Panic to Publish Untitled Goose Game by House House in Early 2019 on Switch, Mac, and PC

Panic, well-known in the Apple community for its beautifully-designed Mac and iOS apps, announced today that it is teaming up with Melbourne-based House House to release Untitled Goose Game, which made a splash last fall when it released pre-alpha gameplay footage on YouTube. The game will be published by Panic in early 2019 and be available as a Nintendo Switch exclusive and on the Mac and PC.

This is how Panic describes the game in its press release:

In Untitled Goose Game, it’s a lovely morning in the village and you are a horrible goose. Combining sandbox-style experimentation with slapstick-style schtick, it’s beautiful, puzzling, somewhat stressful, and above all else, funny as heck.

As the trailer below hints, Untitled Goose Game requires players to use a combination of stealth and puzzle-solving skills to complete tasks, while aggravating the humans around them.

Untitled Goose Game was featured by Nintendo today in one of its periodic Nintendo Direct livestreams that highlighted several new indie titles coming to its Switch console in the upcoming months. The game will also be available to Mac and PC users via Steam.

This is House House’s second game, but its first Switch title. In 2016, the studio released Push Me Pull You, on Sony’s PS4 and PCs.

Panic got its start as an indie game publisher with Firewatch, a critically-acclaimed game from Campo Santo that was released in 2016. Cabel Sasser, co-founder of Panic, said of today’s announcement:

We’re crazy excited to work with House House to bring this funny, good-feeling game into a sometimes bad-feeling world. There’s something so nice about the simple joy of laughing and causing mischief that we know will delight video game-playing families everywhere.

Untitled Goose Game has been highly-anticipated since House House released pre-alpha footage late last year. Interest in the game has continued to build throughout 2018. According to Polygon:

…its simple gameplay and undeniably charming style made it one of the standout titles at the Day of the Devs showcase at GDC 2018.

Panic is will be showing off a playable early version of the game this weekend at PAX West in Seattle.

The announcement of Untitled Goose Game as a Switch exclusive further demonstrates the console’s popularity among indie game developers. I’ve been eagerly awaiting Panic’s next move as a game publisher, and the humor and charm of Untitled Goose Game make it feel like a perfect fit for the company.

Google Introduces YouTube Digital Wellbeing Features

If you’ve ever wondered how long you spend watching YouTube, now you can find out. With an update that hit the App Store today, Google has added ‘Time watched’ statistics to the iOS app’s Account view. Tap your avatar in the upper right-hand corner, then ‘Time watched’ for your total viewing time today, yesterday, and the past week, plus your daily average. The statistics are based on your YouTube Watch History, so they don’t include anything deleted from your Watch History or watched in Incognito mode. Nor does Google include YouTube Music listening statistics.

The new ‘Time watched’ section also includes the ability to set up reminders to take a break periodically, which can be set in 5-minute increments between 5 minutes and 24 hours. There’s also a toggle for batching the notifications YouTube sends. There are 10 categories of notifications available in the YouTube app, so batching them if you have several turned on is a welcome addition. Notification digests can also be accessed from the app’s settings. From ‘Time watched,’ you can turn off Autoplay and disable sounds and vibrations too.

Originally announced at Google I/O earlier this year, it’s nice to see watch time statistics added at the app level, even though similar information will be available from the Screen Time feature coming soon with iOS 12. If you haven’t been running the iOS 12 beta, taking a peek at your YouTube usage statistics now is an excellent way to get a feel for the utility of having an objective measure of how long you spend on the service.

Game Day: Donut County

Tomorrow, Donut County by developer Ben Esposito will be published by Annapurna Interactive, which also backed the critically-acclaimed Florence. The game, which was announced in 2014, but has been in development since 2012, tells the story of a raccoon named BK, his friend Mira and an assortment of other characters from Donut County who are trapped 999 feet beneath the surface of the Earth. You play by manipulating a hole that grows as you move it across the landscape swallowing objects. If the premise sounds strange, that’s because it is, but it also works through a combination of a clever game mechanic, funny writing, and engaging sound design and artwork.

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Master Email with SaneBox’s Customizable Tools [Sponsor]

At its core, SaneBox is about making sure that only your most important messages hit your inbox. Other messages are safely stored in automated folders like the SaneLater, SaneBulk, and SaneNewsletter folders for reviewing later. If there’s something you never want to see ever again, send it to the SaneBlackHole, which is much easier than unsubscribing to unwanted messages.

But email sorting is just the tip of the iceberg. With custom folders, custom snooze settings, and SaneReminders, SaneBox takes email management to the next level.

Set up a custom folder and train it by dragging in a few messages. SaneBox will send all messages from the senders to your new folder. It’s a painless way to set up organize messages for a special project.

SaneSnooze folders can be customized to defer messages anywhere from hours to weeks. SaneBox comes with default snooze folders like @SaneTommorrow and SaneNextWeek, but adding custom snooze folders lets you set when messages reappear in your inbox.

SaneReminders are a great way to keep on top of tasks. Send yourself a reminder to do something later or get a reminder that someone hasn’t responded to a messages. For example, bcc: [email protected] and the message will show up back in your inbox only if the recipient doesn’t reply within 3 days.

Also, don’t forget that SaneBox works on top of your existing email setup. There’s no app to download or new email account to set up. You can use any email client you want.

Sign up today for a free 14-day SaneBox trial to take back control of your email. MacStories readers can receive a special $25 credit automatically by using this link to sign up.

Our thanks to SaneBox for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Connected, Episode 206: A High Appreciation for Winning→

Federico is back from vacation with a list of demands and opinions. Stephen posted a whole bunch of screenshots, and Myke is trying some new things with Twitter.

I’m back on Connected this week and we had fun discussing the future of the Mac mini and whether or not AirPower is ever coming out. You can listen here.

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Fascinating Close-Up Video of Apple I Being Auctioned Next Month

Every so often, an Apple I comes up for auction. The number still in circulation is small. Even rarer are working Apple Is. Next month, auction house RR Auction will sell a working Apple I that’s been rated 8.5/10. The computer, along with peripherals and the original manual, is expected to fetch around $500,000.

Earlier this summer, I had the good fortune of seeing a working Apple I in person during a trip The Henry Ford Museum with Stephen Hackett who donated his collection of iMac G3s to the museum. In person, it’s hard to grasp that the Apple I’s simple circuit board covered with neatly organized, hand-soldered chips played such a critical early step in the history of personal computing.

More interesting to me than the auction though, is a video that the auction house put together to promote the sale, which dramatically pans around the Apple I’s surface revealing the smallest details. It’s a fantastic close-up of a significant piece of computing history that is far closer than you’ll ever be to one in a museum.

You can learn more about the Apple I in this excellent feature by Communications and Information Technology Curator Kristen Gallerneaux on the Henry Ford Museum’s website.