Aery - Little Bird Adventure

TL;DR Pro: It's Pretty. Cons: Levels do not link together properly. BGM doesn't work. Limited options. Poorly implemented story with bad grammar and spelling mistakes. Flight mechanics are TERRIBLE. Difficulty is artificial. Game is very short. ACHIEVEMENTS ARE BROKEN. [b] Developer releases new games with same problems and never fixes them. [/b] I hate to leave bad reviews. Even with games that aren't particularly fun or original, I still generally rate them favourably. Making a game is hard work, and anyone who does should be commended, unless as is the case here, there are too many problems with the underlying systems. And even more egregiously the developer seems to continue to release games with the same problems and does nothing to address the issues. The game looks gorgeous, and I did enjoy looking at the magical realist worlds. Each level has a different shader in effect which leads to some rather ethereal views and does make for some occasional breathtaking moments. Unfortunately, that's really the only good thing going for this game. It looks pretty. This beauty is superficial, and right from the outset my alarm bells were ringing. The options screen is so very limited. Audio options are three sliders for main, music and sound. Controls are for invert Y and Sensibility (sic). Graphics have a fairly generous range of resolutions. That's it. As soon as I started the game, the silence was deafening. There is no background music in this game, besides in the opening menu screen. I checked on the discussion thread and this is a known issue. The developer responded to another user by essentially asking "did you check the sliders were fully up?" Of course changing the sliders makes no difference, and so you must swoop around these pretty worlds without so much as a breeze blowing or the sound of your wings flapping. At the start of each level there is an obnoxiously long "story" thread which cannot be skipped. It is often nonsensical and is littered with grammatical and spelling errors. Of course everything has to have a story these days, even Doom Eternal has a story, but really here it is unnecessary. A brief opening line or two would suffice. My biggest issue is that often these lines of story are describing something which is not representative of what is happening in the game. This rather takes you out of the experience. After completing a level, the game throws you back to the initial stage. There is no progression. You must quit to the main menu, and start again. The map screen does unlock the next level, but it does not flow through them in a natural way. This is true of EVERY level. None of the achievements unlock upon completion of a level, nor does completing the game unlock them. ACHIEVEMENTS ARE BROKEN. The actual flight mechanics are terrible. This does not feel like flying, rather you are simply moving forward at a fixed velocity. Diving towards the ground does not cause the bird to accelerate. You could replace the model of the bird with anything else and it would feel as much like flying. Someone else described it as flying a brick and I would totally agree. We can only change direction, and even that feels stiff and unnatural. In each level, you are tasked with finding a number of feathers. These give off light, but regularly bleed into the background to make seeing them more of a lucky happenstance than requiring any actual skill. You will need eagle eyes of your own. This artificially increases the difficulty. This is hardly surprising as the game is very short. I completed all levels in around an hour. Also, while I'm on the subject, why the heck are we a PARROT? So many beautiful birds known for their grace and aerial superiority, and we are a parrot. It feels more like an ex parrot. And worst of all, from reading reviews and discussions for the next two games, all of these same problems exist in those games too. The developer releases new games without addressing issues with past games. This is BAD PRACTICE. It's also worth noting, all the positive reviews seem to be from accounts with very few games or other reviews. I'm not saying they are all from the same source or paid for reviews, but I am thinking it very loudly: Sweet Girl says "This game helps you relax, the flight is especially well worked out."  ☼Łē✖'αŘ☼  ☭ says "I like to relax to my own music more, so I turned it off in the game (don't thank the life hack for this)." Not Jelimazu says "In short, an exciting and soothing game with a pleasant visual map and relaxing music.." empira's full review reads "Looks very bright! I haven't bought new games for a long time, but now I could not resist ... the 20% discount influenced my choice. The game captures with its atmosphere and freedom. But the game is only suitable for a short time". All of these reviews seem to be in the same vein. They misrepresent, they fail to mention any of the problems and they all share a similar tone of voice. Like I say, I hate to leave a negative review but I could not in good conscience support this developer. I feel a more representative review is necessary to either warn others away; or to make the developer sit up and take notice that people who have actually paid for the games are not happy with the lack of support and apparent disregard for their complaints. A real Dodo.

This game is broken. The first level loops and there is no sound. It seems most of the positive reviews were early on after release, while all the negative ones were later/recent, so something must have broken in this game and the developers left it to rot. Avoid. 3/10

Incredibly slow and unintuitive, broken and boring. There is not much to get here. Levels will loop indefinitely after completion, achievements don't work, no music (except menu), no sounds (except a "blop" when picking up a feather), not much to control except the direction (no slower, faster etc). Devs do not seem to care too much about it all either.

The positive reviews for this game are ridiculous. "Masterpiece"? "Intuitive"? "Captures atmosphere and Freedom"? 10/10? I really can't think of any reason other than paid promotion to recommend a game like this. The only positive is the art style. Other than that, it's more like a quick cash grab. It's sloppy and clunky. It's not an immersive experience and the world, which you are supposed to explore, is oddly limited by boundaries. Boundaries like IN the map not on the outside of the map. You can't go too high and the map isn't open world. It's linear so if you go the wrong way it spins you around and forces you back on the path. Cuz, birds are known for filing flight paths and following them. The achievements are nonfunctional and all levels lead back to the first level. First level loops back to first level. Second level loops back to first level. Third level loops back to first level. Fourth level loops back to first level. Fifth level loops back to first level...And its as tedious as it sounds. The "flying" is horrific. It's the least flight like experience I have ever had in a game. The bird turns like a mine cart and there is no feeling of momentum. For a game this simple, I'd expect it to be much more polished experience. But I suspect the developer has very little love for their creation and doesn't care about the quality of their products. And their happy to take your money.

