071 - Everything, WHAT THE CAR?, & Untitled Goose Game (Guest: Óscar Losada Suárez from Triband) - Underplayed

Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Thank you for pressing start on episode 71 of Underplayed, KZUMS
indie video game podcast. Today we have two secret games,
followed by a developer interview and a review of our
featured game, Untitled Goose Game.

(00:28):
You're on Underplayed. We review indie games of all
kinds, the games with small budgets but big hearts, the
lesser known experiences with imaginative ideas.
I'm Bo PO, but it's not only me.There's a guy with a flow who's
on a journey. So won't you put your hands
together, please? For the Zeo Drifter, the indie
game Sifter, the Curse, Kraken, Mr. Disco Cola, What's going on?

(00:54):
Man, I tell you what Bopo, I'm having a rough time in life.
I just, I feel like I'm stuck inthis loop of buying my own stuff
over and over again. But Oh well, enough about me.
How are you? I'm doing just fine.
My fancy neighbor who keeps throwing crap that I'm missing
back over the fence. To me, those are references to
our featured game, Untitled Goose Game, which is a special

(01:18):
featured game because it was picked by 1 of this season's
guests and that guest is Oscar Lazada Suarez from the Tri Band
team, creators of What The Golf,What the Car and other things.
And we're very excited. Yeah, very stoked.
This is the season of the devs and I know that this is going to
be another good one, so looking forward to talking with Oscar

(01:39):
here in a little bit. And actually, since we do want
to interview Oscar about his game development story, about
his body of work when it comes to indie games, and ask him a
lot about what makes Untitled Goose Games special, we're going
to just get right into our secret games so that we can be
really efficient with our time. So before we move on, if you're

(02:02):
listening to Underplayed right now, we thank you.
We love you. If you haven't already, please
consider giving us a follow and a five star rating on Spotify
and Apple Podcasts. It should only take a few
seconds and we would really lovethat.
It is time for our secret games.In Secret Games, we each review

(02:35):
an indie game we've been playingin secret since our last
episode. We do not discuss our picks in
advance, we keep them a surprisefor this very moments.
Any indie game can be chosen as long as we haven't reviewed it
before. We'll start with you, Disco
Cola. Let the mystery be no more.
Reveal your secret game for Episode 71 of Underplayed.
Well, we all know that I'm a pretty big fan of Goose Game.

(02:57):
I feel like that's not a secret,so it felt very fitting to me.
That's the only thing I could play for Goose Game was every.
I played everything for Goose Game.
When you came into this world, there gradually arose into being
the sensation of I, and you feelthat you are I just as much as I

(03:17):
feel that I am I. But all the time, everywhere
there are other eyes starting up, whether they be human,
animal, anything you like, therebe in other galaxies, etcetera.
Always they're starting up. And so the feeling that we call
I is how everything feels on theinside.

(03:42):
You played the game, everything.Yes, I've played the game.
Everything. I don't think I have looked into
this, but I might have heard of it.
I think I I had seen the traileronce before too, but this one
was like, what are some games that are kind of like goose game
and it reminded me of this one. I was like, Oh yeah, I've I've

(04:03):
seen that before. So cool.
The game everything comes from David O'Reilly, and as the name
might suggest, in everything youplay as everything.
But before you get to do that, you start the game as a Holstein
cow, which I believe are the really stereotypical ones with

(04:23):
the spots. There's a bunch of different
breeds of cow. Sure.
Thank. You for explaining that to my
normal brand. Yeah, yeah, I've learned a lot,
you know, being married to who I'm married to.
So they have a depth of knowledge about cows that I
don't got you, but it it is specified in the game the
Holstein cow. And the very first thing that is

(04:44):
happening is you are Holstein cow having a thought.
And that thought creates the awareness of others thoughts.
And by listening to others and everything around you, you
become able to find more of yourkind.
But then you eventually be able to become everything.
You eventually gain the abilities to group up with your

(05:07):
own kind. As I mentioned, you can become
other things. You can ascend in and become
something larger. Or conversely, you can descend
and become something smaller. So perhaps you're a cow, you
ascend and become a tree. But if you're that cow, you
descend and maybe you become a frog, and then you descend again

(05:30):
and you become a grain of sand. So you can you can become
everything. And it's my interpretation that
the aim of the game is not to become everything, but to
realize that everything is connected.
While you are exploring everything, you continue to be

(05:52):
able to listen to the thoughts of other things as well, like
the trees and the rocks and the ground all have thoughts.
And they speak to you. I mean, in speech bubbles, in
speech bubbles. But yes, they share their
thoughts with you if you choose to listen.
But in addition to that, you getto hear excerpts of a large

(06:13):
lecture from philosopher Alan Watts.
So he's he's sort of talking about a, a philosopher's way of
how everything is connected. But yeah, that's, that's the
most of it. You become as big as a Galaxy
and as small as molecules, Maybeeven like theoretical particles

(06:34):
might be on the level below that.
I don't totally recall how smallit gets.
I imagine it's hard to measure how much of this game you've
seen unless there's some kind ofa checklist.
So there I guess the simplest term to call it would be a
bestiary and it keeps track of everything that you have
actively been. Oh, I like that.

(06:57):
Yes, there are hundreds of things.
I can imagine. Yeah, yeah.
And I have seen a very small fraction of it.
OK. It does eventually become easier
to become lots of different things.
So it's not quite so daunting, but.
So sorry to interrupt you here, but this is really strongly

(07:20):
reminding me of that game you can play in your browser that I
haven't even played, but I know you've played it.
It's like this. What is it called?
It's where you try to. You try to figure out how to
become something using like. You try to make stuff using
other stuff. I don't know if I've played this

(07:42):
infinite. Craft.
Oh, I did play that. Yeah, you're right.
Is it like infinite craft but maybe more more with more of a
presentation with like traditional graphics and?
Wow, you're causing me to philosophize on whether these
two totally like differently presented games are similar.

(08:07):
I guess kind just in the sense that everything is connected.
I think Infinite Craft is a lot less sophisticated in every way,
but OK. Yeah, I forgot that I played
that. Well, infinite craft, it seems
like you're trying to make something.
Yeah. In this, is it more of like an
exploration and just sort of I'mgoing to discover what is

(08:28):
waiting for me in this like? Pretty much, yeah.
In this universe, that's a good way to put it.
Yep. You do all of this, change all
your sizes and the eventually like the last like main skill
you get is the ability to accessa special gate and once you
finish this gate section you will have successfully completed

(08:48):
the tutorial. Oh wow.
OK. Which, for for all intents and
purposes, is actually the end ofthe game.
The game doesn't end. The only thing that ends is the
tutorial. So.
It's a sandbox. It is a it's a huge sandbox.
No credits roll, but once you finish the gate section, it
becomes the sandbox with all your abilities unlocked and you

(09:08):
do get a little fireworks celebration for finishing the
tutorial. But yeah, beyond that, it's just
whatever you want to do. But yeah, beyond the absurdity
and open sandbox E Nos, there are some sort of what I have
previously called on this podcast, the Goose game

(09:29):
challenges. And that's kind of why I picked
this game. And So what some of these might
look like is one of the skills you require is the ability to
create copies of yourself or delete copies of yourself.
So a fun challenge might be to delete as much of existence as
possible. And I tried to do that.
I believe I, as far as I can tell, cleared an entire

(09:52):
continent of its existence. And so I would be interested to
see just how much of existence entirely I can erase.
You also gain the ability to change into other things at
will, so you could try to make as much of existence the same
thing as you like. You could ascend all the way up

(10:14):
to the Galaxy level, but maybe turn everything into a praying.
Mantis or something. Ice cream?
Yeah, I do ice cream. There I believe ice cream is an
option. Oh my gosh.
OK, so I mean, ice cream is one thing in everything.
Yes, everything does include ice.

(10:36):
Cream it. It sure does.
OK, good to know. But anyways, it's a bit long
winded to get everything you need, but once you do it's all
pretty straightforward. So for things they like about
everything, I love these sentences.
It's one of these games nuts. Sorry, yeah, I love the enormity

(11:00):
and the fun of just like, messing with stuff.
I don't totally subscribe to allof the points that the
philosopher Alan Watts makes. I do like the concept of
everything being connected and between the excerpts of lectures
that we get and the gameplay when you marry those both

(11:21):
together, it does actually do a lot in an interactive way to
drive that point home. And I do sometimes get to that
feeling where everything is actually connected on this
higher philosophical level that I don't always necessarily
believe in at a baseline. So adding that gameplay to this
philosophical speech really doeshelp to change my perspective on

(11:46):
it and and maybe challenges my perception and that doesn't
happen a lot. I will say that's a little
surprising because even though Ido hear that voice over in my
ears, I'm watching this. I'm seeing animals rolling like
goats rolling along the landscape in a way that just
looks very goofy. It's very comical, yeah.

(12:08):
And so it almost seems like thatwould be a mismatch, but it
sounds like this game does kind of challenge your thinking.
Yeah, yeah. And it, it still has that light
heartedness, you know, pretty much at its core.
But yeah, it, it very effectively like has me thinking
about stuff that I've thought about tons of times before, but
I'm, I'm experiencing it in a different way.

(12:29):
And so it's a, it's a, it's a bit interesting, a bit
uncomfortable. It honestly to like be
challenged by such a game that Iexpected to be kind of funny.
Yeah, like it would catch you off guard.
Yeah, I like that once you do get all of the different
abilities unlocked, the controlsof everything feel pretty good
and it's pretty intuitive, and it can just feel nice to travel

(12:54):
the ground as a horde, a group, A bundle of trees.
It's it's hard to know what. A murder of.
Trees. Yeah, a murder of trees.
What's that movie? The The Happening or whatever,
Right. The last thing that I like is
that this is this is one of those games where there's no

(13:15):
punishment at all for stopping to take a breather.
And this like this game builds in a mechanic that makes it make
sense to stop to take a break inthe form of the lecture
segments. So like I actually like trying
to grasp what's being said. So maybe I'll put down my
controller when the next sound bite starts and I'll just, I'll

(13:35):
listen. Maybe I'll like organize some
Digimon cards while this 2 minute excerpt is playing.
Or maybe I'll transform a toy. And I really like having some of
those games that don't require my, my tactile attention at
every given moment. I could, I could use more of
those games that allow me to maybe multitask on certain

(13:56):
things. So this is one of those games
and I, I do, I do like that. It seems like it could be
meditative. Yeah, it, it certainly is at
times, for sure. As for things I dislike, I think
it's a little bit too open in myopinion, for me, for my tastes,
and can be a little bit too nebulous.

(14:18):
It's a massive open, I presume, infinite sandbox, and that feels
like a little bit too much for me.
Additionally, while a lot of theearly game does sort of give you
a waypoint in the distance at nearly all times, I can
eventually spend a lot of time aimless and wandering to

(14:38):
progress to the end of the tutorial.
But for my next dislike, it's a pretty big one.
I guess it's just that I think overall the game didn't really
like Grip Me. I had some fun, I had some
laughs, and I had some thoughts,but generally speaking I was
mostly bored. Well, maybe not bored, but I

(15:01):
just. I wasn't thrilled.
I didn't. There wasn't enough to make me
want to keep playing. Part of me just wants to like
turn on the lecture on YouTube or something if I can find it.
Yeah, sometimes you might want to ask, in this sort of
experimental experience that youknow is unlike anything I've
played, does this have to be a game or is the essence of what

(15:24):
this game wants to give me successful in another format,
right. And then also, I wonder, if I
were to play this game, would itbe one that I would appreciate
and sort of be in awe of more sothan actively enjoy while I'm
playing it? I've had a couple of those games
where it's got a very singular idea going on.

