Built for a younger audience, but adorable for all gamers nonetheless.
The Day I Became a Bird, from developer Hyper Luminal Games Ltd., is a visual novel about a young boy named Frank and the future love of his life, bird-obsessed Sylvia. Frank tries to capture Sylvia’s heart by finding out the birds she likes and building a life-size costume to impress her.
The joy of this game comes from its visuals, innocent gameplay methods, and its easy-to-pick-up-and-play gameplay style. Nothing in this game is difficult, and everything that flows through it is just nostalgic moments that are meant to harken back to easier times in players’ lives. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s like eating a perfect bowl of oatmeal and feeling good afterwards.
Now, while that oatmeal might be good for you, the price is the sticking point for said oatmeal. The Day I Became a Bird is priced at $19.99 on the PlayStation Store, and this adventure, in all its beauty and good intentions, lasts around 1.5 hours. I get that there was clearly some love and passion put into this project, but that amount of time versus that price point makes this a tough sell. Let’s break this down a bit.
The gameplay for The Day I Became a Bird comes in a few flavors, each not difficult to navigate, though very different from each other in their structure. The first bit is an isometric adventure, where you play as Frank and walk around levels finding pieces and parts of items you need to progress, while also collecting golden feathers along the way. The latter portion is not pivotal to the main gameplay, but it’s an item that players will want to collect to complete the numbered goal set for it. Through the feather collecting, it also encourages a little bit of exploration around levels, which only stands to prolong the gameplay a bit more, but in a good way.
When the player isn’t in isometric adventure mode, they will be solving puzzles, navigating golden rings in the air or on land, and collecting pieces and parts to uncover the next bit of story. The puzzle-solving part might be the trickiest part of this game, though not terribly difficult, where players will be given a pieced-out picture they must literally put together to reveal the story’s scene that plays out. As the player progresses further into the short adventure, the puzzles will become bigger and less obvious, which does create a small bit of challenge, but nothing overwhelming. I had some fun with this portion of the game, as the later stages of puzzling were fun to get right. It made me feel a bit better about my progress in the game.
Moving on, the next big fun is when the player is thrust into a third-person view of Frank, where he must ride his bike or fly as a bird to go through rings coming at him. Literal gold rings will be coming at Frank from the left, right, and middle, and he must navigate his way through them. His goal is to navigate a certain number of them, and the game is easy enough that it will keep throwing rings at Frank, should he miss some, until he has completed his ring goal number. In addition to the gold rings, Frank can also snag golden feathers along this third-person journey. This part of the gameplay can be tough at times, as Frank can only go at a certain speed, and sometimes the feathers or rings simply aren’t reachable in time. While not too frustrating for me, there was a mild amount of ‘C’mon!’ coming from my lips at times. Nothing too tough, but tricky at times.
The last bit of gameplay is Frank navigating through levels to uncover story pieces, which might involve collecting items to create a single object. The joy of this portion of the game comes from the creativity of the levels presented, ranging from Frank’s home, a school classroom, and even a giant park. These levels have their own personality and house a lot of collectibles that gradually become a bit more difficult to collect as the player moves further through the game. The last piece of this type of gameplay found Frank at a park, collecting items to build the bird costume that was going to be used to impress Sylvia. This was the longest and biggest level of the game, while also being fun with how it interacted with people and how it hid items in more challenging spots. Again, nothing too bad, and all of it was built for a younger audience in mind.
Overall, the gameplay brought a fun story, some gorgeous visuals, and a variety of ways to play the game. Nothing felt stale or forced, which is impressive considering that visual novels typically don’t get this much effort put into them. Normally, they act like they’re a book, while occasionally throwing in some gameplay to make it interactive. The devs did a great job of putting in gameplay that made sense to the story, was easy to navigate, and fit seamlessly with what they were trying to accomplish. That sort of design only bodes well for this visual novel.
As mentioned previously, the only downer for this game is the price tag. It is listed at $19.99 on the PlayStation Store website right now, and, in my opinion, there are more visual novels priced lower that last longer than 1.5 hours. I could see this doing well at $9.99, though, and I hope the devs can lower the price to that point. Depending on overhead and overall budget, I guess only time will tell if that can happen. Regardless, the game is still a good, cute, and adorable adventure.
On that note, let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
The Day I Became a Bird, from developer Hyper Luminal Games Ltd., is a fun, adorable visual novel adventure that features a fair amount of well-placed gameplay and a good dose of creative and nostalgic flavor to it. It’s a short journey, though, clocking in at 1.5 hours.
