Untitled Goose Game review – never before have I felt so appalled by my virtual acts

(House House; Panic Inc; Switch, PC, Mac)
You're a lone goose on a mission to torment the unsuspecting residents of an English village in this finely observed game of stealth and slapstick

The goose, a water bird with smooth white feathers, a long neck and compressed orange bill, is not an apex predator. Yet most of us have a memory, perhaps from childhood, probably involving a plastic bag of stale bread, when we were harangued by one of these quarrelsome birds who had seemingly woken up on the wrong side of the pond. We are used to playing as morally complex individuals in video games; even the heroes typically leave a genocidal trail of dead behind them. Never before, however, have I felt so appalled by my virtual acts as in Untitled Goose Game, which casts its player as a lone goose on a singular mission to victimise the residents of an English village via a thousand mundane, misery-making ways.

There's the elderly man playing a game of darts in the pub garden. Nosing your beak from the leaves of a nearby bush, you'll notice how every now and again he'll perch on a nearby stool to rest his legs. It would be a shame if someone were to yank the seat away just as he sat down, wouldn't it? Then there's the gardener tending his vegetable patch close to an idle sprinkler. What would happen if someone squeaked on the tap just as he was leaning in to get a better look at his carrots? In Untitled Goose Game you must often think like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton: surveying each new scene for its slapstick potential as you seek to fulfil the handful of back-of-a-postcard objectives set by the game's authors. Then again, sometimes being a quintessentially horrible goose requires nothing more than honking loudly and flapping one's wings at a passerby (then grabbing the terrified child's glasses after they fall to the ground). Honk!