Review | Filthy Animals: Heist Simulator - A Clean Get Away

Filthy Animals: Heist Simulator is a multiplayer heist game where chaos is around every corner. Developed by Pewter Games and LoPoly Games, the best way to describe Filthy Animals is that this is what would happen if Humans Falls Flat had you doing crimes in an enclosed space. You can play solo or with up to four other players in couch co-op or online with friends or complete strangers. Regardless of how you choose to play the game, chaos will always rear its clumsy head in all kinds of ways. I played the game three different ways to get a feel for all the ways you might end up spending time with Filthy Animals. But, before I get too in the weeds, let me tell you about the premise and what you should expect from this game.

Oh hey, who likes video games?

Filthy Animals: Heist Simulator starts with a human man named Tony coming to do a job that our previous owner, Timmy called him for. The job? Unclogging us - Timmy’s pet - from the toilet that Timmy tossed us into because we were no longer cute and/or cuddly enough for him. Since our head was too big to go down this small toilet, Tony then puts an explosive in the bowl, closes the lid and we fly into a cage that Tony placed to trap us in. He takes us to a secret location and transforms us into what he calls a “fellow filthy animal”. Making us the same size and height of a human, but, you know, still an animal. You can choose between four types of animals in Filthy Animals. You can be a Chicken, a Monkey, a Moose (with a broken antler), or an Alligator (with their mouth duct taped shut). Each character has an independent levelling system, but they all have the same benefits. Each time you level up, you’ll unlock things like colour swaps, new abilities, more ammunition, and stronger ultimates. 

When it comes to the heists, you’ll have objectives and some secret tasks to do throughout the heist to not only level you up but also give your heist some extra difficulty and chaotic spice. Having the ability to pick up anything on the ground and have it instantly become a weapon is quite amazing. Especially when you knock out an NPC, drag their unconscious body with you and throw it at either other NPCs, traffic, or just to cause one heck of a chain reaction of explosions. I do love this feeling of planning and things going wrong like in Payday 2 but there’s less stress here and more wackiness. The reason I bring up Payday 2 is that, unlike that game's arsenal of guns and melee weapons, the tools you can find and use in these heists are bonkers and, most of the time, chaos-inducing. Imagine you’re at the end of a tough heist, and are close to getting the objectives done, but you only have a sliver of health only for a teammate to come out of nowhere, fire an RPG at you and leave you for dead. They then go and get themselves killed and you have to redo the entire heist again…it’s moments like this that I question humanity, but also acts as a great reminder that this is a game and a silly one at that. 

Hey guys? What are we stealing… and why is it glowing green?

So, I’ve spent time on this game in three ways to better give my thoughts on this review. The first was playing it on the Steam Deck to see if the handheld can handle it and how it would feel to play this game using a controller rather than a keyboard and mouse. I’m happy to report that Filthy Animals runs really well and using a controller is much more comfortable than using the trackball mouse and keyboard I have. The solo experience doing the heists, involved a lot of planning and a little bit of chaos when trying to complete the objectives given to me. 

The second way I played was by using Steam’s  Co-Op mode with my nephew. Using Remote Play worked well but it did take a while for my nephew to get used to the controls of the game. However, it was long before we were causing destruction and had almost completely forgotten about the objective because we were having stand-offs and little random contests within the game to make it more chaotic. He thoroughly enjoyed playing the game. So much so, I ended up buying the game for him and we’ve continued to play together in our free time. 

It’s all going according to plan… Not our plan, but someone’s plan… Probably.

The third I tried out the game was by playing with complete strangers in the online co-op mode. I didn’t suffer any noticeable lag nor did I ever disconnect during my heist sessions with random folks. I was worried a smaller game like this might suffer from issues with online servers, be it not being able to find a match or the latency being a huge issue, but I’m happy to report it wasn’t much of an issue for me. Filthy Animals: Heist Simulator is a fun party game to play in both couch co-op and online with friends. Just make sure you don’t fight over who gets to be what animal as if you’re playing Monopoly and are fighting over who gets to be the race car.