Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Sep 27, 2021

  You're a bird on a skateboard riding around finding other birds to talk to. They give you missions via humorous and whimsical text-based dialogue as the only voice acting here are bird chirps. The NPC birds have personalities (there's one obsessed with snacks, another who likes to set things on fire, etc), some re-occurring between multiple levels, making you feel like part of a team trying to accomplish something, as opposed to a lone skater wrecking havoc. The level design is mostly basic, taking the form of typical human environments bastardised as skate parks. I used to play a lot of THPS 2 & 3 a very long time ago and in those games I remember the controls being: flip trick is button 'c', grind is 'v' and grab is 'b', as well as movement being the arrow keys, so I didn't need to use the mouse at all besides menus. I used those controls for SkateBird and I got through the whole game with those but it never felt as crisp as those games before. There was quite a bit of struggle involved in dealing with the controls and camera. Things like when you ride off a ledge the bird and skateboard will just tumble to the side, making it near impossible to land wheels first, when you ollie once the bird will jerk backwards wanting to have the skateboard land on the backside, and when the camera is facing forward, and you push forward, the camera immediately turns 180 and you end up going backwards. With those shortcomings, all the missions are still doable, you can still string long combos, and the game is really enjoyable. The story was silly and cool in the right way that made things fun and made me want to finish each mission to see the next joke and story bit. Nice soundtrack as well.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 16, 2021

  When I first played this game at launch, I was torn between a thumbs up or down. The camera sucked a lot, and the collision did too. But even then, the charming writing, music, and the little birbs kept me playing, and I was having a great time despite the problems. Going back now after the update I can now recommend the game whole-heartedly. The big problems are all fixed, and the added accessibility options are a big plus. I'd say give it a try
• gamedeal user

  Nov 22, 2021

  at first glance this game might be 'bad' but i beg of you to keep playing it only gets better and your love for the game will get higher and higher. I cant tell you how much fun this game is to just beat and to go even farther and 100% like i did is SO worth it and i would recommend doing it :] and if you have refunded the game please buy it again its only getting better with each patch, so i will say please from the bottom of my heart but this game. This game is so special and i do think you too will love it as much as me!
• gamedeal user

  Nov 27, 2021

  Tony Hawk pro skater...but with actual hawks
• gamedeal user

  Dec 18, 2021

  Finished the story and that's probably all I'll be doing until more patches roll out. I looked forward to this game a lot while it was in development. It had a ton of charm to it and I definitely knew the game was gonna be of the goofy kind watching the trailers and playing the beta, so I didn't expect tight controls and extreme replayability like Tony Hawk, more so a parody/love letter to that franchise. *But Jesus Christ* I'd say it took me about 2 hours of gameplay until I had every accessibility option turned all the way up to make the countless inexplicable bails and combo breaks a little less unbearable (100%ed every tony hawk game on playstation 1 and 2 by the way, its definitely not that i'm bad at skating games). My main gripes were: -combos ending after ollie'ing out of a manual, with the total score becoming null and void. -your character tripping over seemingly nothing all the time -some ramps don't launch you all the way up, causing you to exit the bowl/halfpipe involuntarily or crashing into the wall behind the ramp -lots of bothersome invisible walls in the later levels It's not all bad though, the game has some fun things going for it: -Character customization is very fun with tons of bird species and accessories obtainable in the various maps -The maps themselves have some fun theming, especially the manmade mini skateparks in indoor levels. -The NPCs are really charming and the dialogue is fun. So far the negatives still outweigh the positives though. I see a lot of reviews of people who played less than an hour that just go "hell yea birds" which I mean, valid opinion, but the fact that only 5% of people have the achievement for beating the story speaks volumes.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 11, 2022

  I really really hate to give this a No, but I'm in the middle with this game - leaning a bit soundly on No. I'm a long-time player of Tony Hawk and other skateboarding games and, while I really love the concept and overall aesthetic - the gameplay is total trash. On the good side, I love this game's sense of humor, writing, and soundtrack. Every part of the presentation is charming and gives the kind of semi-serious, semi-silly whimsy you would see in Katamari Damacy (but with birds on boards). Customization options for your little buddy are also extensive and allow you to pick from an impressive number of bird species. You can tell that the developer had a fun concept and decided to run with it as far as it could go. ...however, that's where the good parts end. As I said before, I've played a lot of skateboarding games in the past - both good and bad - but this one overwhelmingly takes the cake for worst gameplay in a skateboarding game. While I could write quite the long list about what's going wrong, I'll summarize the worst points: -Stalls vs. Grinds The game never seems to know the difference between making you do a stall or a grind. Even when you go high-speed at an angle to the lip (which would be a grind in any other skateboarding game), you're stopped dead in your tracks doing a stall which messes up the entire combo. -Ollies Ollies in this game try to be clever by including a double jump (since you're a bird and can fly), but jumping as a whole is so terrible that this mechanic works against you more than for you. I can't count how many times I try to ollie up to a very low rail, only to be bounced off in the opposite direction for...reasons. I can't explain why. -Speed Speed works very differently in this game. The logic is incomprehensible. I can jump full speed ahead at a platform and suddenly my bird loses so much momentum so quickly that it looks like I hit a floating mass of molasses that slowed me to a crawl. On the ground, things are not much better. You're fighting against the game to get enough speed to go up a halfpipe and, more often than not, you slowly but surely slide down without ever having reached the top. -Transfers Transferring in this game is comically bad. When trying to transfer out of a halfpipe, the game seems to randomly accept this request and, worse yet, may actually bounce you off in the complete opposite direction when you are trying to transfer forward up to a platform. This probably ties into how broken the ollie system is, but that's something I can only speculate. This problem means that trying to exit a halfpipe, or even doing a spine transfer (which has its own issues being too iffy/random) is a gamble. What's even more mystifying is that transferring out of a pipe takes an actual dedicated button press (RB) instead of hitting the ollie button while holding up. The only saving grace are the accessibility options that allow you to, among other things, turn off the timers for goals. I swear, if I couldn't turn off the timers this game would be the skateboarding contemporary of Superman 64. At the end of the day, with the gameplay, I am somehow a little impressed this could be made so poorly. I know there's the reasoning that this is a bird on a board and we can't expect much from that - but it feels like the developer forgot to make the skateboarding fun. Overall, have your expectations incredibly low for this game. With its combination of horrible physics and a heaping dose of charm on top of an interesting concept - think of this like the Goat Simulator of skateboarding games. If that doesn't sound appealing to you, then it's completely understandable to pass on this one.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 3, 2022

  as a bird owner tjis is the best thing imaginable i love birts so much game is so adorable thank you so much dev team
• gamedeal user

  Dec 31, 2022

  im straight up skate birding, all over the place everywhere. 10/10
• gamedeal user

  Jan 11, 2023

  The controls are good if you play with a controller. Don't play kb/m on this game. The game is super cute, and I bought 4 copies while it was on sale for some friends ( ' v ') Just remember you're buying a frickin indie game not a port of an AAA game from 20 years ago. You can double jump in this game, you can screm in this game. You're not going to get Tony Hawk's Copyright Infringement Skater: Bird Edition, you're gonna get skatebird. you can wear a little bandana on your budgie, or play as something other than a budgie. its good
• gamedeal user

  Jan 16, 2023

  this happened to my buddy eric