Honk! Untitled Goose Exhibition education resource

In 2019, Melbourne game developers House House shot to international fame and acclaim with their hilariously naughty videogame, which captured the hearts, minds and humour of children and adults alike.​

House House took the idea of making a game about a goose, and built that idea into not just a game, but a worldwide hit.

Playing as a goose is only half of it, the attitude of the goose is equally as important.

In fact, the game’s tagline is “it’s a lovely day in the village, and you are a horrible goose”. There’s something about the inclusion of the words ‘lovely’ to describe what kind of day it is in the village, and the word ‘horrible’ to describe the goose....

“It’s a day in the village and you are a goose” isn’t the same, is it? With the addition of lovely and horrible, we get the sense that the unsuspecting people of this sleepy village, are about have their lives upended by this horrible goose!

There’s an exciting promise to the player; that they will be able to wreak havoc on this village as the titular goose.

And what could be more fun that?

A big part of Untitled Goose Game is that it is funny, as there’s something inherently humorous about a goose stealing people’s things and being a bit of a nuisance.

An angry bear eating people… well, that is less funny.

As we said earlier, the description of the game, the world, and the playable character, set up the player to have an enjoyable, and funny gaming experience. In fact, some people in the games industry have described it as a 'player-driven comedy'.

House House started the idea for the game by first, thinking about making a game where you play as a Goose. But to make the game funny and the gameplay fun, along the way they introduced the idea of the goose being a real pain in the backside (horrible). And they would have also brainstormed what in-game actions players could make this horrible goose do.

You might like to watch the interview below where House House talk about how they came up with and developed the idea of the game:

The actions players can perform in a game when playing, and the effects of those actions, are what we call the game mechanics.

Quickly: brainstorm all the actions you can do as the Goose in Untitled Goose Game

If you don't have access to the game, or you haven't played it for a while, you can watch gameplay of the game's opening below. The first minute of this video shows the player most of the character actions.

Now it's time to start working on your own game idea.

Let's start with your playable character, and take inspiration from Untitled Goose Game to think of an animal or creature for your own game idea.

Then, we’ll think about an attitude or character trait (like the ‘horrible’ for the Goose) and finally, what game mechanics you could give the player. In this case, the actions the player can perform playing as this creature.

Keep your ideas light and humorous, or cute and silly, and appropriate for young players. We recommend that your animal or creature be flightless, or have limited flight. This will make sense later in the resource when you will think about how your player can move from one area of the game to the next. If your animal can simply fly over obstacles, then that will be too easy a game!

You can brainstorm many creatures and character traits, match the ones you like or think will work together, and then think up the mechanics part (the actions your character could perform). Draw up a table like the one below.

Here's our example:

We've included an example of an Annoying Galah who can poop, chew things into smaller bits, as well as pick up and drop things, walk/waddle, and fly low.

It's not a long list, and your list doesn't have to be very long either. These are the actions the player can do, but remember, game mechanics also include the effects of these actions - which we will get to shortly. So your actions list might be short, but the effects of these actions you design in, will be longer.

To use an example from Untitled Goose Game, honking (action) can lead to frightening and alerting characters; so there are at least two effects that can come from the same action.

What would be a good environment to set your playable creature loose into? Places where the player could unleash the game mechanics you are offering?

You can get more specific locations later, for now, we can think of a broader setting or 'world' for our game.

In Untitled Goose Game there’s a strip of shops, a vegetable garden, a backyard – these are all areas, but the ‘world’ of the game is an English village.

Brainstorm some possible worlds, and pick your favourite.

It could be a typical Australian suburb, an outback town, a seaside village, anywhere!

You want your 'world' to inspire ideas for game areas, so start fairly broad, don't go too small or specific. For example, a house could be the world of a game, because there can be areas like living room, backyard and so on. Picking a living room might be too specific (unless of course your creature is really small like an insect!)

We are going to select a Secondary School for our Annoying Galah example.

House House were inspired by what we call ‘slapstick’ humour – this kind of humour features quite a bit in older films, TV shows, even animations like Wallace and Gromit.

Slapstick humour involving exaggerated physical activity for comedic effect - think falls, bumps, tumbles, cakes in faces – that sort of thing.

Bit of history for you, the term slapstick comes from a stick that made a slap sound. It was used in comedy theatre to exaggerate the sounds of actors hitting each other with these sticks.

Huh, the things you learn.

An important part of slapstick humour is that no one actually gets hurt, and the end results of these physical jokes aren’t serious.

By having the Goose (and the player) engage with non-playable characters around the village through a task, the game makers help the player bring these physical jokes to life inside the game.

