Untitled Goose Game

Untitled Goose Game is a 2019 stealth-and-puzzle game developed by Melbourne studio House House and published by Panic. It casts the player as a white goose loose in a small English village, where progress comes from completing mischievous task lists rather than fighting enemies. The goose can honk, flap its wings, pick up objects with its beak, hide items, drag objects, and evade villagers who try to recover their belongings. The game begins in a gardener’s enclosed garden. Among its objectives are stealing the gardener’s keys, making him wear his sunhat, soaking him with a sprinkler, and arranging a picnic using items taken from his workspace. Subsequent areas include a high street, two neighboring back gardens, a pub, and a model village. Each location introduces residents with routines that can be interrupted or manipulated by the goose. A notable early objective asks the player to “make the groundskeeper hammer his thumb.” This is accomplished indirectly: the goose steals a sign, causing the groundskeeper to replace it, then honks at the right moment. Other tasks include trapping a boy in a telephone box, making a shopkeeper put on a sunhat, getting a woman to dress up a bust, and dropping a bucket on a burly man’s head. The game’s final major goal is to steal a large bell from the miniature village. Once the goose takes it, villagers pursue the animal through previously visited areas while the bell rings behind it. The goose eventually returns the bell to its original home, joining a pile of other stolen bells. This ending reveals that the goose has apparently performed the same bell theft repeatedly. Untitled Goose Game was released for macOS, Windows, and Nintendo Switch on September 20, 2019. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions followed on December 17, 2019. Its title, minimal interface, and soundtrack contributed substantially to its public identity. The music uses recordings of Claude Debussy piano preludes performed by French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Rather than playing continuously, the soundtrack changes dynamically according to the player’s actions, with musical fragments becoming more urgent during chases. House House consisted of Nico Disseldorp, Stuart Gillespie-Cook, Michael McMaster, and Jacob Strasser. The studio had previously made the 2016 game Push Me Pull You. Untitled Goose Game became House House’s most prominent release and attracted extensive attention online before and after launch, particularly through images and videos of the goose interrupting ordinary village life. In September 2020, House House added a free cooperative multiplayer update. It allows two players to control two geese, enabling them to coordinate pranks and pursue the same objective lists together. The game won several major awards, including Game of the Year at the 2020 D.I.C.E. Awards, where it also received the Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game award.