(15:47):
Nothing else is like it, but I'mkind of appreciating what it's
doing more than having fun with what it's doing.
And I think that's a good way toput it.
Once I got to the point where I ascended to the highest form and
then descended to the lowest form, and I think even looped
back around to the concept or theory that, you know, inside

(16:09):
everything small is another Galaxy that's just
infinitesimally smaller than theprevious one.
I don't recall if that actually did happen, but it kind of
seemed like once I got that concept, all I wanted out of the
game after that was to just keeplistening to the lecture.
And you don't get to do that at will.

(16:33):
Like you have to keep moving around to keep listening to the
lecture. And so at a certain point, all I
wanted was to listen to the the rest of the sound bites.
And it's just easier to not playthe game and just go find it
myself. Gotcha.
So in conclusion, everything is a game but.
Everything is a game. Nothing is a.

(16:54):
Game nothing is a game. I wouldn't say much more than
that. I got way more than I expected
on the philosophical front, and I'm supremely impressed with the
scale and sheer number of controllable models in the game.
To call it a waste of time doesn't feel fair, but I think
the game either needed to embrace the goofiness a little

(17:14):
bit more or give me some in gamechallenges to complete.
I may go back and try out some of these Goose game style
challenges, but some of those are also made moot by what I
assume is the reality of everything is sort of infinite
and if you traveled far enough you'd find another object to

(17:35):
have to delete. But I I wouldn't mind going back
to experiment a little bit. But as it stands, I had a time
with everything and I give everything a 6.5 out of 10.
That sounds fair. This does look super
interesting, just being unlike anything else.
And I looked up David O'Reilly, the developer, and he also made

(17:59):
this game called Mountain. I wasn't familiar with
everything, but Mountain has been on my list of secret games.
OK, so now I'm like interested in what's Mountain got waiting
for us. So I'm not, I don't think I'll
pick it this season, but sometime soon maybe.
But yeah, I don't think I have any questions.
The trailer really does. Without having played this game,

(18:22):
I feel like the trailer shows you a wide amount of locales and
things. Yeah, I didn't even see.
I didn't even see half of it. Yeah, and the final moments are
interesting. Like I'm seeing a big bunch of
bananas in space and a saxophone.
What's going on? And cheese.

(18:42):
A big block of cheese. Yeah, everything's connected and
it's in space. I guess so.
So yeah, I would vibe with this.I feel like I don't know that I
would love it, but I would vibe with it, yeah.
Where can you play everything? Looks like you can play on
Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Switch and I played it on PlayStation
4. You can play everything on most

(19:03):
of everything. Maybe not most of everything.
And it's generally pretty inexpensive, it seems.
Wonderful. Well, it's time for my secret
game. My secret game has a lot to do
with our guests today because our guests helped to develop my
secret game. Oh, my secret game is what?
The car. Yes, tankers.

(20:00):
So what? The car is a racing game with
the biggest air quotes possible around the word racing First
released in 2023 on like iOS, like Apple Arcade and now like
over a year later, it's now cometo other platforms like PC.
It was developed and published by Tri Band and I want to thank

(20:23):
future friends who gave me a code to what the car on release
week. And this is such a meaningful
pick for me for a number of reasons.
Oscar, our guest today, worked on What the Car as well as other
What The Games. The community manager for Tri
bands came through my stream when I streamed the demo for

(20:45):
What the Car back in the June 2024 Next fest week.
I was streaming the What the Cardemo and their CM came in and
we're just really pleasant. And so that's what kind of got
the ball rolling on getting Oscar on today.
Yeah. And I thought it was just super
fitting to play What the Car in all of its episodes, all of its

(21:06):
glory, and review it today. I think I could have guessed
that that would have been the case.
Yeah, I think it was a pretty safe bet I'll read you the game
synopsis from the Steam storefront quote.
An absurdly silly adventure fullof racing laughs and unexpected
surprises. Roll, Sprint, jump, fly, and
sneeze your way to victory on the racetrack and beyond.

(21:27):
End Quote. So this is a game that you're
familiar with already. Having seen it on Twitch, you
could probably help describe it as well as I could, but this is
a game where you play as a car with legs that walks around a
world, selecting levels in whichyou race to a finish line most
of the time, and if you're fast enough, you get a golden crown.

(21:49):
Within the levels you can also find cards.
This is sort of another layer ofcompletion and there are
currently, as we sit down to record 9 episodes of levels.
The themes for the episodes are Jumping, Sports, Working Longer,
Driving, Water Party, Sandstorm,and Sneaky so you can kind.

(22:14):
Of longer. Longer.
Yeah, exactly. So you can start to imagine some
of the themes going on here and like, maybe what some of the
levels look like. A 10th episode is underway and
is being voted on by the community.
So you can actually get to the end of this game and see that
there's this part that's like under construction and you can
take a survey about what's coming next.

(22:36):
And this isn't just a racing game, disco Cola.
This is an off the rails goofy slapstick adventure game about
doing these little times trials.I think that's the easiest way
to sum it all up. You're doing these tasks that
sometimes they only take a few seconds, sometimes they only
take 30 or maybe under 60 seconds.

(22:58):
So the levels are microscopic. You're doing dozens of them in a
play session usually, and every level introduces a new gameplay
idea or obstacle to overcome. So I'm going to run through a
ton of examples here. So you can be a car with very
large legs or a car with tiny legs, a car with a jet pack.

(23:20):
Those are some of the first examples.
You see, there are levels where you roll on a soccer ball, kick
a soccer ball, and yes, become asoccer ball.
One of the craziest levels is where you actually have a soccer
cannon on top of your car that propels you in the opposite
direction that it's shooting soccer balls.
So it's just shooting soccer balls everywhere.
And that's how you get, that's how you aim, where you go and

(23:42):
how you get momentum. The game will let you be a wide
car and then a wider car and then a wider car.
There are all kinds of differentwheels that can be on your car.
Giraffes play a role in this game.
Sometimes you have giraffes for stilts.
You can be a shark car, a piratecar, a kite surfing car.

(24:03):
So I can keep going, but there are levels that go beyond the
traditional idea of I need to get to a finish line.
So some examples of this are there's a car Eoki level where
it's more of like a a timed rhythm challenge where there are
words on the screen and you're just supposed to hawk to the

(24:25):
rhythm of the words. Oh, I hadn't seen any of those.
Yeah, there's a level where you make burgers for customers.
There's a level where you chop ingredients for a soup or
something. And some levels are skull
levels, which offer an extra level of challenge, and they can
be more hidden in the world defined.
So when you're within an episode, that's sort of the hub

(24:47):
that you're walking around in, and there can sometimes be
hidden paths to get to some of these skull levels, and you have
to find them. You can also skip them, but if
you want full completion you have to walk around a lot.
And when you complete enough levels in an episode, you free a
bear. That unlocks the way to the next
episode, and bears actually playa huge role in the world.

(25:08):
They're all over the place. They're everywhere.
They are like set dressing. They are main characters, they
are supporting characters. They're at the finish line when
you finish races and you'll run into them and they'll just go
flying off of the edge. They're obstacles.
They're obstacles you have to avoid.
Them and none of them were hurt in the making of the.
Game Yes, the the the game makesthat clear and so that's like a

(25:31):
fun layer of personality here. And then there are community
levels. This is where users can create
and share levels and the game will offer these moments to
maybe play a community level based on an idea of one of the
main levels of the game. I haven't played with this mode,
but my understanding is you can take a base game level and use

(25:56):
it as a template for creating your own thing.
And so you're not starting with a blank canvas, you're maybe
starting with the glass car. Make a level about the car where
it's glass and it's very fragilebecause you just played that
level. So you've sort of unlocked the
ability to make that level now. So there's tons of content here.
There have been multiple contentupdates that have been pushed

(26:20):
since release that include sort of like smaller episodes.
It's not like a full-fledged chapter of the game you're
walking around in, but it's a handful of levels that explore a
new idea. There are also daily levels
where you can go in and play a level from Tri bands that's like
different than yesterday's level.
So you're always finding new stuff when you open this game.

(26:42):
And what I liked about what the car is, this is a gameplay first
game where gameplay is king and the gameplay rules.
This game is so much fun. It is constant dopamine hits of
finishing levels. Maybe you get the silver time
and you know how to shave off time to get the gold, so you
just go ahead and replay it. It's only going to take 20

(27:03):
seconds, and you do that dozens of times in a play session and
the time just adds up. It melts away.
The levels are so small that youjust want to keep playing them,
keep finishing them. I love collecting the gold
crowns and the cards. It feels so rewarding.
Sometimes the cards are off the main path.
You see them like off in the distance and you go, oh, I know

(27:26):
how to get there, but I have to sort of zigzag my way and I'm
definitely not going to get the gold time, but I want to try to
get that card. Other times the cards are very
much in your path, but maybe they're more challenging to get
than other cards. Like I have to take this ramp at
a very specific angle or, you know, I have to make sure I I

(27:47):
hit this curve really tightly toget this card.
And so it offers a new challengeevery time you see one of these
cards. And it also means that because
these cards aren't always off oron the main path, there's no
formula to them. They can sort of show up in any
way that Tri Band wants them to.So the game is just always

(28:09):
playing with this idea of completion.
The game goes for and fully achieves quality and quantity.
Just with how fun all these mechanics are, how polished they
are, and then just how many ideas made it into the game.
It's so impressive to me. Every idea feels special and
worthy of being included. There's creativity be abound and

(28:30):
this game is funny that you know, you can attest to this.
It's hilarious that the game will announce like what the
level idea is to you in this really funny voice over.
When you start the level, there are bears bouncing everywhere.
Car with stilts. Yes, it's so funny, and the
controls consistently feel tactile and fine-tuned to what

(28:50):
you're doing, so there can be a huge variety of steering and
acceleration and maneuverabilityacross all the levels, But it
all makes sense within context. So you might be in a level where
you're a car covered in springs and you jump really chaotically.
That's exactly what you would expect if you were covered in

(29:13):
these springs and you're in thiscartoony world.
You're just going to bounce everywhere but another level.
You might have an umbrella and when you deploy the umbrella in
the air, you float down with this like nice touch of grace.
And so those are two very different vibes going on, but
they all work in this game because they each have their

(29:34):
moment to shine. You make a lot of mistakes in
this game. You fall off the ledge, you have
to restart the levels, but replays are instant.
This game throws you back in, and I love that in these sorts
of arcade games where you might have to try something dozens of
times to get it to work, the game is your friends.
It wants you to just keep playing.

(29:56):
So yeah, I just adore this game,top to bottom.
I did have dislikes. It mostly comes with selecting
levels and the sort of organization of content in the
game. Hey, this is Bo talking to you
closer to the present than when we recorded this episode.

(30:17):
In this section of criticisms, Italk about the selection of
levels, and I wanted to report that more recently than this
recording, Tri Band added an elevator feature to the home
area of the game. This allows you to more quickly
revisit entire episodes of levels.
But the general method of selecting levels remains

(30:40):
unchanged from what I can tell. So I just wanted you to know
that this review is based on a version of the game that's older
than the one you can play right now.
So there will be some differences, but my overall
score for the game doesn't change.
OK, I'm going to send you back now.
Selecting levels in the over world can sometimes take time,

(31:01):
especially when you have to backtrack to find missing levels
or to replay levels you know youdidn't do the best at.
It can be hard to remember, likewhere each individual level is
because these episodes are kind of sprawling.
Like these levels are really spread out.
You've probably seen it in the Twitch broadcasts you've seen.

