Starting today, Escape Goat 2 is available on the PlayStation Store for $9.99 in North America, with availability in other regions imminent, according to today’s PlayStation Blog post from Ian Stocker, the game’s main creator. In the post, he also states that he will bring the game to PS Vita as soon as MonoGame is working on PS Vita.
Escape Goat 2 debuted on Steam back in March of this year to a lot of positive fan response. It even reached the #2 spot on IndieGamerChick’s leaderboard (with Journey holding on to the top spot), which contains over 500 reviewed games. Escape Goat 2 is also the very first Double Fine Presents game, an indie publishing arm of Double Fine Productions.
As you could guess from the title, one of your goals is to escape, but there are other goals as well. Of course, just to escape you must reach the top of the Stronghold of Toragos. The stronghold is a tower full of traps, hidden machinery that can move blocks around, skull switches that of course activate things, electric barriers (better turn them off before trying to pass through unless you enjoy being electrocuted!), and ghostly animals. The tower contains over 100 puzzle rooms, though only about half need to be completed to escape the tower.
Along the way you will find and rescue sheep that are stuck inside the stronghold, but sometimes you may encounter passages too narrow for the goat to fit through (as shown on the left below). This is where your mouse partner comes in, as he can fit through these narrow paths. Each level fills the screen (there is no scrolling), and you can move around the tower freely on the map screen (shown on the right below) so you can go back to rooms you’ve already done. This is necessary for backtracking and also getting some of the game’s achievements, such as rescuing all of the sheep.
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If you’ve played the original game, many elements in Escape Goat 2 will seem familiar, like the skull switches shown in the image above. While many of the mechanics from the original have returned in this sequel, the graphics have gotten a very nice upgrade, as you can see in the images on this page, and the music is quite nice also. The game is a very enjoyable and unique puzzle-platformer with a certain charm about it, and I can say this having played and very much enjoyed both Escape Goat games on Steam. If you’ve played the first and liked it, then you ought to try the sequel, too. It should be noted that it is not necessary to play the original before playing the sequel. They are both great games though, so if you like one why not get both since they are both excellent games and also cheap!
Lastly, it should be noted that the Steam version of Escape Goat 2 has a level editor and supports level sharing via Steam Workshop. It does not appear that the PS4 version supports level editing/sharing at the moment, as there is nothing about this on its page on the PlayStation Store or in today’s PlayStation Blog post. So if custom levels are important to you, the Steam version might be the way to go or wait and see if the PS4 version gets this feature down the line.
