I am writing about the goose game

I did not intend to write about Untitled Goose Game. It has been written about exhaustively, the core bits of it reviewed and dissected from Kotaku to Entertainment Weekly, from Polygon to Time. The best piece about it, or possibly anything, has already been written. Folks talking about and posting fan art of the game has dramatically brightened up what has been a fairly bleak time in internet discourse. I have nothing to add, because everything has already been said about this game multiple times by myriad people. And yet.

Initially I was a bit frustrated by the game, as its controls are… not great. But even when I was trapped in a weird rotational loop with the farmer, annoyed that it felt like I was playing a hastily-coded shareware title from the late ‘90s, I didn’t want to stop. All was forgiven, I just wanted more goose. I beat the game, which prompts you with a handful of additional tasks. I thought, I’ll do these here and there amid other games. The next day, I wanted more goose, and promptly powered through these tasks. I watched some streamers do these additional tasks despite just having done them, because, more goose. Which, I suppose is why I’m writing this. It’s just another avenue to more goose.

The game is silly and low-stakes, and I feel like saying ‘spoilers ahead’ is kind of ridiculous. But I also think a big part of the game’s charm is figuring things out for yourself, finding weird little details, experiencing the whole thing fresh. So, with that in mind… Spoilers ahead, here are the goosey little details that brought me the most joy:

The music…
…is a pretty obvious one, but. Yes. The music. Immediately recognizable as Debussy’s Préludes, and yet turning that source material into something dynamic that reacts with the environment… It’s very well done. And it just feels right with the small village setting.
The unnecessary bits…
…like the coin by the wishing well. It’s not useful in any of the main tasks or the additional tasks. It’s just there, it’s by the well, you can put it in the well and make a goose wish. Go grab it out of the pipe, make another goose wish!
Dressing up the bust…
…or, I suppose, the ways in which you can dress up the bust. I’m sure I haven’t figured them all out yet. There are at least three hats and five pairs of glasses. The mouth can support at least the pipe, the pacifier, and the harmonica. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more. It’s a nice touch that there’s more than just one way to do it for the main task, and one way to do it for the additional task.
The additional honks…
…that come from honking in/through certain items. I’m only aware of the harmonica and the bottle, but again… I wouldn’t be surprised to learn of others. They have no effect on gameplay, and it’s entirely plausible that one would make it through the game without honking into such an object. Which makes doing it doubly joyful, and reinforces that this is a game that wants you to play. In the sense of ‘around’, and not just ‘a game’.
Rake in the lake…
…or, the way some of the tasks are worded. No particular joke or anything, just joyous whimsy. Rake in the lake is by far my favorite. It’s the first one that isn’t a direct command – preceding it are tasks with a verb, like ‘get into the garden’, and ‘get the groundskeeper wet’. It is, in a way, jarring that the command isn’t ‘put the rake in the lake’, but that abrupt shift strengthens both the beauty of the phrase and the image it evokes. Rake in the lake.

What it all comes down to, I think, is that Untitled Goose Game is a big small game. Even with the additional to-do items, the game is short. But they’ve packed a lot of little magical things into it that make it… really feel like a living, breathing community being tormented by a horrible goose.