like the one featured in
Untitled Goose Game Untitled Goose Game was developed by four-person
indie studio
House House, based in
Melbourne, Australia. The game originated from a
stock photograph of a goose that an employee posted in the company's internal communications. The team later realised that a game involving a goose protagonist had good potential. House House cited
Super Mario 64 as the initial inspiration for the movement, wanting players to control a character who could run around in a 3D environment. Their previous game,
Push Me Pull You, had 2D art with flat colours. They used a similar aesthetic in
Untitled Goose Game by choosing to use
low poly meshes, flat colours, and untextured 3D models. The game's playable character, the goose, was originally just a stock image, and the idea was that
non-player characters (NPCs) would react to it. The developers implemented a system where the NPCs would tidy up after an item was moved. After restricting the field of view of the NPCs, the gameplay became stealth-focused. Instead of remaining hidden as in most stealth games, the goal was to have the mischief-making goose attract the attention of NPCs and not get caught. The team opted for an English village as the setting, as its "properness" was seen as "the antithesis of what the goose was all about", according to developer Nico Disseldorp. Comments on the trailer praised the apparent "reactive music" system where the music stopped and started depending on the action in the game, though House House later said this was a misconception, as the stops and starts were actually part of Debussy's composition. The positive reception to the trailer's music led House House to include Debussy's work as part of the soundtrack, and to develop a "reactive music" system for the game. It features both the regular and quiet versions of each track, as well as two original ones, called "Waltz For House House", which plays on the menu in the
PlayStation 4 version, and "Untitled Goose Radio", which includes every track played from the in-game radio. A portion of the score was also released on vinyl by
iam8bit, which was pressed with
double grooves to emulate the randomness of the in-game music.
Release The game was revealed in October 2017 with a trailer. PlayStation 4 and
Xbox One versions were released on 17 December 2019. The Xbox One version was included as a part of the
Xbox Game Pass service. Physical releases for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch versions were produced by iam8bit and released on 29 September 2020. iam8bit also published the game's soundtrack on vinyl record for release the same day. A free update on 23 September 2020 added a co-operative mode for two players. This update was launched alongside the game's release on the
Steam and
itch.io storefronts. On 6 March 2023, Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser wrote that the publisher had submitted the game to the Apple
App Store, but it was rejected because the reviewer "thought you couldn't skip the credits," and that after explaining they could be skipped by holding the spacebar, "It was then rejected for something else and at that point we just gave up." ==Reception==