It seems like every year has a breakout game designed to promote itself by wringing as much meme potential out of the internet as possible, and that game in 2019 was Untitled Goose Game. In it, you play as a goose and complete tasks that boil down to “be a dick to every human you come across.” It’s a perfectly adequate one-trick pony. Some of the things you can do with its simple mechanics—flapping, honking, leaning down, and grabbing—are enjoyable, but it doesn’t take long for it all to blend together into an okay-ish haze. Untitled Goose Game is a game, and it’s fine.

Some meme-maximizing games like Undertale also have underlying artistic merit (in that game’s case, it served a double purpose as a brilliant homage to 90s-era Super Nintendo jRPGs), but Untitled Goose Game is really nothing more than a straightforward puzzle game. There’s a little extra value that comes from the freedom you’re afforded to distract people in a number of different ways while you steal their stuff, but that, the lack of a severe penalty for being caught by humans (you merely get bounced away a little), and the novelty of playing as a jerk duck are the only elements differentiating Untitled Goose Game from other, less commercially successful puzzle games. And that’s fine. It’s decently amusing for a while. I wouldn’t buy it, but I wouldn’t feel horribly ripped off and disappointed if I did. Untitled Goose Game is a decently okay experience.

In some ways, though, there’s nothing as terrible as okayness; a great or terrible game can inspire long writeups that praise or lambast elements with amusing passion. This game inspires nothing beyond mild amusement. I’ll never forget the rage I felt upon finishing Final Fantasy XIII or my inner voice going “I need to go to bat for this game” after beating the (still) underrated Super Panda Adventures. Untitled Goose Game is the kind of game that I’m confident I’ll forget exists once I’ve become caught up in something more impactful. And that’s fine. Not every game has to leave a hyper-memorable mark to be worthwhile, and this game doesn’t even bother trying. Which is fine. I expected a bit more, but it’s fine.

Untitled Goose Game is fine. It’s fine. first appeared on Killa Penguin