Escape Goat Review

It’s easy to see what the developers were going for with Escape Goat. They wanted to create a game similar in look and feel to the old NES Castlevania games but instead of focusing on combat, they wanted to make it more about platforming. In both those aspects, Escape Goat succeeds, it’s just a shame the game is over so quickly.

All you need to know is that you are a goat in a prison and you have to escape. In order to do this, you travel from room to room (6 per level) and reach the door at the end. The first couple of rooms were extremely easy, only requiring you to stand on a few switches and double jump to a platform (yes, your goat double jumps!). Then, the game does get quite difficult and shows off some really brilliant level design.

First off, you will find a small mouse very early on in the game and he is very important to finishing a lot of the levels. He can fit in small spaces, activate buttons, he can be killed but he’ll always respawn, and you can switch places with him by finding a magical hat. Yeah, the creators definitely had fun with this one and clearly don’t really like mice.

So, you team up with the mouse and travel through a couple of rooms together activating switches and dodging enemies. Then, when you reach the sixth room of the game you find the princess… I mean the sheep. That sheep tells you that in order to escape the prison you must find its 7 brethren. So, you then are given a total of 7 extra worlds with 6 rooms each to explore.

While I did breeze through a couple of levels, I just couldn’t believe how smart some of the other levels were. They’ll have you using exploding barrels to shoot off an ember into a pile of barrels which then set off a chain reaction of explosions, then you’ll have to quickly jump to a revealed platform, let loose the mouse so he can die just before activating a switch, and finally you must run to the exit before you are hit with a flame. You’ll be going through scenarios much like that in quite a few levels and it really makes the game an overall great experience.

As great an experience as Escape Goat is, it is over too quickly. While some levels are so head scratchingly difficult that you’ll spend a lot of time on them, there just aren’t enough of them. A good 50% of the levels are quite easy to get through and even though there are 6 rooms per level, you need only walk up to a goat in the sixth room. Because of this, I was able to beat the game in under an hour and I was left wanting more. If only it had been a little longer, the $3 price tag would have been more justified. Not even the included level editor extends the life of the game long enough.

Hopefully Escape Goat sells really well because I would more than love to see a sequel. While some of the levels are easy and the game ends too quickly, the game has tons of flashes of brilliance and you will more than enjoy being an Escape Goat.

Escape Goat was reviewed with a copy provided by Magical Time Bean. You can purchase Escape Goat in the Xbox Live Indie section for 240 MSP.

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