(31:24):
So also the content can be a little difficult for me to
organize. In my mind, I mentioned the the
daily levels, the minor episodes, just all the base
episodes themselves. It can be a lot to remember
that's in the game that I'm not always sure about what is where.

(31:44):
And then a few levels gave me trauma because of their
difficulty. You know, there's the there's
the car with the soccer cannon on top.
That level tested my patients and a few can rely a little bit
on lock or jank. I think that's an intended charm
in the game, but in some cases it can be a little frustrating.
But you're going to get that in a game with hundreds of ideas

(32:07):
going on. So overall, what the car does
not follow a strict formula and it stays inventive and fun all
the way through, and that's how it manages to surprise and
delight for many hours. I want to keep going back to
this game to get gold crowns andthe cards and the dailies.
I'm going to give this a nine out of 10.

(32:31):
Hackers, baby. And it's playable on PC, which
is the version I played Mac and Apple Arcade.
Perfect. Well, I don't have many
questions because I already knew, you know, before the
recording today what it's all about.
I knew that I wanted to play it.You knew about everything before
today. I did know about everything,
you're right. No the only I guess the only

(32:55):
question I have is is what was your favorite mechanic in what
the car? I know of the ones I've seen,
the water jetpack seems really fun.
Yeah, I I think I know what you're talking about with like
the water coolers. That's definitely one of my
favorites. I I'm going to ask Oscar about
this because it's just a hard list to pick from, but there's

(33:18):
just so many good ones. There are levels where you ride
on top of things, so like you might roll on a soccer ball or
roll on top of a coffee cup. Those kinds of things are really
fun. I like the more traditional,
just like racing levels where you're an agile race car.
Like those can feel really good in this game.

(33:39):
This. So they nailed the traditional
sort of racing feeling when that's what you're doing.
I like the umbrella. I like when you were a car
inside of a wheel and you're just like at this wheel that can
turn on a dime. It feels so good.
And then the water levels, I would say just across the board

(33:59):
are really cool. You get to have a shark fin and
some of those you get to bounce on the water.
And that just when you're when you're like, if you will riding
the wave of some of the platforms, it just, it feels
like you're, you have this nice momentum going.
Yeah, there's this one in the trailer.
Where he looks like he rolls up into like a Sonic the Hedgehog

(34:19):
kind of a spin, and that looks pretty cool too.
Yeah. And it it's funny because there
will be a progression to the ideas where you'll be kicking a
soccer ball in the goals, then you'll be walking on top of a
soccer ball and then you are a soccer ball, you know, and when
you get to the you are a soccer ball level, it's like, oh, of

(34:40):
course that's like, right. Like of course we're a soccer
ball. Yeah.
So I love that we're we're a soccer ball, but we're a car.
Yeah, so. Yeah, that's that's all I've
got. I I would love if it came to
console. I probably will still play it on
PC because I do really it it looks so fun.
So if I end up with some like spare time, I'll probably still

(35:02):
play it on PC. But cool if you're out there.
Tri band and I would take a console port.
Other games of theirs, like whatthe Golf, have come to console,
yes. So I know it's not impossible,
but I also know it's not their goal.
I know. Yeah.
And, and sometimes things that were possible for past games
aren't possible for future games.
It's just circumstances change, variables change.

(35:23):
We understand that. But I hope you get to play this.
So those are our secret games. Everything.
And what? The car Let's move on to our
interview with Oscar losada Suarez.
This episodes special guest joining us from a land that is

(35:50):
far. He's worked on games like what
the car. He has skills of all sorts and
plays keyboard sports. He knows game design.
His controls feel divine, his programming so fine.
Oscar, Lazada, Suarez, how are you doing?
I'm good. I'm good.
Thank you. How are you guys?
Doing great. I always forget when we have
guests that that that Bopo makesup a little rhyme for him.

(36:12):
So always happy to always happy to hear those.
Yeah. Welcome in.
I'm, I'm happy that you're here.Where are you joining us from
today? Because we're we're working from
different time zones, which we've done before, but I think
this is the biggest gap in time that we've we've dealt with so
far. I I live in Copenhagen in

(36:33):
Denmark. Yeah, so we are 7 hours behind
you, which is very unusual for us to record with that much of a
difference with us and a guest. But we're glad we could make it
work. There are enough hours in the
day that we can still we find a time that works wrong.
We did, yes. So, Oscar, can you tell us what

(36:54):
games you've worked on in your career?
Yes, so I've worked on 1/2 published game called Keyboard
Sports, very close to my heart, even though it didn't fully get
released. It was part of these this thing
called the humble originals keyword forts.
It's kind of like take the keyboard and treated it almost

(37:17):
like a touchscreen. You play this character called
tip wherever you click on your keyboard that's kind of
projected on your screen and youclick on a key on your keyboard
and they'll walk there. Then I worked on what the Gulf
in its early days. And then unfortunately, I had to

(37:37):
move to another company due to classic financial problems in in
these small companies. Yeah.
And that's when I worked on Mutagione.
Mutagione, we pronounce it, I don't know each our way.
So I think it's supposed to be Italian inspired.

(37:59):
That's a narrative game with a very unique art style that was
also an Apple Arcade. And then similar reasons came
back to Trivand with most recently what the Car.
Bo and I have both played Mitacione and Bose.
Played what the car. I haven't played it myself, but
I've seen a lot of people play it and I'm really looking

(38:20):
forward to it. So we are we are familiar with
some of your. Work we are.
I actually recently played Mutazione on stream and I played
it because several years ago Disco Cola played it for this
podcast and the way he talked about it put it on my list and I
didn't get around to it until just recently.
I wanted to play it shortly before talking to you just so I

(38:43):
had that experience fresh in my mind.
I think Disco was able to join acouple of my streams too, so now
it's fresh again in his mind tooso.
Remembered a lot of things I forgot so.
Yeah, and it was an awesome experience.
I loved the narrative journey. I loved exploring that village
and getting to know those characters.
It was just such a joy. And it really goes to show,

(39:03):
like, hearing you say the name of the game, hearing how Disco
says it, hearing how I say it. Everybody kind of does say the
name of the game differently. But I've been saying you,
Tatsione. Yeah, I've been.
I've been doing more of a moo moo tatsione.
That sounds pretty good. We get, we get the thumbs up.
OK, good. I mean, I'm not Italian either,
so, right? What do I know?

(39:24):
I have a little bit of Italian ancestry, so I think it really
falls on me to get it right. I'll do.
I'll do my best. He's carrying the weight for all
of us. OK, Yeah, right.
And we will, we'll ask about that in that game in a minute.
But first we want to ask you what got you into game
development? How did you get started on this
journey? Yeah, so I was studying math and

(39:47):
computer engineering back in Spain.
That's where I'm from. And I was kind of frustrated.
It was a very long program, fiveyears long, which I decided to
stick through even though I wasn't quite feeling it.
And I figured I wanted to not waste all that time spent trying
to learn some things and kind ofre channel it into something

(40:11):
more creative, something different and that.
Was games and I found an interesting looking program in
Copenhagen, which kind of let mesneak in without having much of
portfolio to speak of because mybackground wasn't really focused
on that at that point. And that's that's how I started.

(40:31):
And then halfway through the first year I got started at Tri
Band, that's when I worked on keyboard sports.
And yeah, I mean, from there on I was kind of a little bit stuck
in Denmark. It set its clause in me and it
hasn't that gone since. Your story really shows how

(40:51):
everybody kind of has a different entry point into the
industry and into finding a studio and into finding work, so
that's very interesting. So you mentioned earlier that
part way through what the Gulf you had to leave for a little
bit and that's when you went to go work on Mutatzione.
Can you explain what it was liketo sort of jump into that

(41:12):
project while they're working onit and just talk about some of
the the roles that you had in developing that game?
Yeah, it's sales project that had a long history with ups and
downs, as I understand it, through running out of money,
getting new funding, having to let go of some people and

(41:33):
getting some new ones as new money came in.
And so I think in all it was like about nine years, which is
kind of shocking to think about.So I came in in the last two
years and the game was still changing, but unfortunately it
felt like we never knew how longwe had until the delivery.

(41:55):
It always felt like it was around the corner.
So it's not like we had like 2 years.
Ends up being quite a lot of time if you know, if that's your
budget or your timeline to beginwith.
But it, it wasn't like that. It was more like, Oh no, we're
supposed to release like in six months and then we figure out
we're definitely not ready to release.

(42:15):
And then it's like, OK, we kind of extended a little more and
then a little more. So it's not like we could make,
you know, the the scope of the changes we could make was
restricted by that. So it always felt like something
was sort of looming around the corner, kind of kind of like
something frightening might jumpout at you at any moment.

(42:35):
Yeah. Yeah, we're like we couldn't now
open, like maybe some part of itwas not quite working as we
would like, but then maybe the solutions we could think of
seemed like they would take too long before the point where
we're supposed to and close things off and and ship it.
It also was originally mainly supposed to be for PlayStation

(42:59):
and at some point it became a mainly Apple Arcade title, which
yeah, thankfully we had started to re revamp the controls from a
very controller centric to a bitmore point and click inspired,
which matches much more easily to a touch screen.
So we kind of got lucky there. And so that's what you worked a

(43:21):
lot on is like UI and controls and stuff.
I started as with this, some kind of mission to work on the
game field of the game, but the tasks sort of expanded as I so I
kind of found different areas that felt a bit lacking in
different ways and then convinced people to let me work

(43:45):
on them, I suppose. Wow.
So, so yeah, it started with thecharacter movement.
So we had at the time a shockingamount of animations made over
the years, like too many two fits in a animate file and we
had too many frames for the maincharacter to fit in a file.

(44:09):
Interesting. And if you've played this game,
there's not that many animationsfor that.
We ended up using, which is sad because of all the work that
they someone put into into thosethings.
But anyway, this was to say thatpart of that was trying to
extract those animations and make use of them in the context

(44:31):
of reacting to the player's decisions.
And, you know, go this way. Go up the stairs.
Can we make the infamous staircases fit or rather the
steps, the feet of the characterfeet fit the state cases?
The answer is we could not. Or yeah, it was too, too big a

(44:53):
challenge to do that and well, Ithink.
Yeah, I think the benefit of thestylized art in that game is
that there is that room for error anyways, because I didn't
even I didn't notice that the steps weren't matching the
stairs and and I I credit a lot of that to like just art and

(45:13):
generally just enjoying the scenery.
Yeah, I think when you're in thetrenches, you maybe can fall
into the error of putting too much importance into this sort
of detail where players might not register it a lot.
And it can be kind of part of the sterilization, like you
said, and sometimes even adds tothe charm where if you try to go

(45:36):
for full realism, it becomes much more difficult.
Sometimes you might not make it all the way.
You might fall into some kind ofuncanny valley where it sticks
out more than it needs to. But if you had been like, I'm
just going to hold back, not putmy eggs into this basket, you
know to pick your battles wiselyand then it works better.

