GET THE GOAT!
For better or worse, sometimes you just have a hankerin’ to steal a goat. Those of us at PAX East with said craving headed over to Toto Temple Deluxe, which delivered goat-stealing gameplay in a fast-paced keep-away brawler fashion.
In Toto Temple Deluxe four colorful, funny looking characters dash across a temple head first and smash into each other to steal a goat which sits comfortably atop their giant heads. Points are collected for the player who managed to capture the goat, and whilst said goat is being carried it drops eggs which contain coins for other players to pick up. The player who reaches 3,000 points first wins the round — which is a lot more difficult than it sounds.
There are really only two controls in this game: dashing for when you’re trying to hit the player with the goat, and blocking for when you have the goat in your possession. At first, the dashing mechanism was extremely fast and hard to keep up with, however after some practice I was able to knock the goat off some heads.
Keeping said goat was another challenge entirely, but luckily I was able to produce a temporary shield which I used to block other player’s advancements at the right moment. Power ups also spawned throughout the temple, some of which included giant laser beams, a cloning device with mini-me’s running around, and a magnet which stole points from other players.
In addition to the classic goat-stealing game, there exists a bomb mode which operates kind of like a reverse hot potato. The object remains the same re: goat capturing, however this time the goat bomb can explode at any moment and if you’re not carrying it, you’ll most likely be demolished. The timer resets when another player steals the goat bomb, creating an interesting timing dynamic and constant questioning of whether or not to steal the goat.
Throughout the weekend Steam codes were given out to onlookers when a competitor beat a super hard AI bot. When I was visiting the booth it seemed to be a rare occurrence when someone won, however I was told that over a thousand codes were dished out on Friday and Saturday alone. If you weren’t one of the lucky ones in the crowd, you can get your goat fix this summer on Steam and all of the current gen consoles (WiiU, Xbox One, PS4, Ouya).
Update: User Necrosys found a community blog written by the developers, which dives into the game’s clever UI and how it teaches players how to play the game from the very beginning, starting with the character and level selections.
