I’m genuinely surprised that there haven’t been more geese-themed games since Untitled Goose Game, or at least more games about dickhead animals violating social norms. House House’s avian bullying simulator was a riotous success when it released in 2020, the kind of phenomenon that normally spawns a legion of imitators.
Yet with the possible exception of Little Kitty, Big City, beast-based shenanigans have been surprisingly scarce. No Untitled Moose Game, no games about foxes or other geographically appropriate creatures wreaking havoc in English villages. And certainly, no more games about geese.
Tingus Goose is very different from Untitled Goose Game. It’s an idle clicker rather than a 3D physics puzzler, and the relationship it depicts between humans and geese is far less antagonistic than in House House’s game. But it does share one crucial thematic link, namely geese doing upsetting things. It’s the creation of internet artist and animator MasterTingus, who specialises in bizarre cartoons which, while not explicitly violent or sexual in any way, nonetheless make you feel like you need a shower after watching them.
Tingus Goose is a near-lethal dose of the animator’s hallmark strangeness. It takes place in a world where geese have a semi-parasitic, semi-symbiotic reproduction cycle with humans, infecting them and then growing out of them in spectacularly odd ways.
The cycle reminds me of the zombie-ant fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, only the afflicted humans are not killed by the process, and indeed are entirely happy to see a giant tree made from geese burst out of a man’s head or a pregnant woman’s bump. This goose-tree, in turn, gestates hundreds of human babies known in-game as tingis, which play a crucial role in the tree’s lifecycle.
Growing your goose-tree costs money, which is earned in various ways by the tingis that spawn out your goose-trees open beak. Clicking on the tingis as they descend to the ground generates cash, at least until they burst into what I can only describe as “goose bits”, beaks and feathers flying everywhere as if you’ve just gibbed an enemy in a goose-themed first-person shooter. But tingis also generate cash every time they bounce on their way down the tree, letting you boost your passive income by placing obstacles between the tingis and the ground.
One branch eats the tingi and then poops it out of its butthole.
What are these obstacles? Well, like a regular tree, your goose-tree sprouts branches as it grows. There are dozens of potential branch types, each of which interacts with the tingis in different, but similarly disturbing ways. Some of them will bounce or roll a tingi to the opposite side of the tree. Others might eat the tingi to produce several more tingis. One branch eats the tingi and then poops it out of its butthole. Did I mention the branches are also geese? The branches are also geese.
These branches are where Tingus Goose introduces slightly more depth than your average clicker. Most branches can be extended horizontally and rearranged vertically, letting you optimise your goose-tree to maximise profit. You can eke further gold from your goose-tree by ageing up tingis as they descend. If three tingis touch each other, they will combine to form a single, older tingi. You can age a tingi five times, raising them from a newborn up to being a working-age adult. Each level of tingi evolution exponentially increases the amount of profit you get from them when they hit a branch, so it’s worth building a system that regularly brings tingis into close contact.
In short, there’s a production-chain aspect to Tingus Goose, which becomes increasingly complex the more branches you unlock. You can attach goosey flasks to your tree to help catch tingis and age them, send them down to a golden goose-head to multiply them, then bounce them along to a row of seated tingis who punt them along the row, generating profit with each bounce.
And just in case I’m at risk of normalising Tingus Goose by explaining its workings, I should stress that all of this is deeply disconcerting. When your goose-tree grows or sprouts a new branch, the animation plays out to a disgustingly fleshy-noise, like pushing your fists into a bowl full of raw mince.
Moreover, every time you think you’ve got a handle on Tingus Goose, it finds some new way to weird you out. Each level ends with your goose-tree mating with the sky-goose, producing a flock of new parasitic geese that scatter to the winds seeking new hosts. The fourth level starts with a goose that transforms into an oxygen mask for a hospital patient and turns their lungs into eggs. The lung-eggs then hatch and climb out of their hosts’ mouth, walking ahead of him like a pair of dogs on leads.
Tingus Goose is undeniably grotesque. But the more important question is: is it good? The honest answer is…I think so? It’s so ferociously odd that it can be difficult to see the wood for the geese. But Tingus Goose has a lot going on for something dubbed an “idle” game. Alongside the production element, your goose-tree also has roots (which are also a cow, naturally) that offer permanent stat upgrades, such as the ability to turn your goose’s Tingus-spawning head, and er, a waiter who randomly brings you useful items. You can also collect gems that you can spend on extra branches that can be planet into your goose-tree, further refining your tingi evolution-line.
Generally, I’m not much of a clicker fan. But I do like Tingus Goose. That might partly be down to fascination with how bizarre it all is. But behind its disturbing avian metamorphoses is a well-constructed game, and tinkering with your goose engine to maximise efficiency is undeniably fun. So move over, Untitled Goose. There’s another gaggle in town, and they’re horrible in a whole new way.
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