(45:56):
It sounds like you showed a strong willingness to improve
the projects with stepping up and saying, hey, I want to
improve the game this way, I want to do this, I want to do
that. And you ended up having these
several roles on this project. And while you're balancing these
roles, how does working on one role inform how you approach
another role? Well, for me, that's why I

(46:19):
worked on the on the navigation from going from controller to
point and click on the interfaceand how the mechanics worked on
the, on the gardens and the gardening side.
I worked on the display and behaviour of the dialogues.
And I think they kind of, even though they've maybe touched

(46:40):
different disciplines like user interface or maybe some,
definitely some programming for me, it's all focused on how the
player experiences it. So just seeing, seeing it
through those eyes makes it feellike it's all the same almost.
I can't say we play tested much,but but at least with ourselves,

(47:03):
you know, seeing that it seems to feel like we think it should.
Well, I think it resulted in a game that I loved and as Beau
said in the first episode of theseason, he seemed to enjoy it
quite a lot. So yeah, we we really loved how
it turned out. I will speak on behalf of both
of us here. And I'm glad that you kind of

(47:25):
gave us insight into what goes into making a game.
Sometimes I think a lot of people would look at Mutazione
and think maybe it's a game thatonly took two or three or four
years to make. And sometimes that's not the
story. Sometimes these things have a
plan, and the plan changes and it gets extended and a lot of
hard work goes into making that happen.

(47:46):
And then you went back to Tri Band.
Can you describe the team at TriBand and the kinds of games they
aim to create? Yeah, I think it would be fair
to say we're a bit of a chaotic bunch and at least we seem to
have some kind of fame for it inthe.
Well, locally I suppose, we usedto work in a very respectable

(48:10):
basement, and it's been a while since then.
Now we work in what feels like abit of a palace, although it's
kind of 20 meters away from the basement, so we're not far from
our origins. Moving on up, yeah.
We got a bit closer to the water, some lakes, as we call
them, in Copenhagen in the center.

(48:32):
And what type of games do we work on?
We work on comedy games. That's kind of our mission
statement, to make people laugh.Laughs per minute is even
something we talk about. I've only seen what the car so
far but I am laughing every minute so I think mission
accomplished. At least in that game.

(48:53):
Bose actually played it, so he could probably speak more to
that. Yes, so I actually reviewed what
the car in this episode before this interview and I played
through every chapter. And I'm just astounded at how
every episode introduces new ideas, plays with them in new

(49:13):
ways that you don't expect and that you're continuing to create
content for this game. And it just shows that you and
the rest of the team are so passionate about this idea.
But going back to what the golf where you decided to take a
serious sport and turn it into something more lighthearted and
humorous. How did the Tri Band team decide

(49:33):
to pursue golf as a starting point for this series?
So I would say it was probably largely a matter of accident.
It started with something that does not resemble at all what
the game ended up being. The original version of the
game, I can't remember the full name of it, but I think the

(49:55):
subtitle was The Dark Halls of Golf.
So it was like a Dark Souls inspired thing and it was made
by our creative director and oneof the founders of the company
in game jam. Yeah, that was kind of the

(50:16):
starting point and it very that was pitched to some companies
And then the next milestone it was like, it's not this at all.
And then it was a bit more like a Katamari thing, a little open
world ish. And then that was scrapped.
Then we went to through, I call it the mind map phase, which

(50:36):
seems to happen in every single project at tribe.
And some point somebody always says, listen, let's just make it
real. Let the players know we're
trying to make game X this time about golf and we're going to
show you all the things we triedand they didn't work.
Make it like a mind map in, you know, exploring it.
And yeah, it's happened so many times.

(50:58):
So I get triggered almost by when that happens.
And it's not too far from what that part is kind of like what
the golf I would say actually maybe it is the mind up.
After all, yeah, our featured game today, Untitled Goose Game,
I heard a story that the idea for that game by House House

(51:22):
happened because someone on their development team shared a
stock image of a goose, and it became this thing that everybody
at the studio was looking at. And then they all kind of just
decided, like, wait, there's potential here.
So sometimes these game ideas can come from very unexpected
places. Yeah, Yeah, I think that's very
fair. I think one more general point

(51:44):
to make on this was I think we tend to pick very mundane
starting points thinking that having a shared context for
everyone to kind of start on thesame ground level is useful to
then understand each other when we're trying to make a joke.
Like you need a topic to talk about.

(52:04):
So cars, I guess everyone knows of their existence at least we
don't drive generally, but. And even if you've never played
golf before, you've seen golf like you understand the concepts
of a ball in a club in a hole, and then how do we take that and
just go in new directions? I mean, most people do.
We probably don't very much. And we kind of tried to turn it

(52:26):
into a strength, yeah. In your portfolio, you talk
about programming as a creative thinking tool.
Can you explain this concept andhow it helps you formulate ideas
for games like What the Golf andWhat the Car?
Yeah. I, I was kind of excited to see
that you quoting me on this. I I'm not really sure anyone has

(52:49):
ever opened My Portfolio. We do our.
Homework here. But anyway, that was nice.
That was nice. Yes, I can explain.
It's not really like an originalidea of mine or anything like
that. I think it's how we work at
Tribe and very often we merge the role of the designer and the

(53:11):
programmer or part of the programmer and very much they're
usually the same person as opposed to having a designer
give a specification or a description and then a
programmer materialize it in in code.
So the thinking is that when we describe or think about things
in natural language, we can easily be very unspecific.

(53:34):
For instance, we can say, well, the character will be able to
jump. And that seems like that is a
finished sentence when it comes to describing what they can do.
But of course there's there's a million platformers, a million
games where you can jump and they all are very different,
right. So it's not really a design to
say a character can jump. Whereas when you're confronted

(53:56):
with the fact of the program, the code that you write, you are
forced by how specific you have to be to make everything into a
position. It's kind of a tool to make you
examine the possibility space ofwhat it means to jump, how high,
how far can you hold the button to jump longer.

(54:17):
There's a multitude of variablesthat superficially just in
natural language you will not beforced to consider.
But when you have to code it, there's no question you will
have to decide and and you can kind of instead of making the
decision a bit automatically, you can turn it into a decision
point where you're making at assigned decision.

(54:39):
Yeah, it's, it's a lot of variables that could add up to a
lot of challenges or you can seethem as opportunities and sounds
like you look at these, you lookat these variables as
opportunities each and every. Time exactly.
Yeah, that's that's the idea. That's awesome.
So coming from what the Golf, what is it that you learned in

(54:59):
that game that is now being carried into what the car?
Well, I don't know if we learned, we suffered some
consequences of maybe different decisions and we're still trying
to, I don't know, learn or at least reach some kind of
satisfactory solutions. But I suppose this struggle

(55:21):
would be in the context of AppleArcade, where it's live service
where games are supposed to be probably played throughout a
longer period of time as opposedto, well, you start them and you
finish them and you're hopefullysatisfied with that.
You can play another game or do something else.

(55:42):
This kind of doesn't work well with games that are centered
around comedy. Somebody has to do a lot with
surprise. How many times can you surprise
a person with the same joke? It's probably 0 to one kind of
situation. So yeah, kind of merging the
comedy angle with the replayability or the at least

(56:06):
having enough content so that maybe you don't need to replay
it, but there's enough that you'll play until you're done or
you won't finish it even hopefully.
So that that's kind of the struggle we've been trying to
deal with and we were probably underestimating it with what the
Gulf. It was also not a project that

(56:26):
initially was designed for AppleArcade, but opportunities came
around and they were taken. And with Car, we did know from
the beginning that this was a project made for Apple Arcade
and we somewhat tried to addressit.
I suppose mainly through having this level editor, the players

(56:48):
can make content themselves with.
And maybe I can cheat and say from Car to the next project.
The the lesson that I am taking is making sure that you stick
with a small team until the concept and direction is clear
before you grow a team and then everyone is not really knowing

(57:12):
which way you're heading. Whereas if you've established
the vision in your head, maybe you even have something ideally
that everyone can play and then everyone can align and work in
the same direction. It sounds like useful advice for
most, if not all game projects. Or other non game projects?
Other creative projects. Perhaps all creative projects,

(57:34):
yes. In what the Golf and what the
car, it seems like there are near limitless possibilities for
what you can do. You know in what the car.
You never know what is going to be attached to the car.
You don't know what the car is going to see on its path in a
level, what the car is going to be, or what the level itself is

(57:57):
going to do. Maybe it doesn't do something
that has a traditional finish line.
Maybe it's about cutting up ingredients for a soup or
jumping on a trampoline to get to a target in the sky.
So how do you choose the best ideas for these games, and how
do you know when you're done developing ideas?

(58:18):
Well, we tend to consider them done when we run out of time.
Well, unfortunately necessary sometimes, but I think largely
we prototype a lot because we don't have generally designers

(58:38):
separate from programmers. And it is a very independent
exercise where, well, for betteror worse, you're not really
challenged for by anyone. Like you don't need to convince
the programmer that this idea isthe thing we're doing.
You should only convince yourself, which sometimes can be
worse. Yeah.

(58:59):
So we try a lot of things and then we play tested mostly
internally ourselves with our colleagues and we get feedback
and then slowly some ideas very quickly become difficult to
realize and they tend to slowly fade away.

(59:22):
Others immediately, you know, catch everyone's attention.
I don't know if everyone uses Slack nowadays.
Well, some instant messaging tool that we use at least the
tribe and and you know, you posta GIF, a video of something and
you know how many emojis you getas reactions that that's a good
metric for whether you should keep it or not.

(59:46):
And when you're sharing things over Slack, I imagine sometimes
the simplest ideas, the ideas that you can just take a quick
look at and understand immediately, sometimes those
might be the ones that resonate with people, are the ones that
people want to see more of. It could be as simple as a car
with a shark fin on it. I want to see more.
About what that can do, do you find that the simpler ideas

(01:00:08):
sometimes are the winners? Yes, for sure.
I think we have decided to not take the path of elegance, which
would certainly push us more in that direction of simplicity and
and minimalism. No superfluous elements.
That's lovely. I think whose game has a lot of
that, but we go a bit more for the chaotic side, but still, and

(01:00:34):
we have. So sometimes that means we over
complicate how a controller, we call them controllers, how the
player avatar might behave in a certain level.
Yeah. Across What the Golf and what
the Car? Do you have a favorite gameplay
mechanic in one of the games, ormaybe a few favorites?

(01:00:57):
Well, I'm going to go with a controller as a stand in for a
mechanic, I suppose. I I really like this car
version. I think I called it Hot Wheels.
It's at least inspired by the toy where you can go kind of on
loops, upside down loops. And that, I think was one of the

(01:01:22):
versions of the vehicle that hadthat managed to get tiny bit of
depth despite the fact that we don't get to spend as much time
with each avatar as as you mightin a more traditional game
perhaps. So, yeah.
And I think the hard level for it, maybe you've played it, is
quite nightmarish. I think I remember that point.

(01:01:45):
I did. I don't think I'll forget that
anytime soon, yeah. Right.
It was really tough Even so I think it's it's really
brilliant. I think it really showcases that
the that the controller was quite successful.
I'm glad you were able to make more than one level out of that
idea. And that's that kind of car,

(01:02:06):
there's so many to pick from, but I really like the ones where
you're carrying the water coolers.
And there's another, there's another version of it where it's
sunscreen. I I feel like those are very
similar. It just may be different
aesthetic choices for like what the car is carrying.
I just like the feeling of boosting off of.

