It all started with a gag about a menacing goose.

A few years on, that joke is now being played out on gaming consoles around the world, with players taking control of an unnamed goose and wreaking havoc on the residents of a sleepy English village.

The four Melbourne-based creators of Untitled Goose Game say they are staggered by their sudden success, which saw their low-budget project fly to the top of Nintendo Switch's UK and Australian download charts since its release in mid-September.

For a short while it was even ahead of one of Nintendo's own flagship Zelda games.

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YouTube videos about the game have clocked up millions of views, there have been celebrity endorsements, memes, and major publications like the New York Times and the BBC have published online pieces.

"People aren't writing about this as a piece of media. They're writing about it as if it's a cultural fad," co-creator Nico Disseldorp told the ABC, chuckling in disbelief.

'Make as big a mess as possible'

The premise of the game is simple. The player controls a goose who runs around a town honking and startling residents, and causing mischief by stealing their keys and dumping their mail in the river.

Disseldorp said the creators wanted to tap into a "dark but not too dark" mentality many gamers have in the virtual world, which is to "make as big a mess as possible".

Other developers have explored the concept before, with games like The Sims and Grand Theft Auto allowing players to run amok and elicit reactions from computer characters.

But Untitled Goose Game is purely whimsical fowl play — there are no explosions, guns or bloody deaths.

"You can make a big mess but the people will be able to tidy it back up again. There's not too many consequences," Disseldorp said.

Stuart Gillespie-Cook and Nico Disseldorp were part of a group that met as teenagers and shared a passion for indie games. ( ABC Melbourne: Kristian Silva )

Untitled Goose Game is only the second game released by House House, the studio founded by Disseldorp and co-creators Stuart Gillespie-Cook, Jacob Strasser, and Michael McMaster.

The team were brainstorming ideas for a new game in a chat group when someone posted a stock image of a goose as a passing gag. They moved on from the joke for a few months, but visions of the goose kept returning. Eventually, they made it their focus.

They knew they were on to a winner when a 2017 trailer for the game went viral, and they were signed by US publishing company Panic.

For the next two years they meticulously crafted the game, animating their lead character, and creating devious missions for it.

"It's so hard to explain that at a family lunch — that that's your project," Gillespie-Cook said.

"We're trying to capture a non-gamer audience. That's what is exciting to us, when these people from outside the gaming sphere seem to be talking about it."

The honking goose takes exception to a young boy. ( Supplied: House House )

Gaming hobby leads to unlikely careers

The House House team have known each other for about a decade, becoming mates through overlapping friendship groups.

"There'd always be the four of us left at the end of the night just talking about video games," Gillespie-Cook said.

A passion for indie video games was never something they expected to make a career out of, though.

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While studying at university they turned a "summer project" into their first game release, before working full-time on Untitled Goose Game.

Disseldorp is reluctant to reveal how many downloads their new game has had, but says it is in excess of 100,000.

With the game selling for about $22, it's likely they've made a handsome sum due to low expenses and overhead costs — even when accounting for publishers' fees and others skimming a margin off the top.

"We can go on and keep making video games as long as we like now," Disseldorp said.

The team now hopes the Untitled Goose Game will be rolled out onto the Playstation and Xbox platforms where it could reach a wider audience. However, an expansion to the platforms has not been confirmed.

Then they will start again and create a new game.

Disseldorp said there were no intentions to emulate popular mobile phone games like Pokemon Go, that are free to play but goad users into spending money to improve their experience.

"Some business models are really about keeping people playing the game for as long as possible," he said.

"Whereas for us, we're more about making sure people are having as good a time as possible while they play."