‘Untitled Goose Game’ Review
A few years ago, Canadian Geese flew several hundred miles south to where I live for the winter, but the gaggle never migrated back. Ever since, they have become an invasive, traffic-stopping, defecating, overly aggressive nuisance. So as soon as I watched the debut trailer for Untitled Goose Game, I felt some kind of deeply ironic but spiritual connection to the premise of actually playing as a goose, ruining people’s day in juvenile ways.
Untitled Goose Game is unlike anything I’ve found in a video game before, but is familiar enough to play without needing much hand-holding. It balances humor, art, level design, enjoyable gameplay, and a quirky piano soundtrack that brings the entire experience to life. Though lacking in replayability and suffering from minor (but easily rectified) performance issues, I continued to find layers of fun within the naughty ways the goose pranked and outwitted the humans. It’s the kind of game that begs for a sequel, and I will happily play it if the goose continues to roam free, wreaking havoc on other communities.
Being the one who causes the mischief, rather than the one on the receiving side of it, reminds me of childishly satisfying pranks like ding-dong-ditching – clever and (relatively) harmless joy. Your goose completes a “to-do list” that leads you into an ever-widening series of little gags that you must complete before advancing into the next area, like making someone buy back their own stuff, trapping a shopkeeper in their own garage, or timing a clamoring noise that causes a man spit out his tea.
The level design is fantastic, challenging you to think in a multitude of ways as you sort out how best to stir up a ruckus through your gosling antics. At first, the world looks open and the gameplay carefree, but soon it becomes clear that Untitled Goose Game is an interconnected hybrid of stealth and puzzle elements, which means there is a great deal of analytical and strategic thought required. I found this game to be more challenging than I would have expected, but felt gratified every time I pieced together what to do next. I never got tired of causing people to chase me around and shake their fist angrily when I evaded them.
I never suffered framerate losses or felt uncomfortable with the controls. But the one critique I have of Untitled Goose Game is its performance, because I was game-breakingly stuck at least 5 times throughout my playthrough. I ran into a softlock in the very first area where one of the items on the “to-do list” is to trick a farmer into getting soaking wet. I could not get his attention and spent at least 20 minutes waddling around, thinking I was missing something. Though this kind of softlock was more common than it should be, the game luckily has a restart option in the menu that saves your mission progress whilst resetting the items and people throughout the area. When I exasperatingly refreshed, the farmer immediately noticed me and I was able to move on as intended – and this was true throughout the duration of the game. Eventually, when I would get stuck, the restart option became a quick and easy solution to my problems. Saving for these issues, the game never lost its visual charm or humor.
Untitled Goose Game breaks no graphical ground, but that lack of innovation doesn’t stop it from being a welcoming environment that feels relaxing and benign – more so than any sort of realism ever could match. The color palette and graphical design of the characters fit the game’s tone perfectly – from the goose to the humans. For instance, when humans replace items stolen by the goose, they wipe their hands together to as to nonverbally signal that they feel like the nuisance has been taken care of. It’s a lighthearted and simple gesture that suggests much about their laughable buffoonery. There was just enough detail in these character animations to provide a kind of life and humor to the modelling that carried through key moments in the gameplay.
I finished the game feeling like it was fantastic and carefree in a way that I would never again be able to experience afresh. Once you have solved your way through the game’s myriad puzzles, there isn’t much left to figure out. The initial 2-3 hour playtime felt appropriate and might be a fun game to revisit once I’ve forgotten how the puzzles work in a few years. And – though not a proper “NewGame+” – I was delighted to see after the credits rolled that there’s quite a bit more content to explore once you’ve completed the main story, including an entirely fresh series of objectives.
The premise of Untitled Goose Game might be its greatest strength. Every new action on the goose’s “to-do list” provides humor through a combination of goofy mechanics and implied storytelling, which I found to probe into some actually interesting psychological insights about why we prank others and why so many people get so bent out of shape with others prank us. The premise delivers on exactly what it promises: a beautiful and quirky indie game where you control a goose who messes with humans for fun. If that sounds fun, then you’re going to love it.
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