Games
We speak with developers House House about the yet-to-be-named stealth game and how it’s become one of the most anticipated indie titles of 2018.
The zeitgeist is a funny thing. It's impossible to predict when something will transcend from mere success to outright phenomenon. In 2017, we saw PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds make that leap, proving there’s a thirst among players for anarchic Hunger Games-style battles. Even less predictable was the buzz surrounding a three-minute video of an obnoxious goose harassing a beleaguered groundskeeper. Untitled Goose Game, from Australian developers House House, became the talk of the town, tapping into our widespread distrust of geese.
Nico Disseldorp is the co-designer and programmer of the Untitled Goose Game. He’s the best person to ask about the provincial stealth title, but the first question of our interview with him had to be: why a goose?
”Geese are weird,“ he explains. “For some reason everyone has decided that they’re bad animals. Not because they’re dangerous or anything – they’re somehow socially bad. Only ever a nuisance, but a very bad nuisance."
The game sees players take on a series of tasks with the sole purpose to torment a small, charming, and very much under-siege town. Starting off with the groundskeeper, tasks include getting him wet, stealing his sandwiches and just generally being a nuisance. But what happens when the groundskeeper is no longer enough?
"The game's current structure is that it's a physically small space and you have a list of goals." says Disseldorp. "I think we've taken inspiration from games like Tony Hawk there. It's fun to just muck around as the goose and see what happens, but the goals are there to nudge people towards some larger interactions and challenges. We want people to feel very free to just play around and see what happens.
"As for more characters, we've been working on some things along that line, but aren't really ready to talk about it too much right now."
The goose's main weapon, beyond its belligerence, is its capacity to sneak up on its unsuspecting victims. The game relies heavily on stealth, but not in the way we’re perhaps accustomed to.
Stealth is often treated deadly seriously in gaming – get caught, and you’ll die, go to prison or have to fight your way out of a situation. Things are different, however, with Untitled Goose Game, where your mission is to inflict minor misery on a small town's population. Your character's actions aren't serious, nor are the consequences of being caught.
"While sneaking up on people is very useful, the goose doesn't need to keep in cover the whole time or anything, so the game’s a bit different from a traditional stealth game,” explains Disseldorp. ”If you get caught doing something sneaky, the worst that might happen is the groundskeeper takes their trowel back or something. Even if they’d like to, the groundskeeper has no way of getting rid of you, so they have to put up with this goose ruining everything."
For reasons that are seemingly hard to explain, playing as an obnoxious goose struck a chord with an enormous number of people.
"Before we announced the game we thought that it was probably a bit too weird,” says Disseldorp. ”But other people seem to like our silly joke as much as we do. I think something we underestimated was how relevant geese are to people in the northern hemisphere. In Australia we don't have many geese so I guess we’re geese outsiders in some way. Maybe that's why we made the game – we don't really understand how people are so afraid of this silly animal.
"I think it's appealing to people that playing as this goose might let them be a bit devious in a way that never gets too cruel or scary."
Disseldorp describes Untitled Goose Game and House House's previous title, Push Me Pull You, as "physical comedy games" – and it’s clear the two games share certain characteristics.
"They’re both games that try and make people laugh using the movements of bodies,“ says Disseldorp. ”Push Me Pull You's humour came from the movements of these unsettling, uncanny bodies that move in a strange but very physical way, which I think is similar to what happens in games like QWOP or Mount Your Friends.
”With the goose, the joke comes from this antagonistic relationship. One character plays a prank on the other, and then the victim reacts in an over-the-top way. It's a format that you see in clowning, or silent films, or old cartoons. Lots of games have moments of inadvertent physical comedy, including very self serious AAA games."
While the game is very funny (we dare you not to laugh as you see the goose drop the groundskeeper's sandwich in the pond), it's also charming. Its simple visual style lends the game a storybook feel and captures the feeling of an idyllic town just removed from reality.
"In terms of what we’re trying to represent, we've looked at a lot of British children's television that we grew up watching as children in Australia,” says Disseldorp of the influences behind the game. ”Shows like Brum, Postman Pat, Wallace and Gromit – we like the idea of a little toy world with a community of easy-to-read archetypal people."
As the game nears release, we're eager to find out more about the platforms Untitled Goose Game will appear on and whether it'll keep that Untitled moniker. But Disseldorp is staying tight-lipped on both issues, but he is willing to say that the goose might have more up its sleeve – or under its wing – than we may think.
"Geese don't have complex motives or ambitions, they aren't going to save the world. But you'd be surprised how many different ways there are to trick someone."
