Fun action-puzzle game

Untitled Goose Game is an action-puzzle game developed by House House and published by Panic. It features sandbox-style gameplay where you play as a honking goose who loves causing mischief. Your mission: waddle around a placid British village and ruin everyone’s day. It is an utterly inane game, devoid of even the slightest trace of story. However, it is very addicting and fun.

Who let the goose out?

The canvas of gaming is very broad. You have the big-budgeted triple-A franchises and the more intimate titles from indie directors. And then, somewhere far from the spectrum, there are games like the Untitled Goose Game. It is a story-less game with a ridiculous concept that caters to gamers who are needing a brief respite from reality and are looking for a bit of brainless fun. 

However, that does not say that the game is completely brain-dead. In fact, the developers created a game that is both mindless and difficult. At its core, Untitled Goose Game is a puzzle game. You will play the villain—the goose— and must control it to burst chaotically into the humdrum life of the villagers.

The game starts with you pestering an innocent gardener as he tends to his plants. Your missions will be to steal his vegetables, throw his tools into the pond, trick the poor man into hammering his thumb, and other hilarious hijinks. From there, you will be given new lists of mischief that you need to do as you gradually unlock areas in the village. You only need to hit pause to keep track of the missions.

All the goose’s missions are geared towards ruining the villagers’ day. But that’s not to say that you will spend all your playing time waddling around the town and honking on innocent people. Your progress relies on outsmarting those humans. Most missions have multiple solutions. And though no mission will stump you for hours, there is a depth to the game and a sense of satisfaction in working out what to do.

You can also opt to put a time limit to your missions to bring more challenges. By doing so, the game will require you to do the planning and, sometimes, changing tactics. The game that is typically relaxed will become a manic speed of test and improvisation.

Simplicity is the name of the game

Perhaps one of the reasons behind Untitled Goose Game’s continuous success is its simplicity. Its controls are nice and simple, and it never gets in the way of your missions. You only have to hold one button to run, one button to lean down, another one to flap your wings, and one to grab or drop things. As mentioned, you only need to hit the pause menu to see your missions.

There is no handbook for the game and no tutorial mode you can do anytime. But that’s okay, as the mission menu contains the controls menu. There are really no complicated game mechanics that you need to worry about, either. You are not trying to gain abilities or unlock combos. When you lose, no one dies. At its purest, Untitled Goose Game only forces you to just go as wild as a goose.

Play for fun

All in all, Untitled Goose Game is the perfect game to play if you are looking for a simple yet fun game. Though story-less, it maintains the level of entertainment throughout the playtime. Sure, the small village gets repetitive for a while, and it is completely a singularly small map, but it doesn’t matter. In the end, it lives up to its promise of providing gamers with mindless fun and you can keep challenging yourself with self-made missions using the numerous in-game objects you can steal.