This is a meme game that was mostly popular on consoles and took a while to come to the PC. Even though it looks and sounds like a joke, it really is a game, with the gameplay being mostly puzzle solving with some light stealth elements. Finishing it takes only a few hours and the graphics are simple. But there’s so much charm and personality in it that I think it should win over just about anybody. As I understand it, this has been a real hit for children. Even if they’re too young to play it themselves, they seem delighted to watch their parents do so.

As advertised, you play a goose in this game, in fact an exceptionally malicious one. You’re the terror of the village and your job is to complete a series of tasks in each area of the game that all consist of horrible pranks. You do that by stealing or manipulating items with your beak, scaring or surprising people with your honk or even just bumping into things with your body. The pranks include locking humans in buildings, tripping them so they fall down, vandalizing their possessions and much more. Even if you’re caught, nothing bad ever happens to the unnamed goose. You just get shooed away. It’s hard to understand how this evil goose hasn’t gotten its neck wrung long ago.

There are only a few areas and each of them are really small. None of the humans talk in anything that the goose can interpret as dialogue either. Yet the game manages to convey so much through thought bubbles and body language. It’s easy to understand at a glance what is going on and that this is probably why children like it so much. The animations are wonderful as the goose preens, the humans rage and cry and the whole world, simple as it is, seems alive as you can manipulate objects in all kinds of interesting ways. The puzzles are mostly very straightforward though there may be some timing issues. You may also need some patience to wait for the humans to go through their set routines as certain actions are only possible when they are in a certain position.

I expected a cute little game out of this but this has exceeded my every expectation. Exploring the village is fun, looking at the reactions of all of those poor humans is entertaining, and controlling a goose feels surprisingly powerful. It even has a plot! For a while, I thought the goose was just randomly pranking people so finding out that there is actually a purpose behind all this was a delightful surprise. Plus it’s exactly the right length too, even coming with an optional set of more difficult challenges to take on once you’ve finished the main game. Highly recommended.