To The Moon has been on my list of games to review a second time for a while if I am being honest, due to how it is another piece I believe I may better describe, but also because I really want to play it again, as the game was nothing short of delightful. Yes, I’m sure that some would argue if it is a proper video game, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is a thing that is great and I like a whole bunch. A Bird Story is a taste of sorts for the sequel Finding Paradise, and it brushes up against the definition of game notably more than its predecessor did.
A Bird Story Review
Platforms: PC(Reviewed), Mac, and Linux
Developer/Publisher: Freebird Games
A Bird Story is an hour long dialog-free story about an imaginative child who in his life free of parents encounters and injured bird who he naturally cares for… and you can probably figure out how it ends from that alone. The story is not one that I would praise for its complexity of uniqueness, although its often thin line between fantasy and reality, as it is shown from the viewpoint of the unnamed little boy, but rather the quantity of emotion jam packed within it.
To The Moon was one of the alarmingly few games that warmed my icy heart with its characters, story, and definitely its music, which is a trend A Bird Story continues. It is effective in making the player care about what looks like an SNES sprite, and does so only with its actions. That said, looking at the title critically for a bit, I could not ignore how much more the title could have been if not tied to the RPG Maker engine. It beautiful assets, which are oddly given a sepia tone, look blurry when maxxed out to wide screen, the main character often walks over tree textures due to how the overhead display works, and the strict four directional movement certainly began to irk me a bit as when control is requested.
Now, this brings to light something of a debate I hinted at before, as A Bird Story is very much light on the gameplay, occasionally asking the player to walk from point A to B, but beyond flying a paper airplane around a series of lovely looking backdrops and splashing in some puddles, it is rather barren. Especially when considering the title’s short length and how there is only one part in particular where I felt eh control especially added something, there really is not much reason to actually play the game. Yes, I do wish to support the developer and find the title in question to be an emotional glide that I would recommend to anybody who is cool with the idea of games having minimal gameplay, but there is so little that is gained from it that there is honestly not a lot that would be lost by looking up a playthrough and watching it in one sitting. Treating the title less like a game and more like a pleasing short pixel art film… Still, it is $5 and you should buy it in order to justify such an action.