(01:02:29):
The I was going to say just as aas a viewer, my favorite that
I've seen is the like little water jet pack.
Yeah, yeah, that was originally the game, of course.
Of course it wasn't originally about a car.
It was about a family and the heist.
Nothing of that happened. Yeah, that's our version of the

(01:02:54):
Dark Halls of Golf, I guess. Wow.
And yeah, it was like a bottle of sunscreen and like, yeah,
water cooler on their own. And at some point we figured out
that nobody would ever understand why you were going
through all these completely unrelated.
Even more so it was like, well, we will attach a cart to this
water cooler and this sunscreen bottle, which now maybe is again

(01:03:16):
water cooler. Wow.
Cool, As a game developer, what's 1 tool or source of
inspiration that you rely on that maybe some people might not
expect? So you mentioned before we kind
of touched on the accidental discoveries of maybe the Goose

(01:03:41):
asset main character for Untitled Goose Game.
I think for us being a little cheeky with this interpretation
of two, but hopefully that'll beOK.
Yeah, that's fine. I think we use misunderstandings
a lot, like misinterpreting whatsomeone else has said.
Maybe you're discussing something and you spiral out of

(01:04:01):
what someone else is saying intoyour own imagination, and
hopefully you're able to reconnect to what they're saying
later on. And you're I.
Sometimes I'm afraid that I whatI just imagined is not what I
imagined. It's literally what they were
just saying, but I just got distracted with whatever I
fantasized about at that point based on something.

(01:04:22):
And I think that's kind of the same line with the puns and the
word play. Sometimes I just need something
to grab onto. Like for instance, the shark R
and the carp and the carp Tamaran.
The car Tamaran was definitely Iwould.
We had the idea that we were making a water based world and

(01:04:45):
then I was like, I need to find ship that has the word car in it
somehow. And it was like, OK, car turn
around and it was like damn it. But those are split in half.
OK, can I cut my car model in half anyway?
So it's kind of just finding some kind of thematic bit that

(01:05:08):
you can get to attach to your brain and make it run when it
doesn't want to run on its own, I guess.
And maybe complimentary Chitty idea.
Limitations, I think are kind ofmaybe I don't know how
commonplace is the same that canlimitations breed creativity, I

(01:05:32):
think is the approach with game jams as well, where you get like
a keyword and you might have no relation to that keyword.
How are you so you think to begin with, and then with that
restriction it means that instead of looking at a an
infinite space of possibilities of what the game should be, you
look at the slightly smaller infinite space of possibilities,

(01:05:54):
and that somehow happens to help.
Yeah, I I really love creativitythat comes out of limitation.
I used to play a lot of Pokémon and I would play in Pokémon
tournaments that had limitations.
And whenever like we played Digimon cards and they have
limitations on it, that's when Ihave the most fun.
Yeah, I used to do a lot of theater and improv, and

(01:06:18):
limitation was often how we got to the best ideas, the most
focused ideas in scenes. You know, you're told do this
scene, but there's some sort of a handicap or some sort of a
limitations. You can't do this or say this.
And that allows a story that younever would have been able to

(01:06:38):
tell did come about. So that's really cool to hear
that from a a game designer's perspective.
And then finally, what are you looking forward to doing next,
either in game development or otherwise?
I'll go with game development, Iguess.
So we're working on a new project, undisclosed, etcetera,
But I'm looking forward to beingin a project from its inception,

(01:07:04):
from it, knowing only that we'remaking a project.
Maybe that's a strange thing to do, but not knowing kind of
almost nothing else about it andbeing in the role of a creative
lead, I'm excited about that. Intimidated.
Let's see how it goes. Yeah, it's good to be a little
intimidated, but Oscar, it's been wonderful to hear from you

(01:07:26):
about your game development and your journey.
We will now move on to our next segment with you, which is
reviewing the game you chose from our list, Untitled Goose
Game. It is our featured game.

(01:08:07):
The. Untitled Goose Game is a puzzle
slash stealth slash adventure game first released in 2019.
It was developed by House House and published by Panic Inc.
The game synopsis from the Steamstorefront reads quote It's a
lovely morning in the village and you are a horrible goose.

(01:08:29):
End Quote. So I'll set up the story and
setting real quick. Disco will cover the gameplay.
We'll talk about a little bit ofhistory and significance with
the game, and then we'll throw it to you, Oscar, to share your
thoughts on the game. So in Untitled Goose Game, you
play as a goose in an English village.
This village is made-up of five main areas.

(01:08:50):
So you've got the garden, you'vegot High Street back gardens,
the pub, and the model village, and all these areas are
connected in the same instance, so eventually you can walk to
all of them. You have a checklist of tasks to
do in each area that require youto be absolutely horrible toward
humans, and when you do enough of those tasks, you unlock your

(01:09:14):
way to the next area. So you do this a handful of
times, and the tasks include acts such as stealing items or
maybe getting people wet, makingthem fall down, breaking things
as examples. And your goal is to make your
way to the model village, the last area to get something the

(01:09:35):
goose wants and to just be a terror all along the way.
That's how I would most simply set up the game Disco.
What do we do in this game? Game play wise.
So in gameplay wise in Untitled Goose Game you can do pretty
much everything a goose does, just short of being able to
actually fly. Your goose can waddle, or it can

(01:09:59):
quicklyer waddle. If you get into water, this
translates to swimming. You will swim in the water as a
goose should. You can flap your wings a bit.
This doesn't have an apparent purpose as far as I've found,
but it's a it's it's mostly justlike dabbing on your enemies.
You're adding dramatic flair to your to your actions.

(01:10:20):
You can duck your head to get under low clearances.
Did you like that? I see what you did there.
Did you like that one I? Did like that a lot.
I enjoyed that. Yes, you can grab items, and
this is the most important mechanic in the game other than
just moving, but you will use this mechanic to pick up and
move items and just generally cause mischief.

(01:10:43):
And this is also the same mechanic that will open doors
and latches or activate other kinds of interactables, whether
it be like a lever or something.And you can honk like a goose.
This is largely because you're agoose, so obviously you have to
be able to honk. What would a goose game be
without a honk? But it also does serve a

(01:11:04):
purpose. You can grab the attention of
the humans around you. And yeah, you use all of those
skills to interrupt the lives ofthe humans around you.
And in the big picture, like Boppo said it, it feels like a
puzzle at times. So this this is in fact a lot
like a puzzle game. And you use all of your

(01:11:25):
different goosely skills to to solve all the different puzzles.
Yeah. So that that list of tasks you,
you might know what you have to do, but how you do it is the
mystery. That's what you do, the
experimentation to find out a little bit of history and
significance about the game. Untitled Goose Game was
nominated for many awards at industry events.

(01:11:46):
It was nominated for Best Independent Game at the 2019
Game Awards. It won Game of the Year at the
GDC and DICE awards, and this iskind of a fun award.
It's even won outstanding achievement in Character for the
Goose at the DICE Awards, which is a character you play as a
character that doesn't talk. Just sort of testament to how

(01:12:11):
much personality this goose has there.
And there was a free update in September 2020 that added a
Co-op mode which I have yet to try.
Have either of you tried the Co-op mode in this game?
I have tried the Co-op. Mode you have.
OK, Oscar. Review mode?
Not really. I opened it to check some things
but that's it. OK cool.
Well disco you might want to talk about the Co-op mode.

(01:12:33):
We might be curious about that as. 100% I'm going to.
Talk about OK, amazing. OK, I'm starting to wonder if
that was a central part of your replay for this episode.
Only maybe. Perhaps.
Yes, definitely. Oh wow, this is a surprise to
me. I didn't know this.
OK, so Oscar, why did you pick Untitled Goose Game from our
list? We gave you this long list.

(01:12:54):
There were maybe 100 games in there or more.
What about Untitled Goose Game stuck out to you?
Well, it seemed relevant to my work at Tri Band, I suppose.
We make comedy games and this I think is very much a comedy game
as well. And I had played it back in the
day, so I knew what I was getting into I suppose.

(01:13:15):
Yeah, that definitely helps. And then what are your thoughts
on Untitled Goose Game? You've you played it years ago
and now you've replayed it for this episode.
Thank you for taking the time todo that.
What are your thoughts on this game?
Yeah, I think it's really fantastic.
They're a game that's trying to do one thing and it's very
focused. Many games nowadays feel the

(01:13:38):
pressure to be enormous, take upall your time and then some
more. But this one seems to know what
it's trying to do, and I think it does it brilliantly.
Getting you to role play a gooseseems like a fantastic novelty.
And of course, it's kind of the jumping off board for setting up

(01:13:59):
great comedy and humor that almost comes in a large
percentage from what the player is doing.
Of course, the game is driving you to produce these situations,
but it feels like you're very much an actor in producing that
comedy. I think I really like the
interconnectedness of the space.As you mentioned before, even

(01:14:22):
though the action largely happens in these hubs,
everything is connected and it really feels like it's a space
that is very real and very alive.
The characters feel like they were there long before you
arrived as a hurricane, and theyare also there recovering from
your horrible presence when you leave.

(01:14:45):
I think the music is really awesome, feels quite unique in
its style, a bit classical mostly.
If I remember correctly, it's a piano, maybe exclusively that's
playing the music and it's so reactive to what is happening
with the players doing and what the NPCS are doing as well.

(01:15:09):
I think it is quite key in getting the player in on the
joke, establishing we are tryingto make you laugh.
I think that's that's more important than it seems.
That's like in our games in whatthe golf and what the car.
I think almost the most important role of the punch
lines at the end of each level and goal for the introductory

(01:15:31):
words at the beginning of every level and car, I see that as
kind of the declaration that we're being silly almost.
I agree so. Kind of less important that what
we say is really funny or not, but just setting that context
and mindset for the players key,I think, and the music, how it

(01:15:53):
swells when some tense thing is happening in in goose game or
when you just crossover and are approaching the the farmer for
the first time and it just kind of really drives your emotions
beautifully. I think.
I think the art style is is great.
It's beautiful clean. I appreciate the minimalism.

(01:16:17):
That's a personal preference, ofcourse.
I think I value a lot that, or perhaps it's admirable at the
very least. Not that I don't like violent
games, but I think it's admirable that it's a game
that's not about killing. Perhaps you might say there's a
little bit of violence, at leastconflict, but really like

(01:16:38):
you're. Playing a villain, but you're
not. You're not really hurting people
other than maybe making them fall down.
Emotionally. Emotionally.
Emotional damage. But.
And dislikes, I think it's really hard to find dislikes,
but we're going to go with something just because it was on
the list. So you might have had this

(01:16:59):
situation where the, the MPCS are quite reactive to your
presence and what you do, right?But maybe you've encountered the
situation where you try to stealsomething from them.
This is a thing you do all the time, right?
And they, they catch you, they'll run after you and then
they'll take it from you very mean.

(01:17:22):
And then you can either give up or if you're being a bit
stubborn, you can kind of chase them and kind of take it back
from their hands and like fight them a little bit.
And if you insist a little bit, the AI code that's handling
their behavior, you can get a little confused and you kind of
can go around in circles a little bit around them, which,

(01:17:42):
well, it's somehow breaks a little bit.
You know, you see the seams. Yeah, you can sort of brute
force things through persistenceand just kind of mashing the
button until you trick that character into just sort of
going in a circle enough. And you even if they're kind of
on to you and they keep grabbingthe item, maybe you can inch

(01:18:03):
that item along until it gets tothe spot you need it.
So yeah, it it feels at that point that you're not being
maybe as cunning as the game wants you to be.
Yes, yes. At the same time, it also has a
fitting narrative happening there, right.
So it's like it's almost not really a flaw.
Like, yeah, like the goose. You can imagine it being offsnet

(01:18:25):
and being like no it's mine. I take it right?
So it still works largely. So it's almost not really a flaw
and I should give it a score as well.
Right. Yes, if you're ready.
Yeah, if you're. Ready.
Yeah. I don't know that it's life
changing, but I would say it is.I need to pick one score.

