Re­view: “Un­ti­tled Goose Game”

MISHAWAKA – Nin­ten­do’s re­lease of the non-tit­u­lar goose in, “Un­ti­tled Goose Game,” has play­ers flock­ing to their Nin­tendo Switches. 

The goose sim­u­la­tor that no one was ask­ing for, nor ex­pect­ing, but that every­one is deeply grate­ful for, was re­leased on Sept. 20, 2019. Af­ter a rel­a­tively low-key re­lease, the game took flight in pop­u­lar­ity, ap­pear­ing on YouTube, in dozens of game jour­nals, and, the hall­mark of ubiq­uity, in count­less memes on­line. The game fol­lows the player, a goose, as it ter­ror­izes a bunch of laugh­ably obliv­i­ous and some­times un­re­al­is­ti­cally sus­pi­cious towns­folk. Hon­estly, I wish there was more to say about it to pad out this para­graph, but the in-game story is about as bare-bones as the art style. 

“Un­ti­tled Goose Game” be­gins in the same way all works of art do: with a but­ton prompt to honk. Af­ter burst­ing forth from a shrub, and tak­ing a few ten­ta­tive steps around a clear­ing, the goose sprints off to cause un­con­scionable ter­ror among the in­no­cent denizens of a town as un­named as the game it­self. The player is al­lowed all the nec­es­sary com­po­nents of goose be­hav­ior to carry out their sin­is­ter machi­na­tions. The goose can honk, flap its wings, run, grab ob­jects with its beak, swim, and, of course, duck.  The open­ing stage of the game in­volves bring­ing a host of in­con­ve­niences upon a poor gar­dener. The player must, through in­creas­ingly con­vo­luted means, cause all man­ner of harm and mild an­noy­ance, like steal­ing the groundskeep­er’s keys, hat, and trowel; dous­ing the groundskeeper with a sprin­kler; and re­lo­cat­ing his gar­den rake to the bot­tom of a nearby pond. Now, watch­ing peo­ple chase af­ter a goose at a com­i­cally slow pace, com­pounded with the im­prob­a­ble co­or­di­na­tion of this bird, is some of the purest slap­stick com­edy, on par with Tom & Jerry.  

Now, some of these cit­i­zens, con­found­ingly, don’t take kindly to your feath­ery skull­dug­gery. The goose’s ac­tions will be made much more dif­fi­cult if a per­son spots them, es­pe­cially the cur­rent tar­get. For ex­am­ple, if the groundskeeper no­tices you in the gar­den dur­ing your at­tempt to pur­loin any num­ber of his pos­ses­sions, he will chase you out. In an­other level, a child, to whom in­ter­fer­ing with is mis­sion-crit­i­cal, runs from the goose in fear. These NPC’s (Non-Player Char­ac­ters) would not be much of a prob­lem if they were not mar­gin­ally faster than you, a two-and-a-half-foot-tall goose. The an­ti­cli­mac­tic na­ture of a slow-paced chase, how­ever, only adds to the game’s spec­tac­u­lar hu­mor. 

“Un­ti­tled Goose Game” is a honk of a good time for all in­volved. The player is given a gag­gle of lev­els to play through, though some might get your goose if your at­ti­tude gets too fowl. Feel free to call me a quack if you dis­agree.