Video Game / Untitled Goose Game

HONK!

It's a lovely morning in the village, and you are a horrible goose.

Untitled Goose Game^note according to the developers, it officially has No Title is an Adventure Game developed by House House for the Nintendo Switch and PC (via the Epic Games Store as an exclusive, and then released onto Steam a year later) on September 20, 2019, and PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on December 17, 2019. You play as a goose who wanders around a sleepy unnamed English village doing various goose things and being a general nuisance to any nearby humans.

The gameplay involves some light problem-solving and stealth, and you have a dedicated honk button.

It was announced on August 28, 2018. The teaser trailer is here. The launch trailer is here. The PlayStation 4/Xbox One announcement trailer is here.

A free update which added a local two-player mode was released on September 23, 2020. On the same day, the game was also released on Steam and itch.io. Update trailer here.

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Tropes featured in Untitled Goose Game include:

• 100% Completion: There's a special checklist item for completing all other assigned tasks, shown only after you beat the game.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: All items that the goose can grab will float in water, even if some of them would normally be dense enough to sink. They also will not disintegrate in water even if made out of bread or paper. This prevents softlock situations where an important item would be lost or destroyed.
• Acrophobic Bird: Despite being an animal capable of flight, the goose is unable to fly, even though flying would make many tasks much easier, such as bringing the bell back home. Justified; the goose's wings are clipped.
• A.I. Breaker: In Multiplayer mode, the humans will generally prioritize retrieving items that are being held by a goose. As such, if each goose holds an item, the one being focused on can drop their item, which will force the human to focus on the other goose without actually picking up the first item. Then the second goose can drop their item as the first picks theirs up to redirect the human again. Rinse and repeat as long as needed.
• Amusing Injuries: Many of the goose's goals involve getting the humans to hurt themselves, such as making the groundskeeper hit his thumb with a mallet.
• And Starring: The Goose is given separate credits from the rest of the cast.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • At any time in the game, you can choose to reset, which undoes everything you've done in the game, cleaning up any messes you've made and resetting people back to their original states, while you get to keep your achieved objectives and any Doors To Before are left open.
  • You can snatch items from people's hands, making many of the objectives that would otherwise be prohibitively difficult (such as a certain mission involving a certain bell) much more manageable.
  • Breakable items will respawn, meaning you can't lock yourself out of an objective like making someone else break the vase or throw a pint glass in the canal by accidentally breaking these items. In the former case, the vase will be re-assembled if you wait long enough. In the latter case, the publican will fetch another pint glass from a cart full of dishes. This also saves you from having to reset and lose any other set-ups you might've had.
  • Anytime an interactable object is obstructed by something else, a question mark will display in its place when the goose is near, saving you the trouble of trying to pick up something you can't see behind a wall.
• As Himself: The end credit feature a movie-style cast listing of all the characters (Boy, Groundskeeper, Tidy Neighbor, Messy Neighbor, etc.) ending with And Introducing "Goose as The Goose".
• Asshole Victim: It's hard to feel too sorry for the male neighbor when you see how he reacts to finding his neighbor's pot in his yard. Furthermore, his tendency to take any garbage you drop in his yard (even if it doesn't belong to her) and toss it onto her property, to say nothing of how his reaction to seeing you minding your own business with a pretty bow is to chase you, steal it, and throw it away, makes it clear he's an asshole of a neighbor and all-around rotten guy who's overdue for a good goosing.
  • Same for the shopkeeper, who makes people pay for items that clearly weren't part of her shop's inventory to begin with, including a used trowel.
• Blind Without 'Em: Embodied by the young boy in the village. One of your objectives is to give the kid a different pair of glasses.
• Book Ends: The game begins and ends in the goose's home in the woods.
• Can't You Read the Sign?: The "no geese allowed" signs are put up in the level only when the task to unlock the next area is given. Naturally, you can mess with most of these just like any other object that isn't nailed down.
• Clothesline Stealing: One of the neighbors has a line with socks and a bra hung up. The goose, of course, can mess with these.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: The September 2020 update adds the option to play with two horrible geese, both aiming to make the villagers' lives miserable.
• Cosmetic Award: For completing everything on the to-do list, you get a crown, which you can wear by going to any villager and getting them to put it on you.
• Cranky Neighbor: In the level with two backyards, the male neighbor is this. While he'll mind his own business without the goose's influence, he can end up berating his female neighbor, tossing random objects over her fence, and eventually just sit grumbling over his whole situation.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • For the "do the wash" objective in the area with the two neighbors, you need to dunk soap, socks, a bra, and a slipper in a sufficient body of water. It is not stated that the male neighbor can't still be wearing the slippers. If he wades into the water to retrieve the other objects, it counts as a slipper being dunked and crosses off the objective.
