NOEL KING, HOST:
OK, now we turn to a very different kind of story. People are flocking to play this viral video game. It has action. It has adventure. It has drama - that is most games. This one is different because it is about a goose.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It's called "Untitled Goose Game," and it's all the rage right now in many places, including my household. The premise is simple - you're a goose that goes around the small town to find villagers to bother and honk at. You do things like steal a pair of glasses or untie somebody's shoelace or sneak into a restaurant.
KING: Nico Disseldorp is one of the game's developers. He says he was thinking about a certain type of player when he created the messy goose.
NICO DISSELDORP: Like, they'll go, ah, I don't really care what the game's telling me to do. I'm just going to go in there and just mess everything up. And we kind of realized, oh, that's what, like, a goose might be doing in an orderly world full of people.
INSKEEP: Causing chaos appeals to many. Whether it was sharing memes about the goose or uploading snippets of their own experiences, players and nonplayers came together. Soon celebrities like Chrissy Teigen jumped on board. The developers say they had no idea their game was going to get this much attention.
DISSELDORP: We thought that this was just a kind of inside joke for ourselves. Like, oh, look at how people are afraid of geese. This is so funny - to us, specifically.
KING: Disseldorp lives in Melbourne, Australia, where it turns out there are not that many geese walking around. But he and his team were able, they say, to tap into the brains of people who live near honkers (ph).
DISSELDORP: People who live near geese have a very difficult relationship with them. They're kind of really scary to people in a way that we didn't really understand. They're kind of scared the way you'd be scared of maybe, like, an unfriendly person.
INSKEEP: Whether you fear them or not, playing a goose is apparently fly.
KING: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: That was a pun - just letting you know.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEAN-BERNARD POMMIER'S "PRELUDES BOOK 1, L. 117: V. LES COLLINES D'ANACAPRI") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
