Are Any of These Ridiculous Simulation Games Worth Playing?

Time was, the word “simulation” meant you’d be flying a plane or managing a city or cruelly locking a tiny person in a bathroom. But forget everything you know about such high-octane sims, because the simulation genre has taken a turn for the bland over the past few years.

Game makers are locked in some sort of battle over trying to turn the most mundane thing into the most exciting — or ironically unexciting and therefore awesome — video game. Goats? Bread? Rocks? The lamer the thing, the more likely it is to become a simulation.

Not all gloriously wacko sims are created equal, however. Which ones are worth the effort? I fired up Boring Video Game Simulator to find out.

I Am Bread | PC, Mac | $10

You are. This much is true. But you’re really much more that in this Kafkaesque game from the simulation junkies at Bossa Studios. You’re a slice of sentient bread, and, like me after playing this thing, you want to get toasted.

Luckily you have a helpful human out there noodging you around the house in search of something hot enough to caramelize your delicious body. You’re also inexplicably sticky — even before you flop around in jam — which grants the ability to briefly cling to walls, doorknobs, and other household objects as you flip, fly, and sort of fireman crawl your way to crunchy heaven.

This is not as easy (?) as it sounds. Like most new-school sim games, much of the challenge is in simply navigating the environment, and I Am Bread makes this excruciatingly difficult. The floor is lava in I Am Bread; hit the carpet and you’ll start accumulating dirt, rendering yourself inedible. Life is not a piece of cake for a slice of bread.

Should you play it?
Rye not? Sorry. It’s difficult and frustrating, no doubt about it, but I Am Bread is also wonderfully absurd and weirdly gratifying. Keep in mind, however, that this is part of Steam’s “Early Access” program and therefore you’re dropping $10 on a game that’s still very much in development. That could be a good thing, or may bring new meaning to the phrase “could have used more time in the oven.” Sorry again.

Surgeon Simulator | PC, Mac, PS4 | $10

The I Am Bread gang got their feet wet slipping around on the entrails of this disgusting simulation game, but don’t let the subject matter dissuade you. Available on both computers and consoles, this riotous sim tasks you with performing open-heart surgery and brain transplants, but is pleasantly generous with what constitutes a “successful” surgery. Tossed out the bad ticker and crammed a new heart in the patient’s chest somewhere? Close enough, Doctor! B+!

Good luck getting a score that high, though, because controlling this demented doctor takes serious patience. Your hands awkwardly flop around like baseball bats, knocking over important tubes and glasses left and right as you try in vain to gently bash in your patient’s sternum with a hammer. It gets messy. Fast.

Should you play it?
Absolutely. Surgeon Simulator isn’t just Operation! with a gamepad — it’s hilarious, it’s nerve-racking, and it’s kind of opaque. There are no tutorials, so it’s up to you to decide how, exactly, one might safely transplant an eyeball. The joy of discovery — and the sheer thrill of success, when it happens — is worth the price of admission. Just make sure you have insurance before playing. Homeowner’s insurance, I mean. This one’s controller-throwing hard.

Mountain | PC, Mac | $0.99

“Welcome to Mountain. You are Mountain. You are God.”

Those are the first words you see after booting up this procedurally generated art project/screensaver, which lives up to its name by being, well, a virtual mountain. It’s created by David O’Reilly, the same guy who handled the awesome video game sequences in the 2013 movie Her, though at least that game had controls. In Mountain, you just fire up your mountain and watch it spin listlessly. Occasionally, things happen to it, or it shares its existential thoughts about mountainhood. It’s a little like those cheap Magic Rock kits, and roughly as engaging.

Should you play it?
Probably not. Mountain has garnered both praise and ire from game critics for being either brilliant art or a pretentious waste of time. I tend to think it’s the latter. It’s a helluva lot more compelling than a pet rock, though, and those things were all the rage back in the day.

Goat Simulator 2014 | PC, Mac, iOS | $10

True story: As a kid I was half-bitten by a goat at a dodgy petting zoo and have had a rickety relationship with the long-tongued satanic screamers ever since. But my attitude toward goats has improved thanks to Goat Simulator 2014, which, despite its name, doesn’t so much simulate goats as it does one Supergoat.

The goal is to, uh, achieve goals while wreaking havoc on a small town. Most of those goals involve trampolines and slides and cars and jetpacks and other things you have probably never associated with goat-kind. It’s a bit of a physics puzzler, and deliberately buggy. It’s also way more fun than it oughta be.

Should you play it?
Look past its evil, bitey face and you’ll find a game with a surprising amount of heart. Goat Simulator 2014 knows it’s stupid, revels in its stupidity, and asks that you just join it in Stupid City for a little bit of stupid fun. Plus it’s currently on sale for only $7, roughly the same price as a petting zoo, but significantly safer.

Desert Bus | iOS, Android - $0.99

The granddaddy of terrible simulations was first towed out of the demented minds of magicians Penn and Teller, who included it as a mini-game in their 1995 Sega CD game Smoke and Mirrors. Your task: Drive a bus from Tucson to Las Vegas. At 45 mph. In real time. While the road is straight, the bus swerves slightly to the right, so you can’t just put a rock on the gas button and let ’er rip. You have to drive this fake bus down roughly 400 miles of largely uneventful highway. Arrive safely and you score one point. 

Should you play it?
Desert Bus is now available on both iOS and Android devices for only 99 cents, but put that toward real bus fare instead. Tempted though you may be to play what is (intentionally) the worst game ever, you really don’t need to.

One caveat: You can play it as part of a fundraiser. Desert Bus for Hope, an annual event in which gamers drive the bus as long as they can stand it, has raised more than $2 million for the Child’s Play charity since 2007. Playing an awful game to help sick kids? That’s a ride worth taking.

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