The past few years have blessed gamers with a rise of amusing, quirky, silly games. Goat Simulator, Octodad, The Stanley Parable, Surgeon Simulator, and plenty more are now available to tickle funny bones. Whether the humor came from funny visuals, clever writing, slippery absurd controls, or a combination of those things they are a welcome addition to a library as a break from more serious games. It’s always a good time to find a game that just makes you smile. In comes Untitled Goose Game from House House to try its hand. First impressions from the trailer alone had me doing a big dumb grin and I was pretty excited to be a goose with a singular goal of being a goose (asshole, geese are assholes).
The first thing to notice about Untitled Goose Game is it uses a fairly simple art direction to great effect. The goose stands out being stark white against the other solid colors of the environment. The modeling and texturing is fairly simple utilizing appealing round shapes and a color palette that exudes the same feeling of fondly remembered children’s books. While completely done in 3D the result is a very pleasant 2D cartoon looking art style.
The gameplay is also fairly simple. Clicking to move with option to sprint. The goose can also grab things in its beak, DUCK to pick up things off the ground, flap his wings, and of course honk. Objectives change as you progress through the game reflecting which area you are in. These objectives range from simply dragging a rake into a lake, luring a farmer to get him wet, and stealing a child’s toy and glasses and then chasing him into a phone booth. You know regular goose stuff. The result is figuring out how to use the limited controls and tools available to each environment to solve the problems that are your objectives. Your main obstacle in Untitled Goose Game is those pesky humans whose days you’re trying so hard to wreck. They will notice that their thermos is gone and go find it where you are trying to set up a picnic. They’ll see you trying to steal something from their store and chase you off with a broom. (Let’s just see how well they can keep their little store together if they are trapped in the garage!!!) If you are holding something when they catch you you’ll drop it and be forced away from it. This does create a need for some stealth as you try to make off with people slippers. There are also times where you want to catch someone’s attention to make them drop something, or lure them into a carefully laid trap. The variety of objectives definitely are a part of the humor and keeps the game fun and from getting too repetitive. This does however mean you occasionally get an objective you aren’t particularly interested or is difficult int he constraints of the simple controls.
The music in Untitled Goose Game is used deliberately and extremely effectively. The soundtrack is nice piano melodies and a jazzy angry string of piano notes will play when being chased. The people will make vocal noises, and there are sounds as you interact with various objects, but nothing is quite as dramatic as those piano notes. There is some environment ambiance sound, wind, birds chirping, radios, and little touches that do a lot to establish the environment. It’s notable that this game isn’t afraid to be silent, which really adds some punch to when sound particularly music is present.
The humor of Untitled Goose Game comes primarily of seeing the goose interact with the environment and the reactions of the people this impacts. Children putting on the wrong glasses, farmers getting soaked, ladies getting trapped in their garage, and men losing their slippers are just scratching the surface of amusing interactions to be witness to cause. There is definitely some replayability in going back and trying out different things to get different reactions. Unfortunately, you will be needing to go back and replay sooner than you’d like as the game is on the short side.
Untitled Goose Game uses a lot of simple things effectively and turns them into strengths. House House knew exactly what game they wanted to make and delivered spectacularly in it. It doesn’t feel like anything is missing from the game because when it does use things it is deliberate, and you can tell that there was intentionality behind everything. Care was taken in everything from the art design, sound design, and gameplay to create a fun, quirky, and ultimately very funny game about being a goose.
