Games have long ceased to be mere entertainment. Many of them contain unusual and sometimes paradoxical ideas. Games have become art. This was most evident during the indie boom. The last of us and Bioshock, despite a strong plot and impressive visuals, still give something to the consumer and remain something familiar, like a good, Oscar-winning, but emasculated Hollywood movie. Ken Gao’s games are low-budget, but do not go to the other extreme; this is not art for art’s sake, but something more accessible to the masses. In To The Moon the author found a middle ground. His performance was well done, sounded good and had a simple but interesting message.
I didn’t expect anything more from https://costabingocasino.co.uk/login/ A Bird Story. I was hoping to see a game that would evoke a lot of emotions, make you empathize with the characters, have an interesting message and everything else in the spirit of To The Moon. But that was not the case. The author decided to take a break between two big projects and made… a parable game. That is, it still looks and plays like To The Moon, but as a smaller and simplified.
For those who have not seen both games, I’ll explain: this is an isometric interactive story with a rare opportunity to walk through a level or solve a simple riddle consisting of pressing the action button next to the desired item. The rest of the time you just look at what is happening on the screen and nothing depends on you. That is, the gameplay is absolutely not tense. The graphics here are also very conventional, and the music… Well, we can’t say that it’s bad, but it’s clearly not for everybody, and it’s also less expressive than in To the moon. Everything is focused on the story. And here there is a huge gap between the two games. Firstly, there are no dialogues, so we lost the sparkling humor. Secondly, there is no intrigue in the story. This is a parable, so almost everything that happens or is on the screen can be interpreted in different ways.
At the center of the story is a boy who, returning home from school, finds a wounded bird. He tries to cure her, but for some reason, after they patch her up, he decides to run away with his feathered friend. Then the surreal part begins and the frames replace each other quite quickly (for a game that makes you think about something). The plot has no pronounced intrigue or any charm apart from the semantic load.
And so you ask me whether it’s worth taking such a game at all: with simple, or rather almost absent gameplay, a hidden essence and strange content? If you’re not already familiar with Ken Gao’s work, check out To The Moon first. In addition to the fact that the game is more welcoming to players and has an easier to understand and interesting story, you will at least be able to understand whether you like this type of game or not. And only after that make a decision to buy A Bird Story. I didn’t really like the game, but rather it made me think about the meaning, which is also valuable. I’ll leave the assessment up to you.