THE GOAT MUST BURN

Every year the good people of Gävle, Sweden build a giant straw Yule Goat. Every year someone tries to set it on fire. Sometimes they even succeed. Will you join their noble ranks?

A one-page print-and-play game for small groups and solo players. Scout the area, plan and prepare, watch out for the po po, and do your best to burn the goat.

I'm trying to add more colour commentary to these descriptions, to say more about what inspired the game and what happens when you play it, but this time it's really all right there in the title. I wish I could say that the day my cat was diagnosed with diabetes and I also tested positive for covid was the worst day of my life and it inspired me to heights of artistic expression but it doesn't even crack the top ten and this is a game about doing vandalism. Big supporter of the emergent tumblr cultus of goat burning though, if it wasn't obvious. Most of my life has included an end-of-year effigy burn, but I love the idea that burning the goat isn't just about the goat's destruction per se, it's about the triumph of a culture hero. The destruction is the objective, but the meaning is the overcoming, so it only counts if it's forbidden. That's different from the fire events I'm used to, where the effigy is collaboratively constructed for the purpose of being burned, and the burning is the shared culmination of group effort to yeet the old year's bullshit into the sky. Not stating a preference here either, fire pretty. Both is good--but only one is the subject of a huge international meme this week.

So here's a game about it.

This is one of my series of Small Games for Khoshekh. Khoshekh is my cat and she has diabetes. All proceeds go to vet bills.