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

  Sep 21, 2021

  The game has licensed music where they censor swears with bird calls
• gamedeal user

  Sep 16, 2021

  I really wanted to enjoy this game. I was hyped for ages to play it and was really looking forward to jumping in and having fun being a bird skating about. The camera and controls killed it for me though, I was fighting to just play the game normally without the camera stuttering about getting caught on stuff. I really like the concept and might try it again if it gets updated in the future and fixes the issues I was having with it. For now I can't recommend it though.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 16, 2023

  this happened to my buddy eric
• gamedeal user

  Nov 27, 2021

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

  Mar 19, 2023

  I hate to rag on indie games and I reeeeeally want to like this game but I can't... It draws you in with a promise that its like old Tony Hawk games but ends up being a novelty rip off on par with Simpsons skateboarding or Disney extreme skate adventure. The physics are ass, the board doesn't stay level when you ollie causing random bails unless you do their weird air ollie thing (the only thing unique to this game) just to not drop a combo from what should be a normal landing, when you ollie near a wall it always wants to put you ON the wall then makes you bail, carving ramps is weird because it gives you an inhumane speed boost. Sometimes when you do flip tricks off a quarter it moves you slightly forward so when you go to land on the ramp again instead you just smack into the coping instead and get stuck against a wall. Doing manuals randomly ends your combos for no reason. The combo system doesn't really make any sense, its like a weird hybrid of tony hawk and skate but cant make up its mind about how the multiplier should work. They clearly borrowed a lot from tony hawk but missed all the fun mechanics like reverts, other types of manuals, transitioning between tricks for more points, acid dropping into ramps (huge one for me). Makes the game just feel like its a 3D platformer collectathon that just so happens to have a skateboarding mechanic. The missions are boring and uninspired, one of them is literally "skate to this spot and ollie 30 times"... The map design is questionable, random trip hazards around the map, some edges look grindable but aren't, the top of the cooker in the second to last level is just a pain to navigate because you can't transfer into the pan and there's no smooth surface to skate on, there are just random unused areas like underneath cabinets and stuff that should just be blocked off because they serve no purpose in gameplay, some banks have their weird lips at the bottom meaning you have to ollie onto them and loose all speed you had built. The soundtrack does have its good moments but is mostly like someone heard reel big fish in tony hawk and said "I want that!" you don't need trumpets in every punk song guys. Then when you finally do get a good song after skipping 10 of them you start a mission and it loops back to the first boring track that sounds like elevator music. Not even going to talk about the writing or lack of voice acting cuz it really shouldn't matter in a skateboarding game but the gameplay and mechanics DO NOT carry this game AT ALL. Currently at the time of writing this review there are 2 achievements in the game that ARE NOT ACHIEVABLE and I had to join the discord just to find that out AFTER finishing the whole game TWICE. I'm not convinced a single person on the dev team has ever actually stepped foot on a skateboard in their life or has played more than 30 minutes of a tony hawk game. I feel like they could have done a lot more with the bird mechanics, the only thing this game has that isn't present in other skating games is how floaty jumps feel and that weird aforementioned air ollie glide thing which doesn't feel good to use, it just slows you down half the time. TLDR: not as bad as Disney Extreme Skate Adventure but its close, atleast that game had "Wheres you're head at?" by Basement Jaxx but they get bonus points because the trick are named correctly in this one.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 17, 2021

  I went into this game blind after my boyfriend played the demo on Twitch several months ago. As an avid bird fan and ex-owner of budgies and tiels, even with my bias for birds, I seriously cannot get over the clunky controls, clipping meshes and stuttering camera. Even getting to the quests felt like a "where the hell do I go" moment, and it could really benefit from map markers of sorts. I do absolutely dig the style and concept, and I would love for this idea to be expanded in the future, but right now I don't think it's worth the AUD$26 price tag as there isn't really a whole lot of content to justify it.
• 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

  Sep 19, 2021

  This game is fun and relaxing, has a chill soundtrack, lots of customization for your character, interesting levels, and a cute storyline. How can you not love it? The bird models are absolutely adorable and there's many to choose from. Their mannerisms and animations are also super accurate to real life birds, and they bop their little heads around to the soundtrack. There are some issues (at the time of this review) that I'd like to point out. -There's a learning curve with the controls. I personally like using a controller instead of keyboard. -You can't skip quest dialogue, so if you fail and have to do the quest over again, waiting or mashing the button to skip can become tedious. -Some quest dialogue is missing from certain characters. (?) -You can only skip songs while the game is paused. Other than that, I highly recommend it! Even after beating the main game, I've been coming back and skating around just to calm down and chill to the music. This game has definitely become a comfort for me!