"Untitled Goose Game" by House House (Version reviewed: Mac OSX)

"Wait a minute, wait a minute! This isn't a book!" I hear you cry, or honk more appropriately. Well no, it's not a book but it's a videogame that does a brilliant and rather deft job of telling a story in a superbly stripped-down way, to the point where we both played it and couldn't shut up about it - and thought "Well why the heck not review it on the blog"

So both C and I got slightly obsessed with "Untitled Goose Game" over the course of the past weekend. It's actually a game we'd been keeping an eye on for a long time, not quite believing that anyone could possibly produce such a fun and hilarious game about a completely horrid goose.

But let's face it, if you can design a game around simulating goats, you can most definitely pick on one of nature's surliest animals as the protagonist for a game that positively BEGS you to misbehave.

"It's a lovely day in the village, and you are a horrible goose" I mean if you're not hooked by that, then there's no hope for you!

I was slightly paranoid that my creaky old Mac wouldn't run this at all, but surprisingly it kept up the pace quite nicely as I began the serious business of being a major PITA to the innocent and peaceable denizens of a quaintly English village, going about their daily business.

The game opens with you playing merry hell in a garden, as a hapless gardener tries to get on with planting, hoeing and watering.

You soon become accustomed to the strangely quirky controls and cameras in the game - and you'll need to master the controls super-quick as some of the challenges on your "To-Do list" (which reads like the sort of mental list most 2-3 year olds would draw up if they could get away with it).

Soon the gardener is hatless, his favourite rake floating in the village pond, his plants ruined, his picnic stolen and his keys strangely missing.

"I..er...might have overdone it with the cutlery"

The real joy in this game comes from the fact that the developers obviously acknowledge a key fact early on. Geese are bloody horrible buggers, and they will stop at nothing in their quest to establish their reputation of belligerence and unpleasantness. Here then, having control of one, you can truly go to town not just ticking off things on your list, but generally messing with just about all the NPCs in the game, imagining their frustration as once again they have to fish lost items out of the bushes, the pond or in a couple of cases, out of each other's gardens.

"Who broke my vase, you did! You did!"

Without venturing into spoiler territory, the game might be short but you'll probably find at least one 'to do' item in each 'level' that feels nigh on impossible until you think around the problem. Be the goose, think like the goose, and a solution will present itself (or you could just cheat and dive online for walkthroughs and videos but where's the fun in that?)

C of course opted to spend around half an hour just pressing the honk button, before she too began to become "Solid Goose" - indulging more in a stealthy game of cat-and-mouse (or goose-and-hapless-human), instantly understanding the underlying game mechanic and how to get the most out of it (I think only once or twice did she shout "DADDYYYYYYY" down the stairs for me to come and wrestle her out of a frustrating problem or two).

At the end of roughly 4 hours play, I finally got to the end - an ending that's funny and absolutely on-point for what you imagine is the mentality of a bird that has but one purpose in life - to make everyone else's utterly miserable. As much as the law won't slap an ASBO on a feathered animal, this bird deserves one but the game deserves a ton of awards.

There's replay value in chipping away at all the 'hidden' tasks you'll suddenly find added to your list once you're done with all the main ones, but there's also just the sheer joy of diving back into something that's this satisfying to play.

The only thing we're both left thinking is "When's the next one due?" - I mean the possibilities are endless if that little feathered sod gets loose in the big city!

"Untitled Goose Game" is available via the Epic Store, published by House House Games (self purchased, not provided for review).