The first time I saw Untitled Goose Game at PAX last year, I was already sold and was ready to give House House & Panic my money! A game where you control a goose and wreak havok on villagers, who doesn't want to do that? The more trailers of the games I saw over the next year, the more worried I got about if the game was ever going to come out, and if there was actually a full game here. The demo at PAX was pretty straight forward and remains pretty intact to what you play in Untitled Goose Game. You are a goose and have different objectives that you need to complete by stealing, honking, and creating a mess for the villagers in the town.
These objectives are sometimes straight forward, sometimes not, but always a blast. When my partner and I booted up the game for the first time, I let her play through the first stage to see how she would do. She doesn't play games too much, but the controls were straight forward enough that she was grabbing items from the gardener's garden, movings things around, and starting to check off tasks from the list. In no time at all, most of the list was done and she was starting to figure out strategies to complete the harder tasks on the list. From my end, it was an absolute joy to sit back and watch her play as she had a huge smile on her face the entire time. We both laughed, strategized, and applauded ourselves when we solved a task from the list. This is when I knew this game was gold!
After the first stage she passed the controller, and I started honking away and going to town on the next part of the village. I think she may have had even more fun watching me cause chaos on these poor souls, and helping me strategize to solve puzzles as we continued on through the game. The game itself is simple and straight forward, you can honk, grab items, and run around. The genius of the game is trying to figure out the best way to turn the goose into Solid Snake and sneak around the different environments to try to solve each little puzzle that was thrown our way.
Visually the game is very stunning and runs butter smooth on the Nintendo Switch. As you can tell from the graphics in the screenshoots, the game has a simple yet visually pleasing look to it and I think it fits the game perfectly. The music on the other hand is a bit different, because there really isn't any "music" as you are playing. What does kick in is nice piano work when you start to cause chaos when playing. It is very much appreciated and well done.
If you have read any other review then you will know that all this joy is short lived as you can bust through the 5 or so stages in just a few hours. For us, this was the perfect amount of time to sit back, relax, and honk at people. I have to be honest, I love this game!
This game was reviewed by James Montemagno who purchased it from the eShop (on sale for $15 from $20) and played in full in about 2.5 hours.
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