What Is "Untitled Goose Game"? Your Chance to Play a Huge Goose Jerk

Welcome to the goose discourse.

The internet was taken by storm this week when Melbourne-based video game company House House dropped the ultimate goose-gaming experience since (checks history of technology) ever.

It's called Untitled Goose Game, and people are losing their freaking minds over it.

goose game appears to be tapping into the 20-30's crowd's desire to rebel and indulge in absurdity without causing physical harm and that's beautiful

— mc schrodinger 🔥 gay antifa twink (@emiyannn) September 26, 2019

Untitled Goose Game is the literal definition of ‘aren’t you tired of being nice? don’t you just want to go ape shit?’

— shan m. (@heyshanmurphy) September 26, 2019

The title, logline—"It's a lovely morning in the village and you are a horrible goose"—and sunny green setting are all unassuming, but the game itself (available on PC, Mac and Nintendo Switch) definitely isn’t, playing on our innate desire to be absolute a**holes for seemingly no reason.

In it, you take on the role of an unnamed goose. After learning the ropes—how to honk, how to pick things up with your beak—you’re tasked with harassing the citizens of a nice village, sometimes with the goal of stealing food to host a goose picnic for yourself, but mostly for the purpose of torturing farmers and other normies simply because you’re a goose, and that’s what geese do.

Or, that's how we perceive geese, what with their guttural honks and predilection for flapping unpleasantly whenever you go near them. But really, being a jerk is kind of what people do (certainly more often than geese), especially when they’re playing video games. House House is skipping the pretence of games like Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto and even The Sims—where you can do inhumane things to NPCs, but are generally meant to stay on task—and simply making a**holery the task itself.

Sure, I’ve been guilty of video game-based crimes against humanity in the past, like giving a Sim a rich, fulfilling life, and then, when they go to the toilet, removing all the doors and then the toilet itself, and watching them cry out for help within their toilet-tomb to an unresponsive and cruel god (me). It didn’t help me "win", but the game let me do it all the same, so I did. Now, Untitled Goose Game doesn’t just give me permission to be cruel; it rewards my horrible goose behaviour.

Mercifully, the high crimes in Untitled Goose Game don’t reach the violent ends of Red Dead or GTA; mostly, you just interrupt and surprise people, steal their garden trowels, hide their eyeglasses, or throw their mail in the lake. Still, five minutes into playing Untitled Goose Game, I was happily haranguing a gardener beyond what was being asked of me, attempting to flood his rose bushes, locking him out of his backyard, and generally driving him crazy by blocking his path and, you guessed it, honking like hell.

Then again, what if our goose isn’t an antihero causing chaos for no reason, but a legitimately wronged figure deserving vengeance? Within the game’s credits, House House (working with Panic and Film Victoria) pay respect to elders, past and present, acknowledging that the game "was made on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation", stressing that "Sovereignty was never ceded". Combine that with the fact there’s something very British about this village and its quaint old ways, and you see a metaphor at play. Ultimately, the game's folk are the ones who have added these obstacles to the goose’s path, putting up gates and keep out signs, and paving its grasslands. Isn’t the goose entitled to reclaim a space that’s rightfully his or hers?

Or, maybe Untitled Goose Game isn’t a parable about colonialisation, and simply a bit of fun tosh that lets you ceaselessly honk at people by hitting the space bar, providing our generation with an outlet for disorderly conduct in which our protests are actually heard and effective. All I know is that if you’ve ever considered yourself a horrible goose, finally, you will feel seen.

Untitled Goose Game is now available on desktop and Nintendo Switch.

Header Image: Epic Games