a bird story

A Bird Story Review - An Emotionally Riveting Tale

Reviewed by

Published: November 22, 2014 3:00 PM

This game is the second of a few games in the To The Moon universe, published and developed by FreeBird Games (No pun intended? Maybe?) To The Moon was a near masterpeice of storytelling, so did A Bird Story live up to the freakish success of To The Moon? Well, no. But while this game does not meet with the quota of the predecessor, it is a wonderfully written game, if not anything else. Well, portrayed more than written, because this game does not include a single piece of text until the credits roll.

abs_bbp2One would actually be hard-pressed to truly determine if this is a game, or simply an interactive story. It is obviously highly linear in its approach, it's not as if you can really do much to change the gameplay. The game mechanics are almost non-existent, but the few game mechanics that do exist, that include walking around, and jumping in puddle, among a few other commands, work perfectly for the games advantage.

The story, however, is wonderfully portrayed, even if the story itself is rather cliche. To summarize, you play as a young boy whom nobody will play with, your parents are always out of the house, and you are lonely. You find an injured bird, and you become friends. I won't spoil the story, however, because that is the main part of the game. I will tell you, however, that it is very emotional and riveting. This kind of story have been copied in other famous movies, but without a single word spoken or written, this entire story was portrayed, and shown very well. The use of sound effects and visual cues work very well to the advantage of this game.

At the end of the credits, the author lets in the title of his next work, Finding Paradise. Which he said will arrive "soon." His last game was published in 2011, and now this one in 2014, I would expect "soon" to arrive in a couple years. However, the games are basically a one man job, so development will take some time.

a bird story 1The audio for the game was rather good. there was some areas in the game that I thought the music did not completely fit the situation, and that making the music more emotional might have amped up the game a little more. But altogether the music was ok. It sounds a bit like To The Moon though, in fact, so much like it that the only review to date listed on the steam page is said by the developers aunt "I guess the music's nice-ish, but it sounds kinda ripped off from To the Moon...".

The graphics are fairly good for the program that was used. This game was created using RPG Maker, a program notable for not creating the best done games. In fact, most games that are developed using RPG maker don't succeed, mainly due to the look and feel of the game. But when developed as a more interactive story, RPG Maker seems to do rather well. The expressions and livelihood of the character does play a huge role in the game, as well as the wonder scenery depicted later on in a flying sequence.

This game is very short, only taking as little as an hour to finish, so for the length of the game, the cost might be a little high, but the portrayal of the story makes up for the five dollar price tag.

You can purchase this game from the Steam Store.

This game was bought by the reviewer and reviewed on Steam.

Review Summary

8.5

The game portrays a story rather well, despite being a game developed in RPG Maker

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Lucy
| Former Staff Writer

Lucy Walcott is a former TechRaptor writer who loves to talk about gaming. She has been an avid gamer since she was little, focusing almost exclusively on… More about Lucy