Enterprise developer Sam Chiet brought a shoddy-looking version of the goose from Untitled Goose Game to life. It's mission? To reign terror upon us all by "mildly inconveniencing" you while you're on your laptop.
In an interview with Wired, Chiet said "There's something almost aspirational I find in the reserved anarchy of a goose. I heard someone call Untitled Goose Game a power fantasy for timid people, and that's basically the best way to put it."
To be clear, Chiet has nothing to do with Untitled Goose Game developer House House, so there's absolutely nothing official about it, so download it at your own risk. If you're curious like I am, then you will, and here's how.
Ready for anarchy? Click this link. Your browser will most likely tell you that it looks suspicious as hell, but all you have to do is just right click the download and hit "Keep" if you're on Google Chrome.
From there, unzip the file and launch the "GooseDesktop" application. Windows Defender will most definitely pop up and say "Running this app might put your PC at risk." Ignore the risks by hitting "More info" and then click "Run anyway."
All of a sudden, an adorable little goose popped up on my desktop, tracking mud all over my wallpaper. The goose pulled up a funny meme, and a moment later, dragged out a text document that read "peace was never an option -the goose (me)". At this point, Laptop Mag Editor-in-Chief, Sherri L. Smith, looked over at my screen and said "that's too spicy for me."
"As shocking as it can be to revisit those garish, MIDI-autoplaying, HTML-copy-paste ‘under construction’ pages of yore, I still feel that something was lost," Chiet told Wired. "It's entirely possible that I'm at the forefront of an ironic, then post-ironic revival of the fun virtual desktop assistant/manager."
Apparently, it took only two days to create Desktop Goose, and upon release on Itch.Io, it was downloaded over 500 times within 90 minutes.
The app itself takes up about 60 megabytes of memory, and any windows that this ball of terror pulls out from the side of your screen will take priority over whatever is in the foreground.
Don't worry, the app won't open by itself, and you can easily kill the application if you go to the Task Manager. However, if you keep the app open long enough, the goose will pull out a window that details how you can "tip the goose," aka donate to Sam Chiet if you like their work.
If you don't, the goose might just misplace some applications on your desktop or even steal your cursor from you while you're gaming. One of the last memes I witnessed said "Mess with the honk ... You get the bonk," to which my Editor-in-Chief responds "I don't like being threatened."
