. Clearly those two items needed to be mentioned in the same sentence. Can you imagine a bear fighting a mountain goat? Hopefully you won't need to anymore after this game.
Let us not forget the great animal simulators of older generations. Jaws Unleashed, let people around the world play as the frightening apex predator commonly known as the great white shark.
Featuring an open world, you can roam the waters near Amity in your quest to eat animals, humans, and other refuse you find in the ocean. Assert dominance over your domain and fight the progress the silly humans have been making on their island. The waters are yours!
For something a little less violent and a lot more cuddly, try out Shelter and play as a honeybadger. I say slightly less violent since, as you can see, you can clearly kill foxes with your badger in the above video.
You play as a mother badger sheltering her cubs from harm (awwww) which involves birds of prey, foxes, starvation, fire, and river rapids. Overall much less destrictive and more realistic than the other animal sims on this list, yet the graphics and gameplay have their own unique charm. You'll finally learn, once and for all, that honey badgers do care - at least about their offspring.
For those feeling particularly nostalgic, there is always the classic SimAnt - although you might need an emulator or an SNES to play it. Despite being small in stature, you'll find that life as an ant can be just as hectic as that of a goat.
You play an ant in service to its colony, and that service can include fighting the evil red ants, searching for food, and mainly annoying/hiding from humans. It's much harder than it sounds and actually involves some level of strategy. I played this game when it was released in 1991 and kept getting eaten (I was also four at the time).
For those seeking a more...realistic experience, try out WolfQuest - a game developed by the Minnesota Zoo in conjunction with Eduweb. This free-to-play game boasts an immersive wildlife experience as a wolf in Yellowstone National Park.
Comprised of two episodes, you can hunt, find a mate, establish territories, raise pups, and interact with other wildlife. What's better is the online multiplayer, where you can band together with four of your friends to hunt as a pack. I'm pretty sure I need a Day-Z now where everyone is a wolf.
Every pets deserve their own simulators. In Catlateral Damage you attempt to cause as much destruction as possible in the two minute time limit for points. You'll find out (if you didn't already know from owning a cat) that absolute havoc can be achieved in just two minutes time. Hell, my cat probably only needs one minute.
It's not necessarily the cat sim I want, but it's the cat sim available. In my imaginary cat simulator, you can sleep for 18 hours, catch mice for 1, fight other cats for 3, and spend the rest of the time pretending you want your human to pet you only to scratch them if they try it.
Okay, this is the only game on the list where you're not actually playing as the animal, but I felt it deserved a brief mention anyway. In Dog Feeding Simulator 2014 you play as a human attempting to feed your friend's dog. There are... consequences for not feeding it quickly enough.
There is a reason that the game touts itself as the "scariest dog feeding simulator ever" and that reason is the dog - the dog that slightly resembles poop. I can't be the only person who thinks that.
I desperately want someone to make an Elephant simulator. Or a whale simulator. Or a giraffe simulator. Basically, I want a simulator of large awkward animals - I think their in-game POV could be fascinating, and I just want to squash things on accident.
What other types of simulators would you want to play? Squirrel Simulator? You could earn points by taunting dogs and narrowly escaping their mighty jaws. Bird Simulator? That might finally give us the answer to the airspeed velocity of the almighty swallow (both African and European). Unicorn Simulator? Getting mythological with animals sims could be the next big thing. Dragon Vale (and many other iOS games) have taught me this.
Whatever simulator you want to see next - list it in the comments and tell us why!
Published: Apr 3, 2014 07:26 am