I purchased this game with low expectations of content available due to the price and the minimalist design. The screenshots and description suggested a chill, atmospheric experience. What I received instead was what felt like someone's final for a game design class with a pricetag attached. The first thing that happened when I selected the first level was the game's music stopped playing. This was the only good unintentional design flaw present as I was not forced to listen to the same royalty-free synthwave rift on repeat. I then was presented with a nauseating series of lines which mimicked a poem about birds and flight and the freedom therein. The irony was that I was not a bird, nor was I flying, and there were no camera controls, so my view was locked. Do not let the title or the player character fool you. You are not a bird in this world. You are the equivalent of a brick which possesses the ability to move in three dimensions at a constant, unsatisfying speed. These were all realizations I was making as I locomoted to the other side of the level. Like I said before, you do not fly, you merely displace your brickish body horizontally, vertically, and laterally in an effort not to hit most things but still hit some things. I was doing this very thing when my approach vector to the little feather you have to pick up to end the level ended up being erroneous. I corrected and circled back around to grab the feather. It was at this point my bird-resembling brick body wedged itself into the bottom of what resembled a cairn, my avatar wanting to add its stonelike body to theirs. I was stuck good, and couldn’t get out despite pressing the four keys available to me for movement, so I exited the level and restarted. Another feature this game offers is the inability to accelerate or decelerate which meant I got to transpose myself at a constant rate across the entire map again to pick the feather up thereby ending the level. After finishing the first level I was transported back to the beginning of the first level. Imagine being transported to the second level, but instead it’s the first. The series of words parading as prose reappeared. However, these are unskippable and remain on screen long enough for your four-year-old nephew to clap out all the syllables while your avatar remains steadfast in its inability to move. Despite this feature, I cannot recommend the game as an educational vessel for reading comprehension. At this point I went back into the main menu and selected the second level. A minor inconvenience, but the issues were starting to pile like a cairn waiting to get a hawk-like brick wedged into it. I was greeted with more words than the first level had to offer that reminded me how nice it would be one day to evolve from Brickus Aeronauticus to, let’s say, a bird of some sort, and how if someone made a game like that I would very much like to play it. Your task in this game is to collect X amount of feathers out of X amount of feathers in polygonal landscapes painted with limited color palettes with filters plastered over the whole experience. These feathers are a brilliant white in color, and do a really good job of blending into the landscape unless you are close enough to really limit your maneuvering options. This probably accounts for their abundance in the wild via camouflage from their natural predator: the brick. Did you miss that feather that you barely saw in time? No worries, circle back around with a constant radius turn. By the way, you have no camera controls, so you can only look ahead. The aviation industry calls it “Controlled Flight Into Terrain” or “CFIT” so in that way this game is like a flight simulator when you CFIT because you can’t see what you’re turning into. Then you get the pleasure of going back to the beginning of the level and displacing yourself back to where you were before the worst day in modern brick aviation. What about coming in from above to contrast the feathers with the ground? Like some sort of bird-of-prey? That would require the ability to both acquire contrast visually by moving one’s field of view and having some modicum of maneuverability through the variation of speed. No, the brick-through-brickwall approach works best here. Despite all of this I pressed forward, collecting all the feathers in the second level and was allowed to proceed back to the first. If you guessed that this would happen, that the next place I’d go after completing the second level is the first, then you should have been a playtester for this game that needed more playtesters. So, I pressed every button I could in the vain hope that the unskippable stanzas would disappear prematurely before exiting and loading the third level. My efforts were futile, by the way. This is where I quit. Where my love of masonry could take me no further. I couldn’t stomach sitting as time slipped away from me while I commanded my brick to move around a sprawling level dotted with objects to hunt down items for a narrative that was uninteresting out of the gate. So, instead I let this game live rent-free in my head and wrote this littie review fam. If my refund is not honored, that is okay. I have come to peace with losing that five dollars for the enjoyment I received writing this cathartic piece. We’re all bricks floating in various axes in the aether, and maybe that’s really what the game was trying to communicate.

Bought this as part of a bundle. The concept looked great and relaxing but you can't complete even the first level! Plus the background music disappears entirely. It seems like these would be simple fixes but the developer hasn't addressed it even though they've responded in the discussion groups. Requested refund.

3/10 BIRD DOWN!!!! turn the game on and it plays 1 song that never loops, after that its dead silence until you crash and make a respawn sound \\ (o> (()_ ||

I wouldn't recommend this game in its current state. The game feels not complete as there is no sound in a level, the levels loop if you finish them and the achievements don’t work. The concept of the game seem nice but the execution isn’t good at this point. Seems that the developer isn’t that worried about it as they released more games with the same problems.

I liked the simplistic graphics and the concept, but that is as far as my positive thoughts go. As soon as I click past the menu screen, the music stops and keyboard control glitches. I have tried turning invert Y on and off and adjusting sensitivity, but it doesn't do anything. I even quit and started again: same results. I am incredibly frustrated while playing this game. Refund please!

no sound, first level looped, no controls customization, boring main gameplay loop, seems to be attempt of cheap copy of AER: Memories of old (which I find brilliant)