(01:18:46):
OK, I'm going to say it's 9.5 out of 10.
Amazing. That's so wonderful to hear.
That's great. It's great to hear your
perspective and to hear you justpraise the game so much.
This is a game that I've known about since 2021.
That's when I first played it. I think Disco played.
It I think I played it the day it came out, at least on Switch,

(01:19:06):
yeah. So it's kind of been in your
mind for maybe around five yearsnow.
Disco Cola, can you go into yourthoughts?
I would be delighted. So up top I've, I think I've
mentioned Goose game on this podcast probably 7 different
times for reasons totally unrelated to Goose game, but it

(01:19:28):
should be pretty clear that I like pretty much everything
about this game. I think the game play is super
easy to pick up. I've talked before about, you
know, trying to slowly introducemy kids to to games and they
still aren't quite there with like doing more than one button
press at a time. But I had my 4 year old play

(01:19:51):
goose game with me a little bit this time and they were picking
it up. They were getting the concept of
moving and ducking at the same time and grabbing things while
you're ducking. So I think that this is a game
that has gameplay that is just. Really intuitive once you know
what each button does and it just, it feels like you are the

(01:20:13):
goose. Once you figure out the
controls, the concept is just super simple.
I think this goes back to what Oscar said.
You know earlier about starting from somewhere mundane and just
going from there to create sort of like this baseline
understanding of of what's goingon and that creates a great

(01:20:34):
place for comedy. I never thought of it like that,
but that's totally what's happening here.
It's so it's just that that simple concept of you are a
goose, which I am told from my mother, she's been attacked by
geese many times. So I hear that they are quite
mean, quite foul, if you will. I think the execution of the

(01:20:57):
game perfectly marries challengewith whimsy and just outright
fun in the gameplay. I think it's perfectly married
into a great package. Now the the music as I
understand it are variations on compositions from Debussy.

(01:21:18):
Yes, they're they're excerpts from those compositions.
Yeah. And because of the way those
compositions are made, there's alot of rests in them.
And it that allows for certain moments and actions to really be
be amplified because of all of those rests.
It's it's sort of is a clever way to use those rests to create

(01:21:41):
dynamic music in the world. And So what would otherwise be a
really challenging thing to do, like what happens in Hollow
Night with Christopher Larkin's music, you kind of have to
separate all the different components of the song so that
maybe at this point, you know, the Viola comes in when you're

(01:22:02):
doing this action in Goose game.It's just as effective, but it's
really simple. It's just taking those rests in
the music and allowing you to take just the right parts at
just the right time. And it is just the one
instrument. So it's really just a simple way
to create dynamic music, and that's really impressive and
clever, I think. I love that there's a lot of

(01:22:24):
cool optional events that you can trigger that you wouldn't
otherwise expect to be in the game.
I think that's brilliant. Many of these are told to you in
the challenges lists, but a lot of those are still super clever
ideas and it gets you to even think about what else might be
possible with a similar item. So yes, you can dress up the

(01:22:46):
bust in the back gardens, but what else can you bring to the
back gardens to do that? Yeah.
And and once you find one of those optional moments of
interactivity, it opens your mind about future ones.
It's like I was able to bring maybe this item from this area,
from the Gardens to the High Street.

(01:23:07):
Can I bring something from High Street to the back Gardens area?
And so it it kind of reframes how you approach future
challenges. Yeah, absolutely.
I love the final task of the game.
It's like the one spoiler in thegame, so I won't say what it is,
but I love how it brings us backthrough all the areas, but it

(01:23:28):
also teaches us something about ourselves, the goose at the end
of it that many players maybe will miss out on early on.
I know I did. The first time I played, I
totally missed this small spot in the game that is available to
us right at the piano. And I very, very specifically

(01:23:50):
love the well. There is a like long stream of
water that leads to the lake at the beginning of the game, but
dropping stuff in the well will lead items to that lake as well.
And I just I love dropping things in the well.
It is my favorite thing to do inthis game.
And the game wants you to. Do it.
It wants you to do it. It gives you a coin right next
to the well, and it's like, I bet you, I bet you know what to

(01:24:11):
do with this. Try it with something else,
right? I love the details of certain
items, like for example, holdinga glass jar will change how your
honk sounds. And I think that's brilliant.
And there's a lot of items that that interact with the goose in
different ways. And lastly, I love what I call
and have called on this podcast,these optional goose game

(01:24:36):
challenges. They're just some self-imposed
challenge that you can do. For me, it's getting every item
in the game into the lake and I have yet to totally accomplish
that, but it's possible. It's possible and it's in a game
that is like optional and it's disciplined because of the scale

(01:24:56):
of the game isn't too large or overwhelming.
So it's possible in that sense and it's just fun to do it.
So I love what I call for all games, the Goose game
challenges. That's so great.
As for dislikes, again these arenitpicks.
Just like Oscar said, certain objects can be handled and
moved, but you can't really pickthem up.

(01:25:18):
So like the cabbages and the footballs.
Or we call them soccer balls here in the States.
Small nitpick, but it does make my goose game challenge much
more difficult. I don't like the humans in the
pub specifically. They sort of like block my
traversal. They're mean.
They are, they are mean. I'm I, I understand, like people

(01:25:39):
taking stuff out of my beak, butthese guys just won't let me
through. And so again.
They kick you. Around Yeah, that just makes my,
my. I'm trying to steal your stuff.
Just let me do it. I don't.
Want How rude of you to not let me steal your stuff.
Please, like Oscar said, I feel like just the human coding can

(01:26:00):
be just like weird at times. So for example, I'm throwing all
this stuff in the lake. That's all I'm ever doing as I'm
throwing stuff in the lake. And for a long time, the farmer
just like does not know where his stuff is.
He has no idea, but he'll like chase me to a certain point just
outside of his garden and then suddenly he's detected it.

(01:26:21):
And that point at where he's detected it and how far away it
is from the actual lake is sort of like unclear.
And then once he's detected it, all my work, at least as far as
the farmer stuff, is just. He's.
Just going to keep coming back. He's back.
Yeah, I can distract him as muchas I want, but eventually he's
already detected those items so he's going to go back.

(01:26:42):
And then like I mentioned, I didplay the Co-op.
I played it a little bit with mykid, but I did play it with my
wife as well. This is actually the second time
we've played it together. We played Co-op back when it
first dropped. So I did play this with my wife
and there's a lot about it that I can talk about separate from
likes and dislikes and review. But I did ask her what she

(01:27:04):
disliked about goose game because she I think also loves
this game among a very small amount of games that she enjoys
with me. And her main dislike is that
it's over too soon. And I agree and we both we just
want more. And incidentally, she just
happened to say what she wants is more animals in the game.
And what I've said on multiple occasions to multiple people,

(01:27:28):
probably to you, Bopo a couple of times, is that I want a goose
game where it's goose at the zoo.
I think I may have even said that on the podcast.
Before, but I think you did, yes.
I want goose at the zoo. I want to mess with a Peacock.
I want to scare an elephant. You're the only animal who's not
supposed to be at the zoo, Yeah,is the premise, yes.

(01:27:50):
I that's what I want. And it's funny to me that my
wife said the same thing. So it's over too soon.
That's my final dislike. And all of those dislikes are
nitpicks. I have a very small list of
games that we what we say aroundhere is games that changed my
DNA or changed my, my body maybeis what you say.

(01:28:13):
Yeah, change my DNA is what I like to say.
Goose Game is on that list, but I never thought of such chaotic
fun before and I don't know thatit's like a super sophisticated
game, but just the premise and what you can do and what you
have to do is just such a fun time.

(01:28:34):
This was my favorite game of theyear that it came out, and I
don't often have favorite games of the year, but Goose Game was
an easy pick for me when that year came to a close.
I have to search for flaws even when replayability seems

(01:28:56):
difficult in this game because once you know what to do, you
know what to do and it's hard toforget those tasks.
So replayability is a little bitodd and that's why having those
optional Goose Game challenges is such a blessing because you
can add something new to your playthrough again if you want to
play. I love Goose Game, it's probably

(01:29:18):
one of my favorite indie games of all time.
Yeah, I have it at #3 Favorite indie games?
I can already tell where you're gonna score.
It I I don't know that I came tothe podcast recording with the
intention, but I don't see any reason to not give it a 10 out
of 10 for me. Amazing.
I love that you love this game, but you both love this game so
much, and I'm right there with you guys.

(01:29:40):
I think this game represents oneof my favorite kinds of games.
It is a simply presented game with an incredibly specific
personality. The personality of this game
hinges on this goose, which I think feels totally authentic.
And here's where I'll share my perspective on geese.
I live near a pond next to a walking path that attracts

(01:30:02):
hundreds of geese sometimes during the year, and I've had to
walk by these geese and they scare the hell out of me.
I've seen them chase adults and children, and so this goose
feels like it could fit right inwith what I've seen in real
life. And I love that this world that
this goose is in is forced to tolerate the goose while also

(01:30:23):
hating the goose. You know they all have the the
no geese. They have those ready to go.
They're ready to go and there's that history there.
You know what's happened in thisworld before because of what the
goose has done, presumably what you have done.
And so I love that that is so beautifully and simply
presented. I love how this world
interconnects just like what Oscar says.

(01:30:46):
And eventually we get really cool shortcuts to things and
there are alternate paths to getto different areas if you do
some of those optional tasks. There's the simplicity of the
user interface that I just find so clean.
This game feels like you're playing a cartoon to me because
there's not a lot of UI cluttering the screen, and that

(01:31:08):
really makes it more immersive in a way.
I really like the task list. The crossing out of items is
very helpful. So even if you're assembling a
collection of things, like maybeyou need to grab all those items
for the picnic, every single item will individually get
crossed out in that that book. And so the game is helping me

(01:31:28):
with that task list by crossing things out for me.
Love that. You love your journals and your
task lists. I.
Do I? I love those in games and this,
this game is helping me out withits journal.
I love the multiple solutions toproblems, allowing player
creativity to shine. It means that two players might

(01:31:49):
not have identical playthroughs.And there were a couple of tasks
that I crossed off by doing likethe harder version.
So I got the crossed out task, but then I got the crossed out
task for the to do as well. I because I couldn't figure out
like the base version. And so everybody's mind and
everybody's ideas will lead to slightly different solutions

(01:32:11):
sometimes. And I love when games allow us
to show that personality. I love the music as well.
Oscar, you put it really well when you said that.
It's sort of like reinforces what you're doing.
It's feedback in a game that isn't speaking to us.
It's reinforcing what we're doing.
It's telling us the emotion of what we're doing.

(01:32:33):
I feel like a composer is just like sitting there watching us
play the game. Just.
Ready and they're. Just ready and they're just
reacting to us. Like you've maybe seen a film
composer watching a film and they're live scoring something,
or maybe just messing around with notes on a piano and then
maybe they'll take that and later compose something more

(01:32:53):
full. It feels like that's what's
happening here. Someone is sitting down watching
me play and playing piano to it.And also the piano will add
levity to the tension that comesalong with stealth games and
sneaky games. I can get kind of stressed out
in games like this where I mightget caught doing something and I
might have to redo all this workthat I've been putting in.

(01:33:16):
Don't want to do that. But then the piano is there to
sort of add that levity and makeme sort of relax a little bit.
So also the ending is one of my favorites in all indie games for
the reasons you said. Disco.
I just, I think I remember playing this in 2021, you had
played it before and I think I was messaging you about the end

(01:33:40):
when it happens. Oh, very.
Just probably. I the the way you do the thing
and then the credits roll is just a moment I will never
forget. It's so great.
I did have dislikes I wrote downhere.
I think chief among my dislikes is that tasks can feel good to
pull off, but the efforts you need to put in to accomplish a

(01:34:01):
task can feel like a lot. Sometimes you might have to do a
chain of events to get a task crossed off.
And sometimes something in the chain of events might
unexpectedly not work or it could get disrupted and then it
can take a moment to set it all back up.
And this game kind of feels likethe board game Mousetrap, like

(01:34:24):
you're, you're assembling this intricate assembly of like all
these pieces on this board and then you watch it all work.
But sometimes the trap can get sort of set off in the wrong
way. Or, you know, a piece gets taken
and then the whole thing doesn'twork.
And so when that happens, you can't immediately retry.

