Most of these items are available at the start of the game, gradually expanding as optional secret items are accumulated. Most of the character customization I returned to was in the “worn on head” category, because there are some genuinely hilarious options in there: devil horns, a “drinking hat,” a cool fez, a punk mohawk, a propeller hat, and so on. But I stopped playing around with the skateboard whenever I unlocked new items, and would have enjoyed more playful varieties to choose from. Obviously, you spend very little time actually looking at your skateboard in a game like this, as you’re more reading the interactions between your character and the environment, doing little physics calculations in your head. This was particularly true of the skateboards and wheels on offer. I ended up finding many of the optional items in SkateBIRD, but I seldom found any accessory that caused me to drop everything and equip it. I thoroughly enjoyed just playing dress-up with my burrowing owl, and ended up fancying the floral options for the head, round sunglasses for the face, a pastel striped scarf for the neck, and a plump hipsack, before dropping in. There are items that are worn on the head, face, neck, back, and waist of the bird, respectively. These options expand considerably as you collect out-of-reach objects throughout obscure corners of SkateBIRD’s handful of various levels. Once you pick the species of bird - which you can change at any time in the menu - there are seven options for aesthetic customization: five for the bird, and two for the skateboard. Ultimately, I settled on a burrowing owl, but the amount of species made me feel overwhelmed, revealing to me how much genuine love SkateBIRD‘s developer must have towards birds in general. I was delighted to see a surprisingly vast array of species to choose from: cinnamon green cheek conure, cardinal, rose ringed parakeet, dwarf kingfisher, lilac breasted roller, zebra finch, and a dozen or so more species - most of which I had never heard of. The first thing the game presents you with is a character creator called “Create-a-Birb,” an intentional misspelling that perfectly represents the sort of childlike bird personality that the developer, Glass Bottom Games, has curated on Twitter. SkateBIRD fully delivers on this idiosyncratic avian premise. Couple that soft spot with my childhood nostalgia for skateboarding games like the massively successful Tony Hawk series, and SkateBIRD felt like an instant all-timer once I could get my talons on it.
Readers of Epilogue will know that I will play almost any game, especially an indie, if it features adorable animal protagonists. The concept is a perfect execution of cute and eccentric, whimsical and ridiculous. What first drew me to SkateBIRD was the quirkiness of the project: a game where birds perform tricks on skateboards, shredding halfpipes and popping ollies. But after several frustrating and tedious hours that consistently felt more like a chore than genuine fun to play, I am disheartened to report that SkateBIRD is one of the most disappointing games I’ve played this year. In some respects, I was immediately taken in by certain superficial aspects of SkateBIRD. (Okay, I got my bird puns out of the way I’ll leave the rest to others.) So when I received an opportunity to review the game ahead of release, I eagerly took the chance to do so. I have been eagerly following the development of SkateBIRD on Twitter for nearly three years, and it flapped its way towards the top of my Steam wishlist and perched itself there ever since. Our thanks to Glass Bottom Games for providing an advance review copy of SkateBIRD on Steam.
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