UNTITLED GOOSE GAME
Blame it on the goose, got you feeling loose
Honk. HONK. HOOOOONK! Well, when we’re given a dedicated honk button, you can’t expect us not to press it, can you? With much delight, we waddle through a small, idyllic English village, walking up behind its inhabitants, flapping our wings with the triggers, and screeching away.
As a terrible goose you’re not here to cause chaos ad hoc, you’re doing it to order. Each gorgeous, vibrant, low-poly section of the village is a discrete area, with its own little ecosystem of objects and character interactions. Essentially Untitled Goose Game is a little like Hitman, except you’re a goose instead of an assassin, and your kills are simply acts of ill-natured mischief.
Each area presents you with new interactions; most involving either terrorising people with flaps and honks or picking things up with your beak (which can be angled with a crouch button that also allows you to sneak). You’re presented with a list of tasks to complete, and then it’s your goal to figure out how to accomplish them by playing around, experimenting, and observing the results of causing mayhem for these villagers simply trying to have a nice day.
For instance, in the first locale, you have to make a gardener wear his sunhat. Sneaking through the bushes, you can spy him bending down to tend his beloved vegetables. Popping out, you can clasp the cap he’s currently wearing with your beak and dash away. Hide it in the nearby lake and he’ll have no choice but to wear his sunhat instead. The solutions aren’t always this simple (this is one of the earliest), but by toying around with the world you’ll quickly figure out what makes these people tick.
HONKING GREAT
Though the game is set entirely in one village, each area feels distinct, and they escalate in complexity. Once you’ve cleared enough tasks in an area, you’ll be given a final one to complete that unlocks the way to the next. One of our favourite tasks takes place across the gardens of two neighbours, one an orderly, well-to-do man, and the other a more artsand-crafty lady, and revolves around some clever interplay between the two. Annoy the residents and they’ll place a “No geese” sign near their property as if the goose could possibly understand. You might be menacing this town, but there’s almost something heartwarming about the goose being the source of most of their problems.
By the end, everything feels like it’s been tied together with a little bow. It’s a short and sweet experience – you’ll see the credits within three hours or so – but then you’re given endgame challenges that introduce interplay between the zones that’ll make you appreciate the village in a new way. There’s a purity in exploring human society from the perspective of an outsider, and putting a beak-shaped spanner in the works.
VERDICT
“A LITTLE LIKE HITMAN, EXCEPT YOU’RE A GOOSE INSTEAD OF AN ASSASSIN.”
Simply a joy to play from start to finish. It allows you to relish the feeling of being an utter nuisance and a white-winged menace without being in any way cynical. Oscar Taylor-Kent