A Bird Story is a simple, surreal short about a boy and a bird with a broken wing. Its sole purpose is to tell a story, and can be viewed as a narrative/animation with interactivity -- but without a line of dialogue. It is a standalone game with its own beginning and endings; but for those who's played To the Moon, the boy eventually grows up to become the next patient in the series.
After around one and a half hours the game is over. Nothing much changed for me in those final thirty minutes - finishing the game was almost like a chore. The scenes and the interactive aspects didn’t add much to the overall story, which was pretty much done by the hour mark.
In a nod to the post-credits gimmick of comic book blockbusters, A Bird Story reveals itself as foreplay for Gao's next game. This shameless preview raises the question of why anyone should take the game's human-animal bonding as anything more than a tease. Earlier in the game, the boy and the bird are launched into space for a close-up of the moon,...
A hugely disappointing follow-up for To The Moon, whose trite and overly sentimental story feels long at just 60 minutes.
A Bird Story uses nuanced visual language to tell a wonderful, heartfelt story about friendship and loneliness.
It's only £4, and I'm in no doubt that what felt to me like a cynical result didn't come from a cynical place. My guess is it came from too small an idea, too ambiguously delivered, created with a passion that doesn't reach the player.
