What in the world is Untitled Goose Game?
Where did it come from?
Who made such a bizarre game, and how did it explode in popularity seemingly overnight?
If you’ve been following Untitled Goose Game’s development for a while, it might
not surprise you that such a charming title has gained such widespread acclaim so quickly.
What’s really fascinating about the game, though, is just how relaxed and downright
unprofessional its developers are.
We mean that in a good way.
For the team at House House (yes, that really is the studio’s name), Untitled Goose Game
was a joke that went too far, and its sudden popularity has come as a complete surprise.
House House are not what you’d call professional.
They’re not what they would call professional, either.
In the words of one member of the studio, Jacob Strasser, “We’re three years more
professional than we were three years ago”.
That is, apparently, all they can commit to.
The four fledgling members of House House, Jacob, Michael McMaster, Stuart Gillespie-Cook,
and Nico Disseldorp, made their first game entirely for fun.
Push Me Pull You was a summer hobby project that got out of hand.
The team worked on their game in their time off, building it after work or during study
breaks.
Without really knowing how it happened, the team eventually submitted the game to Sony
and managed to get it released on the PlayStation store, but it was hardly a deliberate attempt
to make a commercial game.
Nor was the game in any way financially lucrative.
House House managed to get some funding from the Australian government for advertising
the game, but beyond that, their budget came entirely from their own pocket.
Push Me Pull You brought in some revenue, but it was so negligible that it wasn’t
even worth dividing between the four of them.
Nevertheless, they’d made a game that they were pleased with, and they were eager to
find a new project to work on.
They just had no idea what it should be.
Sharing ideas together in a group chat, the members of House House started throwing up
some random, silly suggestions.
Eventually, Stuart posted a simple picture of a goose.
No context.
No explanation.
This picture of a goose should be their new game.
The rest of the group laughed at this ridiculous idea…before thinking that, sure, why not?
They didn’t have any better ideas, and it would be fun to mess around with a goose game
for a while before making something more serious.
The team were all interested to develop their skills and learn new things.
Push Me Pull You had been a graphically simple 2D game, so they really wanted to make something
three-dimensional, like Mario 64.
To help them learn, they made a simple goose model and a little garden area, and let chaos
reign.
While House House are all Australian, they felt that the perfect setting for this game
was a quaint English village – somewhere quiet and peaceful, where a naughty goose
would be the worst thing any local resident could possibly imagine.
To this end, the game’s art style drew significant inspiration from British children’s television:
programmes such as Fireman Sam or Postman Pat.
The blank faces of the humans were deliberately modelled after background characters in Thomas
the Tank Engine.
This was fun, but it was time to move on to something less inherently silly.
Nobody at House House really expected anyone else to get much from their goose game; it
was simply their own little in-joke.
They wrapped up their training exercise by making a trailer from the limited gameplay
footage they could get from their garden, and they released it online.
They didn’t even bother giving this pretend game a title.
They figured that if people liked it, great, but otherwise, they could release what they’d
already done as a small game, put it to one side, and try at finding an actual new idea
for a bigger project.
Except, to their surprise, a lot of people actually really liked Untitled Goose Game.
They really liked it.
10 It turned out that, as Australians, House
House had underestimated the notoriety of the humble goose.
What they had thought was an in-joke amongst themselves tapped into a shared – but unspoken
– anxiety that plagued many people across the Northen Hemisphere.
Everyone agreed: geese are terrifying.
Met with an astonishing early wave of enthusiasm and attention, House House accepted that there
was clearly more to be done with Untitled Goose Game.
They would need to expand the scope of their initial demo, they’d need to actually come
up with a name for their project, and, it seemed, they’d need to explore their options
for the game’s music.
While the initial plan was to leave Untitled Goose Game without a soundtrack, the team
had roped in Dan Golding for the game’s trailer.
Dan had previously provided music for Push Me Pull You, so he was an obvious choice.
Dan had reached for the simplest, easiest grab: Claude Debussy’s Prelude Number 12,
which is out of copyright, and therefore free to reuse, even commercially, as it’s within
the public domain.
Scoring the trailer was quick, easy, and didn’t take any extra thought.
It was clear from reactions to the trailer, though, that people really liked how well
the eclectic piano music fit with the gameplay, with commenters expressing their hope that
this music was present in the game.
So, Dan began building a dynamic soundtrack out of Debussy’s work.
He recorded himself playing each piece of music twice: once slow and calmly, and once
fast and energetically.
He then sliced these recording into tiny bitesize chunks, so that the game’s soundtrack could
switch effortlessly between fast-paced chaos and casual nonsense.
As work progressed on the still Untitled Goose Game, the team at House House attempted to
keep things as casual as possible.
They weren’t interested in becoming serious professional developers, whatever that might
mean.
Where necessary, they roped in other developers to help with things they couldn’t do alone,
and worked with publisher Panic Inc to get the game more traction.
Otherwise, they did their best not to take their work too seriously, which is why the
game eventually shipped still without a name.
In fact, on launch day, after a hectic few initial hours of dealing with the game, House
House packed everything up and headed into downtown Melbourne to join a protest against
the ongoing climate crisis.
Sure, their goose game was important, but it wasn’t the most important thing they
could be doing.
Speaking to Kotaku, Nico said: “If striking for you means that you can’t
play our video game on launch day, that’s OK.
People can play our game, or another game, some other time.
The climate emergency is urgent, and needs us to drop what we are doing and demand that
governments act immediately.”
(We look forward to the healthy discussion that will arise from including this quote
in the video.)
Environment protests notwithstanding, Untitled Goose Game became an instant hit upon release.
Players couldn’t get enough of the antics of an adorable yet very unruly goose.
The only major complaint among many players was that there simply wasn’t enough of this
game!
Well done, House House – you’ve left people wanting more.
A dumb joke has turned into one of the most notorious indie games of the year.
The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously.
Have fun, be creative, and feel free to explore the weirdest, wackiest ideas you can think
of.
You never know what little nuggets of gold you might find along the way.
Relax.
Have a good time.
Everything’s going to be okay.
Everything except the climate, of course.
If we don’t do something soon, we are all going to die.