Goose Game

Renegade Shepard’s got nothing on you in this.

There aren’t nearly enough games that let you play the villain. The beauty here is that, as much as it might feel like it on occasion, geese are not evil creatures. I, on the other hand, take immense pleasure in being horrible and therefore, I love this game.

Controls are simple, never getting in the way of your desire to wreak havoc. Hold one button to run rather than waddle, one to lean down, another to flap your wings, another to grab or drop things – and that’s it, really. Objectives are presented via a ‘to do’ list in the pause menu, and almost exclusively involve making the lives of the villagers miserable.

The game begins just outside a small garden and, once I’m in, I’m giggling with glee within seconds. The waddling animation is endlessly captivating, and it is literally impossible to dislike a game that opens with “press X to honk” – but my first human encounter really seals the deal. One of the first objectives I complete is to steal the gardener’s keys, snatching them right off his trousers. I then make a run for the lake, honking triumphantly as he gives chase, dropping them into my watery domain far out of his reach before smugly paddling around without a care in the world. Later I’ll get the sod wet, steal his lunch, make him buy back his own trowel, and more. This, I’ll remind you, is the first area of the village.

Once the whole village is open to you, each area presents the optional challenge of completing all its objectives within a tight time limit. This requires forward planning and, sometimes, a change in tactics if the way you usually do things is too time consuming.

There’s no denying that once you approach the six hour mark, the joke (slowly) begins to wear thin, the small size of the village meaning you’ll have repeated yourself a lot. But that really doesn’t matter. This wasn’t designed for GTA levels of playtime, and I can’t remember the last game that made me laugh so often while I was playing it.