Review: Gotta Go

Watch the throne

Gotta Go is a game about avoiding your fellow employees, strategically farting in a way that they won’t notice, and racing to the nearest bathroom so you don’t crap your pants in front of the whole office.

Needless to say, Dire Nerd Studios had my attention.

Gotta Go (PC)
Developer: Dire Nerd Studios
Publisher: Dire Nerd Studios
Released: August 11, 2017
MSRP: $4.99

Look at that trailer up there! That’s a damn fine trailer! It made me laugh a bunch, and it actually convinced me to review this game that I knew next to nothing about! Unfortunately, that is easily the best part about Gotta Go. There was a lot of promise here, so it pains my heart to write these words… This is a bad game.

My biggest gripe is the dialogue. It’s pretty much all just slight variations of what you see in the trailer. This is a huge missed opportunity. A game like this lives and dies by its ability to make you laugh, but there’s only so many times you can chuckle at “Shut up [insert name here]!” On top of that, the timer doesn’t really allow you a chance to actually read what your co-workers are talking about, during any of their many constant interruptions, as you make your way towards your porcelain goal. As a result, these interactions just devolve into mindless, barely-animated QTEs where you are just mashing buttons in order to get them to shut the hell up.

You see this screen? Get used to it because you’re going to be seeing it a lot. The only things that change between levels are the floor you’re on and your HR assessment from the previous level. This screen is the closest thing to a narrative that Gotta Go has. Even just a few variations in the text would have gone a long way. As it stands, it feels like Gus, the main character, is trapped in some bizarre Groundhog Day type of situation where he’s forced to relive the same thing over and over ad nauseam. While this may be the desired effect from the developers, it works against the game as a whole, and it comes across as just plain lazy.

The gameplay is, quite simply, not good enough to carry the experience either. In fact, it’s pretty awful. At no point do your objectives ever evolve past “walk from Point A to Point B.” Farting is a necessity during your journey. It refills your Gastric Gauge, so you don’t end up crapping your pants and having to restart the whole game from the very beginning. There are no checkpoints. If your coworkers smell your farts, they will report you to HR, and this fills up a meter that carries across levels as well. If this meter fills all the way up, you’re fired. You, once again, have to start the whole game over from scratch! There are power-ups that you can unlock across playthroughs, but they mostly just make the experience even less enjoyable.

Then, of course, there’s the soundtrack. I’m using the term “soundtrack” pretty liberally here. It’s just one song, and it’s not even the charming little piano ditty used in the trailer. There’s nothing particularly bad about it, but I can’t help but wonder why they wouldn’t use the song that it’s advertised with. This may seem like a pretty small complaint, yet it dramatically changes the tone of the game. Instead of a lighthearted, poppy piano chug, what actually plays is just some lifeless electronic number that sounds like it could have come preloaded on a cheap drum machine from the early 2000s. 

All of these issues add up to a final product that feels devoid of any real personality and what we’re left with is a generic experience that relies too heavily on a gimmick that never fully delivers on its promise of fun. I really wanted to love Gotta Go but there honestly isn’t a single redeeming quality to it beyond its incredibly likable trailer. I’d love to see the folks at Dire Nerd come back with a more fully-realized sequel or update, but until then don’t waste your time or money on this. 

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}