What you may need to know

1. It’s a lovely morning in the village, and you are a horrible goose. So starts Untitled Goose Game in which you play the titular goose terrorising a quaint English village with a pleasingly annoying HONK!

2. On the surface, UGG is a stealth puzzle game in which your are set a series of tasks to complete. Alternatively, you use your goosey powers for evil by tormenting the locals, stealing their possessions, harassing shopkeepers and bullying bespectacled children to the point where your day can only get better by making someone else’s day much worse.

3. A bit like real geese, the dicks.

4. Goose Game’s plot is short – you can play the main storyline in under three hours. It also suffers from the same drawback as most single player puzzle games in that once you’ve beaten it you’ll be unlikely to return to the solve the riddle a second time.

5. That said, it’s still a joy to play. From the animation of the befuddled, plodding villagers to the classical score which rises and falls depending on whether you are chasing or being chased, who knew that being a sadistic goose could bring such pleasure?

6. The creator‘s previous effort was Push Me Pull You (2016), a game they described as being about friendship and wrestling. But that’s only true if your friends are human centipedes with heads at both ends. Oh and they can swap their human heads for dog heads. The gameplay is secondary to the insanity of the setup.

7. Untitled Goose Game is available now on PC and Mac via the Epic Games Store and for the Switch from the Nintendo eShop.

Kieran’s Verdict: Honking good fun.