【Esther Studer】

Toxic internet trolls can Esther Studereat dirt, I think we can all agree. But there's another, more playful kind of trolling that most of us save for our friends and loved ones. That's the sweet spot for Untitled Goose Game.

The charming little indie from House House comes with a simple premise: you're a goose with a to-do list. Every item on that list can be accurately described as "mess with the humans." To help you in your quest you've got your beak, your ability to fit into small spaces, and your mighty honk.

It doesn't sound like much, but the humans you're messing with are easily fooled. If anything, your goose has a distinct advantage.

At its foundation, Untitled Goose Gameis a vaguely open world stealth/puzzle game that gets larger and larger as you cross more items off your list. You start off in a park-like area just outside a backyard garden where a man is hard at work. He's your first target.

Your to-do list tells you to get into the garden and then cause all sorts of mischief with the items you find there. Tasks like "get the groundskeeper wet" and "rake in the lake" are simple enough to solve with only a little investigation, and (unsurprisingly) that initial list serves as the game's tutorial.

Most problems have a logical solution. "Rake in the lake," for example, involves grabbing the groundskeeper's rake with your beak and dragging it out of the garden, then dropping it in the nearby lake. Rarely is it as simple as walking up to whatever thing you're meant to steal or move, though.

For example: Rakes are large objects by goose standards, and the groundskeeper will easily catch on to what's happening if you try to just openly waddle your way out. That means you've got to get crafty, perhaps by using some other nearby object to create a distraction or perhaps by dragging the rake through tall bushes that would leave you concealed.

Maybe both! Almost all of the puzzles are open to creative solutions. You'll always be limited by the tools arrayed in front of you, but there's a lot of flexibility within that. The bigger trick is often figuring out exactly how to create the circumstances that make solving a particular puzzle possible rather than executing a specific, pre-ordained plan.

Observation and experimentation form the beating heart of Untitled Goose Game. There's no death or danger, no game over screens. There's just a town filled with easily annoyed humans who will gladly chase you away from wherever you want to be.

As you clear out that garden to-do list, you'll eventually hit upon a task that opens the way to the next part of town (and its corresponding to-do list). Each successive location introduces new twists and slightly tougher challenges, with all of it eventually culminating in a final challenge that sees you backtracking along a very specific path through town. Pull that off and you get three new pages of much harder things to do.

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Untitled Goose Gameis inherently funny, but the comedy can be kind of subtle. Really, the entire game is a sandbox for causing mischief. There's no dialogue and minimal story, but the "try anything" sandbox factor means you end up creating your own little punchlines.

Your honk, for example, isn't just a tool for alerting and/or distracting the humans. It's also a way to directly interact with the people around you. Honk at someone right near you and yes, you'll alert them, but they'll also look right at you.

One of my favorite activities in Untitled Goose Gamewas staging these staring contests with my victims before and after I caused mischief. We'd just lock eyes in a way that suggested my goose was daring them to do something. "I'm just a goose, buddy. How could I have locked you in that garage?" How indeed.

So much credit to House House here for building fantastically lifelike goose animations into this game. Watching your goose move and respond to the world around it is entirely part of the fun here, from the way its neck cranes around to keep an eye on nearby people to the gentle and vaguely threatening flapping of its wings whenever you hold a certain button.

There's a real sense of personality radiating out of every frame. Untitled Goose Gamemakes its humor work by empowering you to find the comedy through your own play. Trolling has never been this much fun.