Like many regular people, I often toss and turn in bed at night restlessly kept from sleep by the same persistent question: what if Hitman’s Agent 47 were a goose? Well, me and my fellow feather-inclined friends can finally rest easy, as the unrelentingly charming and wonderfully absurd Untitled Goose Game has finally brought our sleepless nights peace by showing us the answer – and that answer is a magical kind of fowl play that replaces murder with merciless annoyance. It’s a short game, but that time is packed with plenty of laughs and simple pleasures.
As implied by the absence of a title, in Untitled Goose Game you play as a goose. But not just any goose: you’re a goose who is also a total asshole. (Honestly, maybe that just means you are a regular goose.) You run around a lovely, minimalist English village honking, flapping your wings, and generally doing goose things as you clear off a hand-written checklist full of mischievous goose tasks.
Much of Untitled Goose game genuinely feels like a stealth game. Even the biggest asshole of a goose has to be sneaky at times, hiding in bushes or in boxes as you wait for the right time to rush out and cause mayhem. It’s not an exaggeration to compare it to the likes of Hitman or Metal Gear Solid, just with goose-based shenanigans replacing all that icky murder. Slowly creeping up behind an unsuspecting sap who is holding an item you need or using strategically placed walkie-talkies to lure some mook away with HONKs never failed to make me laugh.
And this goose’s to-do list apparently consists entirely of being a total jerk to the people who live in its cute little town for reason beyond “because goose.” The foul deeds required of you can range from stealing food for a picnic to nabbing a gardener’s keys off his belt to untying a little boy’s shoelaces, scaring him until he runs away and trips, then quickly stealing his glasses and letting him blindly search the ground until you bring him the wrong pair back. It is gloriously malevolent. Who wrote this list? That much is unclear, but we know whoever did has a special kind of hatred in their heart.
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I loved just about every maniacal task I was given, all of which are as weird as they are clever. Being an asshole goose is just a ton of fun, so even the silly simplicity of a task obscurely called “Rake in the Lake” was enough to send me into a honking fervor as I excitedly stole and dragged a poor old gardener’s rake into the dang lake. It’s hard to describe the strange pleasure Untitled Goose Game elicited as I let out triumphant victory honks while the gardener stood on the edge of the water shaking his head in frustration.
While a task like “Rake in the Lake” lacks wiggle room for how you can go about crossing it off your list, many of the others thrive off of flexibility, improvisation, and creative problem solving. Another early one asks you to get the gardener wet, which can be accomplished in a number of different ways that I won’t spoil (simply because there are relatively few objectives overall, so spelling this one out would give away a large percentage of them). Not every task is like this, but I loved that many of the solutions I came up with could feel unique to me.
You can flip through some screenshots from Untitled Goose Game below:
However, it can be a tad frustrating at times that grabbing objects with your beak is a little less precise than you’d want it to be for a game that requires some speed and accuracy to avoid being thwarted by a pesky human. Granted, a goose grabbing a full-size pumpkin with its beak doesn’t exactly sound like it would be the most elegant thing in the world, but incorrectly highlighting one item to grab because it was just a little too close to another could sometimes waste precious seconds and cause my carefully laid gardener traps to go to waste.
Thankfully, there is a delightful lack of consequence or urgency in most areas, letting you take your time, mess up, and experiment as you refine your bill-based terror. Getting caught with an object simply makes you drop it, which can often result in a hysterical back and forth as you nab something out of a person’s hand over and over. Messing up can still throw a monkey wrench in your plans (especially in an area like the pub, which has a bouncer who will shoo you outside), but there are no “Goose Over” screens to fear, and I wouldn’t really want that any other way.
But what really ties this downy duvet together is its music and sound effects. Much of the time there won’t be any music playing at all, letting you relentlessly honk away or just listen to the adorable patter of your little feet, which accompanies one of the best walk animations of 2019. (I also loved tiny details like bottles, traffic cones, or even a harmonica altering your honk while you are holding them in your bill.) When there is music, the piano-driven score expertly fades in and out with the action on screen – it lent an air of Benny Hill-style ridiculousness to chases, and always seemed to mischievously creep in at the perfect time just as I started to sneak up on an unsuspecting target. It’s used with a light touch, but to incredible effect.
Once you complete most of the checklist for an area, a new path will open up letting you move on to the next one, complete with another checklist and a fresh set of unsuspecting victims. You’ll spread your feathers of doom across the village main street, multiple gardens, and even an outdoor pub in what connects to make up a congruous and fun to explore village – Untitled Goose Game is mostly linear, but side paths will open up to enable shortcuts back and forth.
Watch us play through the first area from Untitled Goose Game below:
And therein lies the biggest fault in this goose-based adventure: it’s pretty dang short. It only took me about an hour and a half to play through the five main areas of this quaint village, and while I absolutely loved every second of it, I wasn’t ready to give up the gander just yet. This English village ultimately felt like only a single level of a game, but the rest was missing, leaving a whole lot of unexplored territory on the table. I easily could have seen my goose exploring other locales, each with their own unique areas and checklists. It feels like the goose is taken away too soon – like he had so much more mayhem to give.
That said, what’s here is lovingly crafted, filled with tiny touches in every corner and with everything made to feel shiny and crisp to both look at and play with. There’s a bit more to do beyond the credits, too, with a new set of checklists appearing with tasks that require you to run between areas for some additional challenge – as well as a bit of speedrunning for those so inclined. It kept me busy for another hour or two, but I still wish this goose had soared a bit further.