Some moments include the gardener hitting his thumb with his own hammer (when the player honks) and fall backwards through the unlocked gate. This would be less funny, and not considered slapstick if the gardener was seriously hurt.

You can rewatch this moment in the game in the video link below:

The game designers have constructed the game in such a way, that the player gets to make these slapstick jokes come to life. Untitled Goose Game is quite unique, because although slapstick humour has existed in theatre, film and television for a long time, not too many videogames use slapstick humour – at least not as effectively.

To set up gameplay jokes for your game, you'll need non-playable characters to play jokes on.

To get more ideas for these characters though, let's first think about more specific locations (areas) for your game world, so we can then think of characters who would populate these areas.

Be specific – notice how the ‘world’ of Untitled Goose Game is the village, but that it’s broken down into a number of locations within that world – you could consider each part of the village like a level of the game.

So vegetable garden, shops, backyard, outdoor dining area, and so on.

The world for our Annoying Galah is a Secondary (High) School, and some locations within that world include:

• sports field
• a bicycle bay
• teacher car park

Brainstorm potential locations for your game world. You can brainstorm as many as you like, but aim for three at least.

Like in U.G.G we want the player to be able to setup some slapstick jokes in our game, but to do this, we need non-playable characters (NPCs) to annoy!

Using your previous brainstorm around areas, go through each area, and think of a 1-2 characters that could populate or are unique to this area.

It can be helpful to think about something unique about this character. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just something individual to this character, something they don't share with other NPCs.

Look at our example below:

Your turn!

List out all the areas you thought of, imagine up some characters and their unique thing.

The next step is to match an action players can make your playable character do, with these non-playable characters you've thought of (and their unique thing) to setup and perform a joke in-game.

We'll keep using the example of the Annoying Galah to help your thinking.

One of the Galah's action is to chew things into smaller bits that they can drop.

We could match this ability with the Physical Education teachers love of using their whistle.

The joke could be, the whistle gets stuffed full with little bits the Galah has chewed up, causing the P.E teacher to huff and puff trying to get their whistle to work.

This could cause them to lose control of the student game they're refereeing on the sports field. Chaos!!

Have a look at our table below and see some other ideas we've thought up:

Your turn!

Draw up a table like the one above, fill the first column with your NPC characters and their unique thing, then think about playable character actions you could use, and the in-game joke the player can setup by matching these two things.

In videogames, we know that there are often ‘levels’ you need to complete before you can move onto the next level. In three-dimensional games like UGG, often there is a larger map with areas within it – but like levels, you can’t get past one area and into the next, until you the player have completed a task, or opened up a way to get from the area you’re in, into the next.

In UGG, as well as a checklist of things the game asked you to do, there is also usually one last really important action the player needs to take, to open up the way to the next area.

For example, in the garden, the player needs to setup the gardener unlocking and then falling through the gate so the Goose/player can get through and into the next area.

With your map, and your list of physical jokes, think about ways that the jokes could result in the way forward into another area.

For example, let’s take our Galah dropping gumnuts into the P.E teachers whistle, which causes them to lose control of the student sport game they’re officiating.

This takes place on the school sports field.

So our idea could be: the game gets out of control, and of the student players kicks a ball wildly through a fence which connects to the area the bike shed is in.

Once you’ve nailed down your ideas, think about the order of the areas – where would the game start? Where would the player move to next? What would be the final area?

Once you’ve got an order you are happy with, time to produce a map!

Draw a map of your three locations, how they connect and where the player will move from one area to the next. It could be a birds eye view map, it could be three-dimensional.

You might like to look at the beautifully illustrated maps the House House commissioned here and there is a nice image online here too.

You might like to add directional arrows to show the flow of how the player will progress through.

Add notes about the characters your playable character interacts with, the tasks, the ‘jokes’ you have setup for the player to bring to life!

By now, you will have a really good feel about your game, your game world, your playable and non-playable characters, and the in-game jokes players can setup to move from one area of the game to the next.

You might like to revisit the game actions the player can partake in when they play your character, and match those actions to a console controller.

You can draw your own version of a standard controller, or download and digitally edit or print the image below. Remember to draw your playable character somewhere on your button mapping diagram!

Congratulations, you've reached the end of this resource!

You might now have a really fun idea for a videogame, maybe you would like to make it into a videogame one day?

Even if you don't, that's fine. A lot of thought and planning goes into a videogame and it's design before a single piece of code has been written, and it can be really fun and a valuable learning experience to go through this process.

We hope you've enjoyed it.