Untitled Goose Game Finds Joy in Being a Terror
Geese are horrible, straight up. They’re maniacal, territorial, vindictive, and live to see you in discomfort. Imagine your meanest ex, but if they had wings and sharp teeth, and shit all over your front lawn every single day. This is an opinion I’ve held my entire life—that is, until I played Untitled Goose Game by House House.
The premise of Untitled Goose Game is simple: You are a horrible goose, and you live on the outskirts of an idyllic English town. Now it is time to go do what geese do best: ruin people’s days. The gameplay mostly consists of a mixture of puzzle solving and stealth-focused game play. Each level flows seamlessly into the next, as you waddle your way through a handful of vignettes, which include settings like a groundskeeper’s garden, a town center, a pub, and so forth. Each scene offers you a handful of scenarios that range from “Have a picnic!” to “Throw the groundskeeper’s rake in the lake.” The gameplay is fairly straightforward, but that’s not what you’re here for. If you were ever like, “Oh, wow, I wish they would make a game where you can just antagonize people,” then buddy, do I have a game for you.
Where Untitled Goose Game really shines is in its humor and characterization. The goose controls operate, well, like a goose would. You’re clumsy and not especially fast, and you really have only two modes of interaction with the world: biting and honking (who can relate?). But the game allows itself to be very expressive in those two modes. Your honk sounds like a strained trumpet each time you let it out, and it’s illustrated with these lovely little fuzzy lines that emerge from your beak. The townspeople react in a myriad of ways—some will shoo you away, others will run from you in fear. One scenario saw me chase a young bespectacled boy into a phone booth, trapping him inside it because he was so afraid of my goose. It’s unbelievably silly, and the game understands that and plays it up to its best ability.
Something about this game that I didn’t expect, though (and that I don’t think was intended), was a strangely placed meta commentary on our interactions with games as a medium. You see, there are zero consequences for your actions, much as for a real-life horrible goose. And when you make these people’s lives a mess, you have to sit there and watch in real time as they clean up your chaos. When you, a nightmare goose, rip up the singular rose that this poor old groundskeeper has managed to cultivate, he predictably loses his shit. He chases you, shoos you away, then slowly and methodically cleans up your mess. You have to sit there and watch him pick the flower up, walk over to the soil, and plant it again so it doesn’t die. You might say that I’m reading way too deep into this, to which I would say: yes! But I’ll be damned if I have ever seen another game demonstrate consequences so clearly, and it’s the simplicity and focus of Untitled Goose Game that illustrate this the best.
Untitled Goose Game is a short, sweet, and deeply funny experience, one that can only really come from a small and focused studio like House House. I can’t recommend it enough—even if you absolutely hate geese like I do.
Originally Appeared on GQ
