Untitled Goose Game

Yep, it's that goose (Source : Polygon)

The first announcement of this game is about the end of last year. It raises a lot of attention to many gamers, including me, since it advertises a game simulating a bad-behaving goose. The initial release window is for early 2019, so that got me pumped up as well. But, then, back in February, another announcement is made that the game will be pushed back to late 2019.

Fast forward to August, we finally have a release date. 20 September 2019. I checked on the calendar, and immediately realised, that the release date coincides with the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Ni No Kuni: Remastered release. So, how does an unknown indie developer House House manages this? Fast forward to early October, Untitled Goose Game currently is the best-seller game in Nintendo Switch, smashing records in numerous charts, and the Internet is talking about this particular goose like there’s no tomorrow. So, what about this game that makes it so instantly popular?

For those of you who are not familiar with this game, Untitled Goose Game is a sandbox game, where you play as a goose. Your ultimate goal is just to ruin everybody’s life living in the village. That’s it. You just goof around, while honking all the way, bring terror to this once peaceful village.

And that’s probably the key thing about this game. Because Untitled Goose Game is so simple, the game is basically available to everyone. It is very easy to learn how to play it. The game also doesn’t “punish” you if you make mistakes along the way. There’s no “life bar”. There’s no time limit. That makes the game less intimidating to non-regular gamers. But, if you do something right, it feels satisfying, it rewards you with more goof to do in the next unlocked area.

Honk (Source : Gfycat)

The music ambience is also spot on. Those piano notes are a right choice to accompany this foul goose everytime the goose do something “wrong”. The escalating music will make you feel the need to quickly run away after snatching that sunglasses from the store. It will also let you know if you’re doing something right.

For me, this game is basically a living reminder to bigger triple-A game companies. A game can have amazing graphics, amazing stories to tell, amazing music to listen on loop, even when you’re not playing the game. But, if your game scares away potential gamer with your intricate mechanics, nobody will play it. And that’s a sad thing, since I’ve already encountered many games that fall under what I’ve just said. By making your mechanics simple enough for everyone, while keeping it interesting, more people will eventually play your game, and House House proves this for me by delivering this beautiful little game.

Again, with most of my writing thoughts about this game, I will also go into what’s not good about this game. But, here’s the thing, I hardly find any bad thing that I can talk about. Yes, if you read the summary above, I said that the AI have a bit of issue. But, as far as I’ve played it, I rarely encountered it. And, anyways, it’s an AI. AIs are prone to failure, because that’s just how AI is now. The ”drag and hold your mouse” to move around that I didn’t really comfortable using? Given more time, I can definitely get around that.

So, if you have $7.99 burning a hole in your pocket, give this game a shot. It’s worth the price and the time. And, by playing this game, you can now jump on the meme bandwagon of this particular goose that has been going wildly now!

Author’s Notes : Definitely waaay to late to the party… Yes, I’ve been too busy lately. Even though this is a relatively short article, this still takes me a while to write. I mean, I’ve started writing about this 3 weeks ago, but it just sit abandoned in my drafts until now.

Oh, well, let’s just put the past in the past. More article coming soon…!