  • One area transition involves going through someone's house from the back door to the front door. If you brought an item from outside into the house and dropped it inside (and would thus lose it if not for this trope), the item will be thrown out the door you exit from. This also is an alternate way of getting the fancy vase broken.
  • It's possible to drop items into the well, but they'll just pop right out the nearby drainpipe, so you can't lose important objects this way. (And everything floats in water.) During the final chase scene, the well is boarded up so you can't use it to skip carrying the bell past the humans in the first three areas.
  • For the objective "Get the groundskeeper wet", most players try to get him wet using the water sprinkler. However, you can kill two birds with one stone and toss the rake into the lake (one of the other objectives), and make the groundskeeper go into the lake after it.
  • Speaking of the groundskeeper, he is intelligent enough to make use of the Doors To Before that you have made. Once you've cleared a path around to the back of the garden, if you lock him out he'll just run around and come in through the back. If you manage to get that far without completing the Lock The Groundskeeper Out Of The Garden task, it will be counted the second you lock him out even if he just immediately goes around and gets back in, to prevent that task from being Permanently Missable Content.
  • At the pub, the burly man can be distracted if you hide under the stairs and honk, whereupon he'll leave his post to climb the stairs and peer at the deck. This is useful for leaving quickly with an item. However, if you're thinking out of the box, you can also achieve this by opening the gates to the other areas and getting a walkie-talkie from the high street under the stairs. Honking through the other one will get the burly man to investigate the stairs just like if the goose was under them. Using a walkie-talkie outside while one is under the stairs is a pretty effective way to enter the pub, since the burly man will be distracted and leave the entrance open.
• Door to Before: The gates that are latched from the other side, accessible once you complete an area and get to move on. You'll actually have to use one in order to complete one of the objectives at the pub. Once you get the bell, they're all padlocked, forcing you to backtrack through the entire game.
• Droste Image: The model village includes a model version of the model village.
• Dungeon Bypass: Thanks to a bug, it is possible to skip the entire final task by clipping through one of the Doors To Before that are closed during it. You go directly from the model village to the pond in front of the goose's home, in about 5 seconds, without ever once encountering a single villager or even so much as being challenged for your bell.
• Excuse Plot: The whole game is a excuse to be a creatively obnoxious goose.
• Fetch Quest: Each level features a task where the goose must bring several items to a specific location, such as food to a picnic basket. The entire game is actually one giant Fetch Quest, when it's shown that the goose's goal is to steal the bell and throw it in a ditch in its home.
• For the Evulz: The majority of the objectives have nothing to do with the goose's goal of stealing the bell. However, the developers have stated that you shouldn't ascribe human-like morality or higher functioning to the goose's actions; it does the things it does because it is a goose.
• Foreshadowing: The goose's home in the woods features a pit full of golden bells. Your ultimate goal is to get another and bring it back.
• Forgot About His Powers: The goose cannot fly, requiring the player to devise alternate means to get past many obstacles. Looking closely at its wings shows that it apparently had its wings clipped, implying it is a domestic goose and possibly explaining its desire to make the villagers' lives miserable.
• Foul Waterfowl: Just like it says in the description, you are a horrible goose.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy:
  • The staff members working at the fourth level's pub will shoo you out if you get spotted. If you hide from the publican and her husband by going under the tables, however, they'll eventually give up the chase even though they might have cornered you.
  • Zigzagged with the cardboard box; most people will not consider a random box suspicious, even if the box had been open and empty just ten seconds ago and they heard a honk in the vicinity, and the delivery person will carry the box into the pub even if she's fallen for this trick many times. However, if the box starts honking too much or the person actually saw the goose get inside, they'll just get annoyed and force the goose out of the box. Unless it's the tidy neighbor, who'll still throw the box into the messy neighbor's yard.
  • The humans generally have goldfish memory, only knowing what they're currently doing. For the "get dressed up with a ribbon" challenge, you can watch as the woman stares at the empty space where her goose statue should be, then walk up and stand there when she turns around to pick up the ribbon — she'll turn right back around and put the ribbon on you, forgetting that she noticed the statue was gone a few seconds ago.