(01:34:44):
You have to sort of set things back up.
And there can be a little bit ofa tedium in that for me.
And I feel most of it is that I feel a loss of momentum when
something doesn't work in my favor.
Also, in games, I like feeling powerful through the characters
I get to play. And this goose can do, you know,
useful things, grab things, honkat things, very humorous things.

(01:35:07):
But also I think the goose feelspretty disadvantaged in this
world of humans that can kick itaround and steal things from it
and outrun it. So it is a game where I think
you are more successful if you're stealthy and you're
cunning, which are things that don't come as naturally to me.
Yeah, we play a lot of action games.

(01:35:28):
We, we play a lot of action games.
We play a lot of games where we feel powerful as the characters
we're playing. And this is a game where I just
don't necessarily feel powerful.I feel like a menace, I feel
like a villain, but I don't feelthat powerful.
And so for me personally, that'snot the first feeling I chase in
games all the time. So overall, Untitled Goose Game

(01:35:51):
has some tedium for me, but morethan anything it has a world
that is burned into my memory for how simple and distinct each
of its areas are. I love finishing tasks because
they feel rewarding when you finally outsmart the humans.
I love that there are multiple solutions that make the world
feel flexible. I think it has an Alzheimer of a

(01:36:12):
beautifully simple ending for me.
This game I think back in 2021 would have been like an 8.5.
I've replayed it now this past week.
I think it holds in an 8.5 OK, which is a very positive score
for me. Yes, yeah, One of the things I
was worried about replaying Goose Game, as I do with any

(01:36:37):
game that I've absorbed all of the content for, is will I enjoy
it again. And I was very skeptical that I
would with Untitled Goose Game like that.
That definitely has diminishing returns.
Playing in Co-op really helped with that first of all way more
than I expected it to because I had also played the Co-op

(01:36:57):
before. But anyways, after having this
this long of a break between my last playthrough, it it still
held up and I still had a lot offun.
I didn't think that me and my wife would be sitting there
laughing after the kids had goneto bed, but we were still
finding those those moments where we just couldn't couldn't
contain our laughter. So one of the things you can do

(01:37:20):
is the goose is honk doesn't serve a huge purpose throughout
most of the game, but when you're playing Co-op, one of you
can run interference, 1 of you can be a distraction.
And this really changes the way that you can deal with some of
these more annoying puzzles, like some of those ones with the
bigger setup. One of you can just run

(01:37:42):
interference with the shopkeeperon High Street and just grab a
bunch of crap and put it in a basket.
And the tasks themselves don't change, so it sounds like maybe
that gives you just a clear advantage, yeah, over playing.
Not a clear advantage. Like you, you know the the
programming. Still competing to figure out
who to focus on, but generally honking overrides just about

(01:38:08):
everything else. Sure.
Wow. Interesting.
So what I want to ask Oscar about is how Untitled Goose Game
creates its own identity, maybe through genre, maybe through
personality. And what about its personality
and what it's doing inspires youas a game developer?

(01:38:29):
I would say the key part is the Goose character going all in on
that premise and just squeezing everything they can out of that.
I think they did. You were talking before about
the To Do List, and I find to dolists, task lists generally a
bit anathema too. Free time and playing games,

(01:38:52):
though they are very prevalent nowadays.
But I think in this case you would almost be able to call
them instructions for becoming agoose.
So I think what they're doing through the way they phrase it
is teaching you to get in the mode.
The same they do with music and with everything, right?

(01:39:13):
I think that's just kind of brilliant.
And I agree that the particularly the tasks about
gathering a lot of things like the picnic and there's basically
one in every areas I remember they can they can get a bit
tedious for sure. And especially if you have the
misfortune of having your your horde spotted and you're in

(01:39:36):
trouble. We've all had.
That happen. Yeah, it happens.
It happens. I think they also do great in
having pretty ordinary tasks like picking up things be
particularly goofy and refreshing by of course, well
you don't have a hand so you'll pick it up with your beak, but
more so a little bit Octodad style tiny microscopic version

(01:40:01):
where you can control the neck and it only has two positions
basically. But still, it makes it ever so
slightly clunky and you can definitely get the Oh no no, I
needed to. Lower my neck to untie the
shoelaces 0 and now it's in their hand I need to raise it
and you just get confused and you press everything wrong
because of the tension of the moment and I think just these

(01:40:23):
actions help the flapping the wings is also an ingredient for
role play, I think right. It's like you're boasting,
intimidating the humans. Yeah, only one human gets
intimidated easily by by the goose, but they all get startled
by the hunk, which is just right.
There's one the practical use for the flapping of the wings, I

(01:40:45):
think it's when you're in front of those women in the pub and
they give you a flower. Oh yeah.
That's one they'll they'll ask you to duck and then honk and
then flap your wings. And if you do those things in
the right order, they'll give you the reward.
That's right, yeah. OK.
But other other than that, yeah,it's like for show and.
Yeah, it's a bit lock and key like single use almost doesn't

(01:41:08):
count in that sense in my head. But yeah, for sure I think from
there. And it is funny to finally be
like now I get to use it. I think from now on I will look
at the journal in this game as the goose guide.
Yeah, that's how I'm going to think of it.
From the Bible, How to be, It's like opening the how to be a
goose. Yeah, I love that, that that
changed my life. And what inspires me as a game

(01:41:34):
developer about this game, I think the efficiency and how
naturally they managed to get the players in on the joke it
started with. I remember seeing the trailer or
teaser or some video that they put as part of their ramp up to
the release back in the day and it was just like an immediate

(01:41:55):
hit. Everyone got it.
Yep, I think that's just a sign of genius in the execution.
For me, when I look at this, what is really impressive is how
hard it is to classify as a game, especially when it comes
to the genre. And I think 1 testament to this
is in our list of games to review, we've got them separated

(01:42:17):
by genre and disco. And I each thought that this was
in our adventure category. And then I thought, wait, maybe
it's in our simulation category where a bunch of games like
that, like we have Goat Simulator in that list.
It turns out it was in our puzzle list.
But you could arguably put it inany of those.

(01:42:37):
And I think not being able to succinctly categorize it as,
hey, this is a puzzle game or this is an adventure game really
goes to show that this is like aunique experience.
It's AI think it's a sometimes unfortunate consequence of not
sticking to these very trodden roads of play with a gun and

(01:42:58):
it's much harder to find new ground in that space.
But if you, you know, have the strength, the boldness to pick
something else, something that like this, then then sometimes
you also get rewarded with feeling truly original, hard to
classify fresh. And certainly that's kind of an

(01:43:20):
aspirational goal probably for every game developer.
So I've mentioned before the task list, I feel like games
nowadays very often are falling into vices of playing with
extrinsic motivations for the player, rewards systems that

(01:43:42):
kind of build on addiction and very satisfying feedback loops,
right? Our lives have sometimes no
reward or feedback for our actions or the delay in between
our actions and their outcomes. If you try to learn something,

(01:44:03):
it's going to take years before you reach, you know, some kind
of milestone perhaps. And in games, everything is
compressed to the extreme and infact designed to produce
satisfaction at every step. So of course they're addictive.
And I think this game doesn't abuse that aspect that sometimes

(01:44:24):
I think is being abused nowadays.
Instead just gives you intrinsicmotivations.
The activity itself is fully rewarding.
It has the most minimal version of a structure progression
system, does have a task list, but aside from that there is no
nothing else. So I think that's that's great.

(01:44:45):
And even within the task list, there's a little bit of
flexibility with making progress.
You don't have to do every task to move on.
You can, if there's a task that's bothering you or you
can't figure it out, you can choose to focus on another one
and save that one for later too.So I like that too, that it's
not forcing us to be on this focused path.
Yeah, we've mentioned a couple of examples of this in our

(01:45:09):
reviews, but this game has some subtle storytelling.
Bopo mentioned the no goose allowed signs that are around.
I sort of mentioned the locationwhere we placed the final item.
I think that tells the story. How else does this game create
that sort of like subtle storytelling?

(01:45:30):
Well, I would say the fact that all the spaces feel
interconnected already takes a big step forward in creating in
your head a reality that's much fuller than it actually is.
Meaning of course they didn't make the rest of the town, but
in your head, surely it's there.In fact, not just in space, but

(01:45:52):
in time, based on what? You just hinted at that ending,
right? It immediately projects in your
head forward and backwards, and you imagine much more than
actually was in the game. I think the NPC's feeling like,
well, you encounter them, you kind of walk through them and
they are already, they look likethey're doing things right and,

(01:46:17):
and you interrupt them more thanthey're waiting for you.
And I think that also makes it come alive.
And I would say the ending with that role reversal also helps to
make them feel like, OK, they they have a mind of their own.
I see what you mean. Yeah, I guess if I thought more

(01:46:38):
about it, there's like two more specific but very similar
examples. There's the the fancier man in
the back gardens as well as the farmer and the way that they
both react to their respective flowers.
Each each zone has a flower thatyou can collect.

(01:47:00):
But the way that these two specifically reacts to their
flower, like you get a sense of some of their own personal goals
or their own ambitions and what they care about.
And the way that the two characters in the back gardens
talk to each other. Like you start to understand,
like who these people are. They don't have, they have no

(01:47:22):
more than a nose on their face and that's it.
But that starts to paint a picture of who who these people
are. I look at those two in the back
gardens and it's, it's great because we get to see two
villagers side by side and see how they live their lives.
You know, it might be their day off.
They're spending their day off very differently.
But they're neighbors and there's a relationship there.
And they throw things back and forth to each other so that they

(01:47:44):
like, they know, oh, this is your bra.
I'm going to give you this back.And I just love seeing the guy
relaxing with his paper with hislegs crossed.
And then the lady next door, she's working on her arts
projects. And, you know, that's just how
they are each spending this moment in their lives.
This is just a snapshot of two people very efficiently.

(01:48:07):
What about when the neighbor thethe lady in my head, she's
peeking through the fence in between them looking at the
other neighbor. To me it felt like she had maybe
some kind of crush. On them.
And it also felt like maybe at least the version that I made of
the decorating the bust was the bust was supposed to be the

(01:48:30):
neighbor, the helical man. So I think.
She's her mute. A little bit.
Yeah, her mute. Interesting.
Yeah, I. So that that's she doesn't do it
all the time, but you know, she sometimes goes there and also
they probably use that. So you have to Createspace so
you can go to the lower part of her garden without being spotted

(01:48:51):
right while she goes there. Oh, interesting.
Yeah. Wow, I also love that this whole
place has this feeling of an English village, and that idea
is communicated to me even before I read about the premise
of this game being set in an English village.
And me myself, never having beento an English village, I just

(01:49:12):
kind of understand that it's in an English.
Village. There's there's certain like set
pieces that you're like, Oh yeah, OK, I know where we are.
Yeah, there's architecture. There's like just sometimes the
items they use or just the way things are laid out, it just
feels like it has that sense of a place as well.
I'm curious about how we approached puzzles and if you

(01:49:32):
could give examples of logic youused in specific moments, like
what led you to a certain solution that you thought was
interesting. There is no logic, I am a goose
and I just want to steal whatever I can.
And from there sometimes I solvepuzzles on accident, like
breaking the broom. Didn't even look at the task.

