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Is Untitled Goose Game the best game of the year?

Honk.

Has it really taken a game about a goose to make us all let out that collective breath we’ve been holding? Maybe it has, and why the hell not. Untitled Goose Game waddled round the corner like an unsuspecting gag game two weeks ago and boom, suddenly it’s everywhere. Although, to be fair, considering House House’s first trailer went viral in 2017, the future popularity of this game has seemed sealed for a while. Perhaps not quite this popular though:

Apparently we have all, even Hollywood celebs, been dying for an outlet of mindless mischief in primary colours. It’s just taken a simple goose game to give us an excuse. But, does all this collective clamour mean that Untitled Goose Game is the best game we’ve seen this year?

If you rank games by the amount of joy they produce, then yes. The goose game has landed at absolutely the perfect time, hitting the sweet spot between simple game mechanics, harmless japes and an aesthetically pleasing smudgy art style. Plus, with the game exclusively centred on an animal doing silly things, its an infinitely shareable, social media goldmine. If some games are made to be streamed, this was made to be meme-d.

When we reviewed it on release, we concluded: “Untitled Goose Game is one of those rare experiences that plays exactly the way its trailer suggests. To do items are crossed off in perfect comedic timing over top of beleaguered villagers falling prey to goose antics. The goose sprints frantically away from the same villagers, ill-gotten goods in beak, to jaunty classical piano riffs. There’s a cheeky push and pull between stealthily making mischief and honking in someone’s face and waddling away gleefully.”

It’s only taken two weeks for the game to shoot to the number one spot on the Nintendo Store in the US so all this coverage is certainly getting the game into the hands of players. At the end of the honking day, it’s a simple game that produces the kind of simple joy you often have to dig to find in larger games. Why do you think we all got so obsessed with the ‘Can you pet the dog?’ meme. We like the little things in games, the little touches of silly humanity, and this game is absolutely fully of it. It’s made of the stuff.

It’s a big win for an indie game to get this kind of coverage, and yeah maybe that does make it the best game this year. You can find out more about An Untitled Goose Game on it’s website.

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