It’s very Charlie Chaplin, but with fewer moustaches. This is all set over a background ambience of tranquil Debussy pré ludes, and the lack of speech or dialogue means that the physical comedy element of the game is amplified. Dialogue is limited to the emoji-filled speech bubbles of confusion or outrage which pop up above the characters’ heads and the player’s own indignant horrible-goose honks. This is no Candy Crush-the dopamine hits lie not in the achievement but in the comedy. While, in theory, the game has goals and aims, the fun isn’t really in completing the list of tasks. Still from Untitled Goose Game, 2019, Courtesy House House Production It’s feels like a happy-go-lucky Bob the Builder kind of world, in which you can take comfort that no real damage will ever be caused.
The shapes are as round and bouncy as the goose’s waddle, which means that, even in a world where falling over in puddles and being repeatedly thrown over fences is really quite commonplace, the violence is pretty low stakes and, to be honest, you don’t even feel bad when you, say, honk at a small crying boy until he runs to hide in the shed and you can lock him in. The colours are subtle in their low saturations, but each graphically generated shape is comfortingly well-defined, right down to the human characters’ triangular turnip noses. Created by Australian game developer company, House House, the art style of Untitled Goose Game’s graphics is playful and stylishly simple. With exhibitions dedicated to game play and design in the V&A, and MoMA’s growing collection of video games, it’s hard these days for even the most strident traditionalist to effectively argue that video games are not art, and the design for Untitled Goose Game is certainly an attractive aesthetic. But it’s so much fun, and the art style of the design is very much responsible for this. The aim of the game is to travel around a sleepy rural village as a horrible goose, completing tasks such as “make the shop scales go ding”, and “steal the old man’s woollen hat”. And to be honest, that pretty much sums it up. “It’s a lovely morning in the village and you are a horrible goose.” So proclaims the tagline for Untitled Goose Game. Is there a word then, for the fear of a goose repeatedly stealing your glasses and running away with your toy aeroplane? Because maybe there should be. They say that anatidaephobia is the irrational fear that somewhere, somehow, there is always a duck watching you.
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