Birb Game

I don't [i]want[/i] to give this a negative review, because from what I can tell this game was made solo by a young indie dev and I don't want to squash their creative spirit. But I'd be lying if I said I thought the game was good. If the dev reads this know that this review has the best of intentions behind it, and I hope that your career soars in the future. You'll notice that I have very little playtime in the game, because in the ten or so minutes I spent dinking around it truly felt like nothing the game presented me with worked. The controls are an unintuitive mess. Flying through rings gives you no feedback. There's an alleged "hat maker" on the main menu that just covers your bird with giant, untextured spheres and cubes. I assume the intent was to literally 3D model the hats yourself, but not only is that a needless slog compared to almost any other alternative for a system like this, but the sliders to adjust the size/dimensions/positioning of the objects you spawn in are so finicky that it felt impossible to even make something as simple as a top hat. The game doesn't even have a soundtrack, not even royalty free or public domain tracks. Comparisons to the already unsavory Superman 64 are inevitable with a game like this, and Birb Game unfortunately doesn't manage to clear that very low bar. It's okay for a teenager making their first proof of concept, but not worth spending your time to play. Five bucks is very pricey for a game like this. I got this game through my Steam Curator, but in its current state I don't think it's anywhere near full price or even a moderate discount. There are better games for this price that are more worth your while. If it's more than two dollars, don't bother. I also got a popup that the game wanted access to other computers in my network on launch? I assume that has something to do with the LAN functionality the game touts, but it just made me wary that the game was trying to steal my data.