In 2018, Among Us changed gaming history. Though it wasn’t that popular upon release, it quickly gained traction during quarantine. Since many people couldn’t leave the house or hang out with their friends, online multiplayer games like Among Us were perfect for maintaining connections. Unfortunately, various bugs, players with bad manners, and cheaters made the player’s experience worse. People eventually got tired of Among Us, but after 3 years, a new contender appeared in the murder mystery genre: Goose Goose Duck.

Goose Goose Duck is a mafia game that has many similarities with Among Us. Townspeople have to complete missions and find out who the mafias are, while the mafias have to kill the citizens. The thing is, we don’t use the term “townspeople.” The good guys are geese, and the mafias are ducks. The challenge is for the town to figure out who the ducks are among the geese, while the ducks have to kill all the geese. There are a lot of different modes to try, but I am going to focus on the most popular one – Classic+. In this mode, the tasks don’t change, but each player has a specific role in the game – the diversity of roles is what differentiates Goose Goose Duck from Among Us.

Firstly, on the goose’s side, the sheriff is able to kill anybody, but this power has its own risk– if the person who was killed by the sheriff was innocent, the sheriff also dies. Mimics are special characters: they act as spies for the geese by tricking ducks into thinking that they are ducks. The celebrity goose is a useful role on the citizen’s side. When a celebrity goose is killed by a duck, everyone is alarmed about their death. I kind of like to play as mimics, because spying for the mafia is not a common role in these types of games, so it felt very fresh to me.

On the duck’s side, there’s the morphling duck. The morphling duck is able to disguise itself to other players; you can get closer to the player that you want to change into, take their blood, and change into them. In my opinion, this role adds difficulty to the game because it decreases the level of trust you can have in others.

The assassin duck can kill people during meetings if it correctly guesses the goose’s role, but it comes with risks. If it incorrectly guesses the role, then the assassin duck has to exile itself instead. Silencers have the power to mute a goose’s mic during meetings. If someone saw something suspicious, the silencer should mute their mic to survive.

There’s another role that makes it far more interesting than Among Us – the neutrality side. In Among Us, there’s no in-between position, you are either the imposter or a crewmate. But in Goose Goose Duck, neutrals are neither on the duck’s nor on the goose’s side; the neutrality side is the Joker among the rest of the deck. Their mission is to die by voting, so standing on dead bodies or acting suspiciously toward the geese is their goal. If other players vote for a duck who is actually neutral, then they lose. I think this role is the hardest in this game because the other side has teammates but as a neutral, you have to think alone and you have to be self-reliant.

I rate this game a 5/5. It’s pretty easy to get the hang of it in just a few tries, and it’s really fun to play with friends because Goose Goose Duck has a variety of characters instead of just two. Anyone who’s looking for new entertainment, especially those who enjoy playing mafia games, just give Goose Goose Duck a try.