(01:49:53):
List. You didn't even try for that.
One Nope just happened pretty much.
I'm just trying to see how far Ican take things.
Yeah, literally and figuratively.
Yeah, that's a great way to lookat it too.
Like did you accidentally stumble across anything in this
game based on your actions and not really knowing what to do?
I think what you're doing a lot is uncovering the rules of the

(01:50:17):
game while you're playing, the rules about how these NPCS will
react to you and the things you do right.
Definitely wordlessly, which is beautiful.
They teach you that if you honk,they will notice.
They'll get startled, they'll golook at what happened, where
that sound came from, and if youwalk near them, they'd react in

(01:50:42):
different ways. At the very least, they'll look
at you frowning almost. It feels like they don't have
eyebrows, and some of them in the infamous pub, they'll even
try to kick you out. Disapproval, goose disapproval.
And you figure things out like if they see an item that belongs

(01:51:05):
to them, they will bring it backto its rightful place and all
these things. That's fairly basic, but you
know, you can't really assume that that's how the game behaves
to begin with. But you uncover them and you
become more conscious of them. I think maybe to some extent
from the beginning it might be somehow assumed implicit, but as

(01:51:32):
you progress you become more able, more aware and more able
to use it to your advantage. For instance, in the pub,
there's a lot of the tasks you have to solve by making them see
a certain thing in a position that you put as a distraction so
that they get out there annoyingresting spot and then you can
make it through and do whatever you need to do.

(01:51:54):
I think with the with the farmer, of course, that's where
they're teaching you the most. For one thing, that some parts
of the MPCS are interactable. You get this explicit task to
pick up their keys. And that is a key element in you
knowing that yes, you can try totake some things from them,

(01:52:15):
right? And that sets up the next thing,
which is their hat that you alsoneed to do something with,
right? But it's beyond reach, right?
The beyond your reach unless youdo something else and it kind of
is you exploring what is the possibility space and kind of
wondering in a very it's doesn'talmost doesn't feel very logical

(01:52:39):
in the sense of logical reasoning or like very puzzle
like. It's more like you're saying,
but how do I make them kneel down so I can reach?
So it almost doesn't feel like you're doing a puzzle, you're
just playing and then telling yourself a story, I think.
That I, I never thought of the farmer as being a stepping stone

(01:53:03):
to successive characters in, in later areas, you know, making us
interact with him, learning thatwe can take things off of the
person of somebody that is used with the boy in the, the High
Street and then it's used with the fancy gentleman in the back
gardens. We have to take off his
slippers. You know, those kinds of things

(01:53:24):
happen. So wow, I didn't think of it
that way, but it's very intentional and and very good
that they teach us that. So glad we have a a game
designer on the podcast to bringthese things to light.
Right. And, you know, we didn't pick up
on some of these things despite,you know, Disco and I each
having replayed this game. All of us have replayed this
game. I'd like to touch on
replayability again. This was a topic that I think

(01:53:47):
you were interested in Disco. Yeah, just like as I think you
maybe have played it how many Times Now?
4. If you exclude trying to fill
the lake with all the stuff, probably 4.
But if you include that 5 or 6 times.
I played it with my kid once just because they wanted to play

(01:54:08):
something with me. And there's only so many options
that they're suitable for right now.
So yeah, I mentioned it talking about Co-op.
I was worried about it because once you know the solutions,
it's hard to forget them. Having the Co-op option is
helpful if you haven't played that previously.
So that offers some replayability.
But yeah, it's the same thing with like a lot of puzzle games,

(01:54:30):
like how do you how do you tackle replayability with a game
like this? Yeah.
And then otherwise, you know, you've talked about the sort of
optional tasks, the Goose game tasks The game gives you the to
do as well list, which I appreciate, but I like that the
game ends and then it unveils all of the to do as well tasks.

(01:54:51):
So it's like this is a clear point where you can now stop.
You know, you can enjoy the timeyou had and just stop here, or
you can keep going and here's what you can work on.
And so I just like that there's that very clear moment where you
can make a choice. Any other thoughts on the
replayability of the game? Yeah, I think it's a hard
battle. We, we think about it daily at

(01:55:16):
our work because surprise seems to be such a key central element
to the comedy of it, right. And if you remove that, I didn't
remember the puzzle specifically, or at least how
you're supposed to solve them. Maybe even now they fade
quickly, but it didn't have the freshness.

(01:55:37):
So for instance, I, the first time I played, I didn't get to
the very end. I got to the pub or something.
So the part after that immediately felt way fresher,
way more exciting. Sadly, it was almost over.
So there's something lost for sure.
I think the mitigations perhaps that make it last a bit longer

(01:56:02):
is how it is a bit toy like and toy like open-ended.
We've mentioned several times the puzzles, they have one
outcome, perhaps sometimes not even multiple, but you can
certainly take several paths to reaching that outcome.
So there's room for experimentation.

(01:56:25):
And that is as opposed to puzzles as a well perhaps as
some kind of definition where they have only one answer.
So this is more toy like games toys and there's limitations,
but there's a wide space where you can do different things.
I think the multiplayer edition,even though I haven't played it,
I can definitely imagine that yes, it'll make it easier in

(01:56:49):
some sense, but I don't think difficulty is exactly the key
experience in this game, but rather it allows for certain
place like I imagine being very comical to be able the moment
two players realized, OK, you gothere and honk and I'll be
waiting right here, right. And and if you've one of them

(01:57:10):
has played the game, they'll also get that little smirk out
of thinking like now they're going to see if one goes was
trouble. Just wait.
And of course, the self-imposed challenges that disco mentioned
earlier. It's beautiful that people.
I think you never know how much people are going to latch onto
that, right. How there's a point where I

(01:57:32):
guess how much you manage to engage them with the core game
is probably what determines how far they'll take it on their
own. You know, because they really
want a little more or because it's working so well for them.
And then they'll take that extrastep of saying, OK, but what if
I do this right? And you can do it because it's a
bit of a sandbox where you have a space to do things that are

(01:57:55):
not exactly scripted. Yeah, I love that.
What if that's my favorite part?Next, we would talk about
memorable moments or sequences. I feel like we've shared a
couple. Did you both have memorable
moments or sequences that you wanted to share that maybe
haven't been touched on? I think there's just really
simple ones. The first time that you turn the

(01:58:16):
sprinkler on the farmer is just so delightful.
The first time that you make someone buy their own stuff back
from the shop, that's one of my favorite things to do in the
game. I want to try to get everybody
to the shop to buy their own stuff back.
Yeah, I just think that's such a.
How do we who thought of that? How do we get the bouncer from

(01:58:37):
the pub specifically to get to the shop?
Because I want to make that guy pay.
Let's make him pay for his box of tomatoes again.
Yes, dumping the the can on his head isn't enough.
I need to embarrass him more. That was, That was a puzzle
where I couldn't figure out the base solution this time.
So I went back to the gardener and I took his tool and I

(01:58:58):
brought it back to the shopkeeper and then I honked him
over to there. That's how I figured that.
I, I guess the, the normal solution is you have to get the
boy to buy his glasses back or buy his glasses to buy his plane
back. That's what.
OK, I was. I tried to get him to buy his
glasses too, and I swapped his glasses with ones that were at
the shop too. Yeah, so that was an instance
where I accidentally kind of stumbled on the to do as well

(01:59:20):
version. I was like, oh OK, I got a bonus
achievement there. That's cool.
Does it react immediately when you do what to do as well in the
main place it does. If you start a fresh save and
you start doing to do as well tasks, you get the normal tasks
crossed off and the as well task.
It's really, it's really great if you know what you're doing,
you can be really proactive and just cross everything off as you

(01:59:43):
go. I really like just that small
moment when you're in the pub and those women cheer for you
and they give you the flower. It's the one kind moment of
respite from being kicked aroundin this place.
It's like the one place where humans are nice to you and just
like, oh look, a a goose, let's have a nice moment with a goose

(02:00:04):
right now. And that shows a lot of
personality you don't see elsewhere.
Yeah, and we have touched on it,but I will not go all the way to
the ending. But the part after the pub,
there is a certain unsettling feeling that grows as you
approach this strange miniature version of the town.

(02:00:26):
And that's a little strange. And you explore it and there's
not much to do. And then as you head back, how
the music changes and it makes it before you see what's
happening. The music already got in my
head. I was, I, I think I had my
partner next to me and I said something's off.

(02:00:47):
What has happened? I feel like I'm in danger now.
And and then that's exactly whathappens.
So it's like, OK, mission accomplished by the you stick
the sign right? Yeah, I agree.
And then, yeah, they turned their tables on you and it
somehow is like the whole world has changed a little bit, right?

(02:01:08):
Which is another ingredient of like they're alive.
You are only a passenger one more in this space, right?
Because now the gates that you're you had immediately for
the gate you saw this time it's going to be open.
I'm just going to take this shortcut.
I know my way around. Nope.
They've closed it all off. They've repaired, you know, the
ramp you built between the gardens?

(02:01:29):
It's fixed. And you're like, what?
What do I do now to put down my?Beautiful pal.
Yeah, exactly. All my work.
It's my favorite moment in this game.
I think it's a sequence really, and it's one of my favorite
sequences in all of games. I think it's just one I think
back to. I've thought back to it for

(02:01:50):
years now since I first played it in 2021.
I think that's where we'll wrap up Oscar.
Lastly, we'd just like you to again remind people about what
the car, where they can play, what the car, and tell people
anything else that you want to say right now.
Yeah, So what the car, what the Golf, they're both on Apple

(02:02:12):
Arcade, they are both on Steam and what the Golf is on, I don't
know, I think pretty much every platform at this point.
So you get to pick their silly games.
Golf is a game for people who hate golf and we know nothing
about golf. And we also exactly none of us
know how to drive at the company.

(02:02:36):
I think we have sadly broken that pattern recently.
But it was nice while it lasted.And yeah, thank you for having
me. It was nice chatting.
Oscar, this was an absolute pleasure.
Thank you so much. Such great fun.
Thank you for for taking the time to record with us today.
Yes, and good luck with your next game development projects.

(02:02:57):
It sounds like you're very excited and we're very excited.
And I'm very proud of you. Yes, congratulations.
Thank you. Well, that's our review of
Untitled Goose Game. You can play it on PC, Mac,
Switch, PS4. An Xbox One Oscar rated it a
9.5. Disco Cola rated it A10I rated
it an 8.5. That's the end of this episode

(02:03:19):
of Underplayed. You can find more of our
episodes at kzum.org/underplayedand on common podcast platforms
like Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Our music was composed by Jack
Rodenberg. Our art comes from Oni Mochi.
Underplayed is on Twitter, Instagram and Threads at
Underplayed pod. You can find me in those places

(02:03:39):
at Bopo. That's Bo under score PO.
And I am at Disco Cola in all ofthose places as well, including
Backlogged, where this game, Untitled Goose Game, is on my
top 100, my top 100 indie games,and my very, very short list of
games that changed my DNA. Next time we'll have two more
secret games to review, and our featured game will be Papers

(02:04:01):
Please, a puzzle simulation gamedeveloped by Lucas Pope.
Until then, everyone keep on playing.

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071 - Everything, WHAT THE CAR?, & Untitled Goose Game (Guest: Óscar Losada Suárez from Triband)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}071 - Everything, WHAT THE CAR?, & Untitled Goose Game (Guest: Óscar Losada Suárez from Triband)