  • On the flip side, they perfectly remember every object you moved, prioritizing putting them back where they were over almost everything else, and it's possible to get them stuck in an endless loop this way. An example from the first area is to knock over the thermos on the table inside the garden; the groundskeeper will see it and walk towards the thermos to right it, but the cooler box's natural position might be in the way. As a result, he'll attempt to pathfind through the box, jostle it a little, fix it so that it's back in its natural location, then see the upturned thermos and restart the cycle.
  • The humans are also bad at actually doing anything about the goose; the worst they'll do is shoo/chase you away from certain places and take back things you've stolen. If that's something they don't already do, they won't make any attempts to get rid of the goose that's being an absolute pest to them. At least, not until the final mission. They also will not leave their designated quadrants of the village under any circumstances. ^note Aside from the groundskeeper if you take his trowel to the high street to complete one of the additional tasks. The tidy neighbor won't even leave his property, so you can pile his stuff right outside the fence and he'll just stare at it in frustration.
• Here We Go Again!: Once the credits finish rolling, the game returns right to where it began: with the goose honking and ready to commit more mischief on the town.
• Hero Antagonist: The villagers do everything they can to drive the goose away, but after all, the goose is annoying them!
• Holler Button: HONK! It's mainly used to draw the humans' attention when you need a distraction, and honking in certain places or while holding certain items can have some funny effects.
• Human Mail: Different species, same principle. One of the ways to enter the pub in the fourth level is to climb into a cardboard box and wait for the deliveryperson to pick it up and deliver it inside. Getting the tidy neighbor to "deliver" the box by throwing it over the fence also completes a hidden task.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: In the two-player mode, the second goose has a differently shaped beak that's a darker shade of orange, but is otherwise identical to the first.
• Ill-Fated Flowerbed:
  • The first level is an entire garden of flowers and vegetables, just waiting to be destroyed (though only one flower is within reach).
  • The male neighbor has a prize rose, while the female neighbor has a bird-shaped topiary. Damaging both of them is a requirement for progress.
• Innocent Bystanders: The villagers, whose daily routines are constantly disrupted by the goose's antics.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: The goose cannot fly (though it can flap its wings), so you need to find another way to get past even small hedges and fences. Conveniently, the humans also have this restriction; the groundskeeper can't climb over the three-foot fence if he's locked out of the garden, for example.
• Iris Out: Centered on the goose when you quit the game or hit the reset button.
• Level in Reverse: In the final section of the game, you steal a golden bell from the model village and have to bring it back all the way to the beginning of the game. The game's various short-cuts close up and force you on a path that makes you traverse all of the game's levels backwards.
• Manipulative Bastard: The goose, who arranges things in such a way to trick the humans into hurting or humiliating themselves.
• Market-Based Title: Ironically, the official Japanese version does have a title, or more specifically, a subtitle (Untitled Goose Game ~Mischievous Goose is Comin'~).
• Mickey Mousing: The music becomes more energetic when a human is chasing or colliding into you, or if anything else dramatic is happening.
• Mistaken for Thief: While the exact conversation isn't heard or written, the confrontation between the boy and the shopkeeper over the toy plane suggests this is what happens. The same happens with the groundskeeper and his trowel.
• Nameless Narrative: The goose is just a goose, and people are referred to as "the boy," "the groundskeeper," "the burly man," etc.
• New Game Plus: After you retrieve the golden bell, you're sent back to the beginning with all the hidden to-do list items revealed, plus some extra time-trial challenges.
• Nobody Here but Us Statues: To "get dressed up with a ribbon," you have to take the ribbon off a goose statue, hide the latter somewhere, then pretend to be the statue so a woman will put the ribbon on you.
• Not Completely Useless: Though spreading your wings is fun, it's effectively just a Taunt Button that has no real effect on anything in the game. Late in the game, however, it's actually a required action to be awarded a flower.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: The ending to the main game reveals that the Goose has been messing with the village for a while now.
• Pet the Dog: There's exactly one objective in the game that doesn't involve messing with someone or ruining their day: Be Awarded A Flower. All you do is stand on a storm drain and put on a little show for the couple having lunch, and they cheer and give you one. Technically two, but the second one is the same as Be Awarded A Flower except you do it while wearing a bow.
• Poke the Poodle: Steal or hide random objects to make their owners have to chase you or look for them. Break a few things, either directly or indirectly (like a broom or a fancy vase). Startle people, either by honking directly at them or by using more... creative methods. About the worst the goose will do is frighten a child into hiding from it, and cause a couple of the humans Amusing Injuries.
• The Pratfall: A common reaction if the goose manages to startle someone. Causing this for the old man is also an objective.
• Priceless Ming Vase: A lovely purple vase sits on a pedestal of the messy neighbor's yard, practically begging to be broken. Doing it yourself isn't enough, as it won't fill the level objective.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: The dynamic silent-movie piano soundtrack is derived from Claude Debussy's "Preludes".
