Untitled Goose Game is a body-swapping fantasy that transforms any would-be suburban miscreant into a waddling force of mischief and destruction. Instead of putting your finger in everyone's freshly baked pie, you menace around town and devastate an ordinary Saturday afternoon. Untitled Goose Game is a philosophical exercise to determine if the conniving will of a large annoying bird is either innate programming from a bored deity or a product of our broken society.
I deal with a gaggle of geese every day. They’re in my way either on my suburban running route or near where I park my car at work. Despite the distance between those two locations, it is the exact same group of delinquent vagabonds. I know this because there is exactly one white goose among the dozens of Canadian geese. I have evidence the white goose is the leader. Recently, when I got too close, the white one spread its wings and hissed at me. I didn’t know geese where capable of this and now it is something I think about every day.
Untitled Goose Game, which I am lead to believe isn’t the actual name of Untitled Goose Game but representative text for a game without a title, is a game about one single white goose. The goose, who is the player, who is me, idly parades around a small (what I assume) British village and through indifferent annoyance, tenacious sabotage, and outright demon possession, spoils a lovely afternoon for everyone the goose encounters. Like all geese, this goose is a pest animated by the possibility of public malfeasance and nothing else. This feels accurate.
As a goose, I am granted certain actions to raze the ambience of any environment. There is a button to honk and it is immensely satisfying. Honk. Honk honk honk. Honk honk. Over and over. The comedic timing of it is somehow perfect in any situation in which honking is and is not a viable option. You can also grab things with your break, run like a refrigerator, and spread and flap your wings to project some vague form of intimidation. Despite being capable of flight, this goose refuses to fly. This seems irrational, but only if you’ve never experienced a pack of these things taking their time to walk across a clearly marked street.
Four pieces of this neighborhood can be described as levels. It’s my mission to perform actions, collected in a list, that lay waste to the productivity or leisure of the human occupants of these levels. In the opening garden, I can drag away farmer’s rake and toss it in a pond. I can honk and cause the farmer to hit his thumb with hammer which he was using to post a sign telling geese to keep out, as if I could read or interpret symbols. Once I do enough of these things, something happens that gives me access to another part of the town and another level. I move on.
Operating on a vaguely clockwork world, it can feel frustrating to try and figure out how to do what needs to be done. This calls for patience and determination. Not unlike Hitman, there is always an opportunity to strike and waiting for it can feel like a process. Sometimes one exact thing will need to be done and it will not be possible, either through logic or observation, for your brain to figure out what manner of mischief the game is asking for. For that, there is the internet and its wealth of hints and information.
The progression of levels comes with an increase in complexity. Leading people away from things they’re near, usually by dragging away non-important items, is a great way to isolate a prize and take it where it needs to be taken. I trapped a small boy in a phone booth. I knocked a bucket on a guy’s head and he sat in a pile of tomatoes. I pulled a stool out from beneath an old man. I got to wear a nice red bow when I made a lady think I was a goose statue. It felt invigorating to be a harmless antihero.
Two specific instances really sell the premise and the promise of being a cataclysmic goose. The first was when, between levels, I passed through a house with its back door open and, without seeing the destruction, heard a cacophony of noises indicating I destroyed everything in there in about two seconds. The second was the end-game objective of dragging a bell across town and coming to terms with the chaos I had sewn over the last two hours.
There’s innocence to everything around me. Sometimes I shake my tail feathers and I think it endears me to the local populace. I move like a greatest hits collection of what my brain has collected and filed as Classic Goose Movement. It projects freedom from blame even though I am to blame for every visible misfortune. There is also a vague pop-up book aesthetic to every person and environment, making me feel like the hero or villain of whatever fiction I assign to my objectives. Given the sales charts some two weeks after release, other people seem inclined to agree.
It feels good to play a game with oddball mechanics. Like Donut County last year or Tokyo Jungle last decade, it’s rare to find a console game with something brand new to offer. The point of interaction isn’t projecting explicit violence, but rather initiating mental pain and suffering. The goose is consumed by the need to engage in psychologic warfare, and. It cannot be killed, only shewed away. It doesn’t operate with real consequences. The price of this immortality is repeating a few things over and over until I get them right.
Untitled Goose Game is a body-swapping fantasy that transforms any would-be suburban miscreant into a waddling force of mischief and destruction. Instead of putting your finger in everyone’s freshly baked pie, you menace around town and devastate an ordinary Saturday afternoon. Untitled Goose Game is a philosophical exercise to determine if the conniving will of a large annoying bird is either innate programming from a bored deity or a product of our broken society.
