Portland Produced “Untitled Goose Game” Won Big at the Video Game Industry’s Equivalent of the Academy Awards

The game also might get its own Lego set.

IMAGE: Courtesy of Panic Inc.
By Shannon Gormley

The horrible goose is still reeking havoc in the video game industry.

Last week, Untitled Goose Game took home top prize at the DICE Awards in Las Vegas. Along with Game of the Year, it also won Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game and, for its titular anarchic waterfowl, Outstanding Achievement in Character.

An acronym for "Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain," DICE's winners are determined by a panel of industry insiders, earning the show a reputation as "gaming's Academy Awards."

Released last September, Untitled Goose Game was created by small Australian developer House House and published by Portland's Panic Inc. Players control a belligerent goose who systematically irritates the residents of a quaint English village. Rendered in simple, bubbly animation, the game became a viral hit and a surprise best seller, cracking 1 million copies in just three months.

Related: Two Computer Geeks From Portland Unleashed the Viral Video Game of the Year. Here's What They're Doing Next.

Despite the game's popularity, the win was considered an upset, given its simplicity. The two other indie releases nominated for Game of the Year are role playing games with complicated plots and lots of dialogue: Disco Elysium is a gritty detective story that deals with drug addiction, while Outer Wilds has a plot about the end of the universe and controls that require an understanding of extra-planetary gravity.

Apparently, House House and Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser were surprised by the win, too:

Untitled Goose Game is up for several other awards this year, including grand prize at the Independent Games Festival, which takes place next month.

It could also get its own Lego set.

A few weeks ago, an Goose Game design made its way onto the Lego Ideas site, which the toy company uses to crowdsource plans for new products. After a design is submitted to the site, it has to gain 10 thousand public votes before it's approved for production. Campaigning can take years, but the Goose Game set became a staff pick, and quickly surpassed the 10,000 votes required for expert review.

If it's approved, you'll soon be able cause goose-y mayhem in plastic brick form.

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