Untitled Goose Game
Being even more of a nuisance than usual in UNTITLED GOOSE GAME
Scenes of Britishness are a largely untapped gaming resource. Aside from the leafy apocalypse of Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, few games accurately capture the damp-bunting disappointment of the British experience. And until someone makes a savage economy management sim set during a Women’s Institute charity bake sale, we’ll have to make do with Untitled Goose Game: The world’s first mild inconvenience-’em-up.
There’s something nice about playing a game where my goal isn’t to break necks or save worlds or amass boundless wealth. As a goose, I’m more concerned with stealing hats and trapping people in garages. It’s worrying how happy I am to go along with this seemingly meaningless list of things to do. Firstly, because it suggests the only call to action I need is a to-do list, no matter how banal or obtuse the tasks. And secondly, because I never question why a goose even has a to-do list. Who wrote it? For what purpose?
It’s slightly irresistible in the same way clicking a retractable pen is. If you’re holding that pen, only a trained buddhist monk could resist at least three clicks. In the same way, I defy anyone to play Untitled Goose Game and not honk inside a milk bottle or play the harmonica while flapping your wings. There’s a simple, silly immediacy to it that’s refreshing. But there’s some depth, too. Working out what kind of chaos you need to unleash to make a scared boy buy back his own stolen toy, for instance, does impart a sense of gentle purpose. The result is a combination of puzzle and stealth, underpinned by a constant desire to flap around hammering the honk button.
And now we come to the joyless shuck bit: Untitled Goose Game isn’t always fun to play. There’s an imprecise sponginess to everything. This is at its worst when you’re being chased or ushered away by the people whose lives you’re ruining. On top of this, the stealth systems and camera can be wobbly. It seems absurd to be this critical about a game in which the main goal is ‘literally be a goose’, but I did start to get frustrated after my third unsuccessful attempt to dump a glass in a river.
HONK
I wonder if it’s a game that would exist without the encouraging support of social media—a novelty idea that the community loved in theory, that was never likely to live up to whatever weird expectations we had. That said, Untitled Goose Game is more than a mere novelty. There’s structure here, with some surprising and thoughtful secrets, and some geographical unlocks which even remind me of Dark Souls. And if the thought of that doesn’t enthrall you, there’s always the milk bottle. ■
There’s a simple, silly immediacy to it that’s refreshing