Crazy Cows

Crazy Cows. This game is supposed to be light entertainment and for a while it actually is — but then you figure out what's actually going on, and it stops being fun.

It's a turn-based strategy from the late nineties where you control a herd of crazy cows and try to kill your opponent's cattle. The playing field is simple, the controls are intuitive — you move a cow, it moves, it tries to hit the enemy. The developer — if you can even figure it out — remains shrouded in mystery, which is one of many signs that this is primarily just a quick diversion.

The gameplay can be described with one word: tedious turn-based mechanics with zero depth. You give the cows orders, they move, sometimes they collide, sometimes they don't. The first few minutes are funny in the most primitive sense — watching cows beat each other up. But then you realize there's no strategy behind it, or rather, no strategy that makes any sense. Movement is unpredictable, attacks depend more on luck than planning, and the rules are so murky you're not even sure if the game is working properly or if this is intentional design.

In the context of its time — when PC strategy games were dominated by titles like StarCraft and Warcraft — Crazy Cows simply got lost. It hasn't aged poorly because the graphics are pixelated — no retro veteran has a problem with that. Not at all. It was already outdated upon release.

Today you can play it in your browser as a curious footnote. Five minutes of entertainment, twenty minutes of annoyance, and after thirty you're asking yourself why you even started it. To remember it, it'll last about as long as an average doctor's waiting room visit.