• Recursion: The model village in the final section of the game has its own model village.
• Red Herring: A large number of items aren't used to solve checklist items, but exist to expand the goose's distraction options.
• Serious Business: The final segment involves stealing a bell. As soon as this item is picked up, the entire village locks down the various shortcuts, begins actively searching for the goose, and will prioritize retrieving the bell. Considering that the goose has spent all morning terrorizing the village and has already stolen multiple bells before, the reaction is unsurprising.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the TVs in the TV shop is showing a small character rolling a ball about most of its size, a shoutout to a very different game where the aim is to ruin lots of people's lives at once.
  • You can sneak into the pub by hiding in a cardboard box.
• Snobs Versus Slobs: The third level's focus is around two neighbors. The male one has a very neat and orderly yard, while the female's is plastered full of garden ornaments and works of art. Many of the objectives taken will result in building tension between the two.
• So Much for Stealth:
  • Though the "proper" way to enter the pub is to hide in the box and be carried in, you can also just untie the Burly Man's shoelace and charge in, letting him fall flat on his face as he chases you.
  • Much of the game has you being very sneaky to accomplish the things on your checklist, so that's pretty much done away with at the end of the game when you have to carry a noisy bell all the way back to the starting point. Many quests where you're supposed to use stealth can instead be accomplished by, for example, repeatedly snatching an item back from a human every time they take it from you.
• Spit Take: One of your goals is to make the tidy neighbor do this. Just honking while he drinks startles him, but doesn't make him expel his tea. The actual goal is to ring the incredibly loud bell behind him while he sips from the cup.
• Stealth-Based Game: More than one reviewer has described this game as Hitman... with waterfowl.
  • This has been recognized by Jeppe Sørensen, an artist for the Hitman games.
• Sticky Fingers: As the goose, you will often be called upon to steal the humans' things. What the goose really wants is the beautiful golden bell from the miniature village model.
• Storefront Television Display: There is a small shop like this.
• Taunt Button: Spreading your wings, save for one goal late in the game, serves no purpose other than taunting villagers or making chasing the wimp into the phone booth that much more entertaining.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: The humans in the game mostly exist to be hassled by the goose, but an objective of the fourth level is to be awarded a flower by mimicking the actions of the two female patrons there.
• Throwing the Distraction: Honking will lure nearby villagers to where they heard the noise. Dropped items can also serve as a distraction if they both see it and care about it.
• Tied-Together-Shoelace Trip: Averted. The goose can get the bouncer off its tail by screwing with his shoelaces, but the goose isn't dexterous enough to tie them together; it just undoes them, and that's enough to trip the guard anyway. This also works wonders with the boy.
• Tree Cover: The goose is small enough to be completely covered by the hedges, fit under certain tables, and generally get into tight places. Not only will the humans not find you, but they also won't find anything you hide there.
• Trojan Horse: One way to get into the pub is to hide inside a box and let the delivery-person carry you inside.
• Troll: The whole point of the game. As the goose, your objective is to complete the various tasks on your checklist — all of which are ways of harassing humans, because you are a horrible goose.
• Universal Eyeglasses: If you manage to steal the boy's glasses and give him one from the shopkeeper's stand, he will somehow see just fine.
• Unknowingly Possessing Stolen Goods: Inverted. The task "make someone buy their stuff back" involves stealing an object and putting it in the shopkeeper's store. When the victim attempts to take back their item, the shopkeeper will force them to pay for it.
• "Untitled" Title: Also serving as a Protagonist Title, considering your player character.
• Vicious Cycle: The ending, where you drop a stolen golden bell into a pile of identical ones, implies that the goose has rampaged through the town and stolen their most prized possession several times before.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Practically custom-built for it. The entire point of the game is to be a "horrible goose" and terrorize the village by stealing food, playing keep-away with the things they need, startling them with loud honks, and just being a nuisance in general.
• Villain Protagonist: The goose isn't especially dangerous, but the goal is to make a pest of yourself in a peaceful village.
• Wham Line: "Steal the beautiful miniature golden bell"... "and take it all the way back home."
• Wham Shot: Not so much for thorough players who inspect every inch of the Goose's home before setting out on their quest, but at the end of the final To-Do ("Steal the beautiful miniature bell... and take it all the way back home"), you discover a pit with multiple beautiful bells, indicating that the Goose has done this several times before and justifying the "No Goose" signs all over the village.
• Would Hurt a Child: The goose has no qualms about messing with the only juvenile villager it meets.

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HONK HONK!

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