Just Crow Things Review – Rising to the Caw of Doody

From the wild imaginations at Unbound Creations comes Just Crow Things, an unabashed meme game where you poop on everyone and caw at everything. If caw-sing chaos and winging solutions on the fly are your jam, then this game might already be on your wishlist.

Just Crow Things isn’t meant to be taken seriously; there’s no profound message or rich setting here. It knows what it’s about and commits to the bit, rolling from punchline to punchline with no time to roost. However, sometimes it sacrifices some fun factors along the way.

At the end of the day, this is a lighthearted sandbox of bird-flavored whimsy. It’s perfect for an afternoon of silly, breezy fun.

This Is What Beak Performance Looks Like

Your goal in Just Crow Things, almost always, is to cause chaos. You can fly up and swoop down on humans to make them panic and drop shiny objects. Tools like baseball bats and hand torches can be picked up and used. How can a crow do that? Dunno, and don’t care.

There are 12 levels in total, a few of them being optional and one being the tutorial. In each level, you find NPCs who give you tasks, all of which usually involve defacing something or disrupting someone.

For example, a character might ask you to poop on some humans to show them a thing or two about encroaching on someone else’s territory. The trick is, you need to eat some food to generate poop. That’s just science.

However, they do say you are what you eat, and that kind of rings true here. Eating an average fruit will give you average poops, but a pepper will give you fiery poops that set people ablaze. Fire poop bombing a car will make it explode. Again, that’s just science.

As I got further into Just Crow Things though, I felt like some of the quests were a bit tedious and meandering. Some made me feel like I was finding needles in a haystack or just running circles around the maps looking for small details.

It sort of hampers the fun when you get a quest to use an item on specific spots in the map, because you have to carry that one item around while scanning the map. It takes away your agency to just explore, poke, and prod at the world at your leisure.

If you drop a quest item to explore, the map will tell you where it is at least, so you don’t have to worry about losing something important if you go on a personal side quest.

There are also races you can do in every level, where you compete against the clock while going through some checkpoints. As a whole, these feel like the weakest link in Just Crow Things. There isn't much humor or storytelling to them, and the controls can get a little finicky when it asks for precision.

Each stage requires 100 points to finish, but they can be fully completed with 150 points for an extra cosmetic. I’ve found that doing the story quests usually gets you to 100+ easily, with the races offering an extra 20 points total.

I really enjoyed this approach to the gameplay; I didn’t have to be a completionist to feel like a completionist, which makes this appealing as a casual game. It's not a deep commitment, and you don't have to collect all the feathers here. Even the races can be made easier if they’re giving you trouble.

It just falls in line with the philosophy of Just Crow Things: we’re here to have fun, take it easy, and have a laugh.

Going on a Meta Quest

A lot of the humor in Just Crow Things is referential, meta, and absurd, and it doesn’t waste time being in your face about it. Sometimes, it's nice and complements the gameplay well.

For example, there's a stage set on the moon. The first NPC makes a Commander Shepard reference and then asks you to find resources using a metal detector. The entire stage is basically that planet-probing mini-game from Mass Effect 2, which is kind of clever and doesn't overstay its welcome.

There’s also a fantasy level that depicts a generations-long war between cats and dogs. It's up to you to help one side or the other (or find a third secret ending). In this case, the meta-humor blends well with the gameplay, creating an opportunity for novel gameplay.

However, the referential humor can get a little old or obvious. In this totally-not-Skyrim level, the first thing the first NPC says is, “You’re finally awake.” Then a cat says they have wares. I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed an arrow-to-the-knee joke, too.

I won’t spoil all the references, but that’s the sort of vibe Just Crow Things brings to the table. At its core, it’s a silly game about a silly lil' birb, and the extra references feel like winks and nods to the player. You just might see a lot of them coming and shake your head.

At an overarching level, the game doesn’t quite stick the landing by the end of the story, either. It resolves a pretty fluffy, easygoing narrative, which is fine, but it’s paired with a nothingburger of a final level. If it was a reference to something, I’ve missed it.

Just Crow Things Review | Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, Just Crow Things is a game about the journey, not the destination. It truly is a sandbox of silly tools and sillier jokes, and the New Game+ just unlocks a literal sandbox mode where you can spawn objects in each stage.

In some ways, it rides the line between being a love letter and a playful mockery of the games it’s referencing, and that’s what makes it a decent comedy game. Even if the jokes get a little tiresome or obvious, it’s all in good fun. It just unfortunately loses some of that fun toward the end.

Just Crow Things was reviewed on a Steam Deck with a copy provided by the developer. All screenshots were taken during the process of review over 7 hours.