Crazy Cattle 3D is the latest game to hit digital culture. Everyone's playing it, bro—so just hop on and let's go! It's a low-fi battle royale that you can easily play it here: https://crazycattles3d.com/, and it's exactly the type of thing you might play at school or work for a couple of minutes. It's one of those games that kind of looks like the type of thing you'd see someone play in a movie or low-budget TV show, and the unique aesthetic gives it instant attention from viewers.

The developer, Anna, released the game in mid-April, and since then, it has completely blown up into unimaginable heights. Anna's passion project has received international attention, with big players in the scene—like Vinnie—streaming it. Not to mention the countless clips parodying modern gaming culture by talking about "dropping in with the boys" and playing a few rounds of Crazy Cattle 3D.

Considering she's a fairly prolific creative—often dipping into making her own music, which features in the game—it's great to see Anna's work finally gain the attention and recognition it deserves. The 2001-esque shareware graphics make it nostalgically appealing, as if we're seeing a game from another time come to life. Plus, the fact that it's physics-based, coupled with a horizon that seems to leap around the screen whenever there's a decent amount of speed built up, means that the gameplay is immediately engaging.

Even the technically inaccurate title—Crazy Cattle 3D ("cattle" being cows, not "cheap")—feels like a relic from another time, where some European developer created a game that made its way into a magazine demo disc or graphics card packaging. You can see Anna's fondness for that era too, as a video on her BlueSky account shows her desktop aesthetic set to look more like Windows XP. After all, there's long been interesting games that look like they came out during the PS1 era, with absolute art like Nubby's Number Factory and Cruelty Squad remaining extremely popular. What was once considered "ugly" in older games is now considered beautiful—markers of that time, similar to the phase the internet went through when everything was given a VHS filter.

As such, Crazy Cattle 3D is not only a satire of the popularity of battle royale games and their place within digital spaces, but it represents a keen interest in the "uglier" aesthetics of 20 years ago—which are now considered fun and beautiful in their limitations.