Moreso than climate change and migrant crises, these are the injustices English people will stand up for. Yet Untitled Goose Game players soon discover you can pull the Tidy Neighbour’s prize rose within reach of her shears. The Messy Neighbour understands this, pruning her topiary until the point it meets the fence, and no further. Similarly: every English person knows that you can prune plants up to but not beyond the edge of your garden. If the goose manages to tug a fancy vase into his path, he’ll fling that over too, where it’ll land with a harrowing crack, splitting into two. In this respect, the Tidy Neighbour’s AI routine is true-to-life - he’ll chuck bras, socks, and garden tools over the fence if they don’t belong. For instance: every English person knows that if you find a ball from next door in your garden, you’re entitled to lob it back.
How do you push English people to breaking point? You take away their sense that there are rules. It takes only one chaotic element, though, to disrupt the status quo. Their non-communication is carefully maintained, like a privet hedge. The fence that separates them is latticed, filled with holes, yet they do not make eye contact. These two people are ideologically opposed, but they are dedicated to civility. Wind chimes, to her, are not an offence against God. A column of spare tyres becomes a plant pot, an old bath a flower bed. The Messy Neighbour, by contrast, is your auntie who’s a bit arty, inclined to repurpose what others would throw away. For him, the back garden is a place of comforting routine: broadsheet paper, tobacco pipe, tea pot, all laid out neatly on a cast iron table, the paraphernalia of a quiet life. The Tidy Neighbour’s patio is tiled like a chessboard, a monument to order.
Set in an idyllic village that seems trapped in the late ‘80s, it has brought the world not just wholesome stealth, but a true picture of what it’s like to have neighbours in England.Ĭredited simply as the Tidy Neighbor and the Messy Neighbor, two of Untitled Goose Game’s NPCs live side by side, but at arm’s length.
The goose game is a phenomenon - a genuine viral success that has reached, somehow, Blink 182. We managed to keep this way of being to ourselves until September 20 2019, the release date of Untitled Goose Game. There may be perennials in the borders, but they’re just that: borders. I’m not saying it’s impossible for English neighbours to get along, exchange phone numbers, attend each others’ barbecues - just that the default is distance. Equilibrium is restored.Įnglish readers will know how rare and significant encounters like these are - the Cuban Missile Crises of a perpetual cold war. I thank the neighbour, make apologetic noises, and he retreats back across the line into home territory. In fact we didn’t know, but recording later confirms it: our new puppy makes a horrendous racket every time we leave her. You go out your dog barks the whole time you’re away?” “Do you know,” he puffs, punctuation thrown off by nerves and anger. Clearly, a furtive conversation has taken place next door and he has been designated to take the desperate step of talking to us. It’s late, by the standards of my street, but there he is: my neighbour, walking quickly up the drive, as if compelled by a force that isn’t his own. It happens as we’re getting out of the car.