Fugl

Sad to see this game end up like this, as I've been following it since it first became popular on itch.io I think. I bought the Steam version because the free one is abandoned, and it completely broke and glitched/crashed out on my laptop, but this game has only stagnated in quality all these years later. First off, there is very little to do or see in all the worlds. Back when this Steam version was functional, I remember how little the worlds varied as you explored them. Your only goal is to find every animal type in every biome. Still, with the clunky controls interfering with your navigation of the land areas, and the mind-numbing repetition, I knew it wasn't worth all the digging around and crashing into the ground I would need to do to see all the animals. There is no survival mode, no campaign/story that could explain the various biomes or the origin and goals of the main character Arcus and add some desperately needed intrigue, nor is there true support for mods that do more than at skin presets either; so the whole living ecosystem aesthetic becomes shallow and unengaging, and you can never break up the monotony of the base flight simulator when it overstays its welcome. The transformation gimmick isn't all that impactful either because the animals you can turn into don't affect your flight all that uniquely, the only types of transformations there are are ones that make you slow, ones that make you fast, ones that make you only able to swim slow or fast, and ones that make your character hard to control. They don't give you special abilities or powers to make the journey easier or more interesting, giving you even less reason to find all the native skins. The glitchiness, lag, and constant crashing are the true capstones to what ruins what little there is to enjoy from this game. Even if I just want to hop in for a little mindless round of flight sim, I really can't because the game is strangely graphic-intensive and extremely unstable, so even if you can get to the main menu, the maps completely glitch out and eventually crash now. 1.5/10: Horrible disappointment, especially from the perspective of a long-time follower of this game. The only good thing about it is the base concept; if this were done better, it could have been a really great spin on an ecosystem flight simulator. Stay away from this game and look for another flight simulator to buy, because this is just a money hole at this point.

boring and repetitive with nothing to do but aimlessly fly around the same endlessly looping maps, and the controls feel so clunky and inelegant that it's unpleasant to do even that. disappointingly, the different biomes don't actually connect to each other so there's no sense of exploration or progress through different landscapes, just infinitely repeating pre-generated terrain that quickly loses its novelty. there are no weather effects or day/night cycles to add at least [i]some[/i] variety to an otherwise bland experience, no unique structures or landmarks to create points of interest and a sense of discovery, no threats from the environment or other animals to provide challenge and excitement, no objects of interest to play with or eat or carry around, no interesting events or interactions in general, and the only thing you can collect is the animal forms your bird can very loosely mimic, which does little to engender a sense of accomplishment and gets old fast. incredibly, Fugl has apparently been in early access for almost 8 years, and given that the developer has stated that adding more gameplay elements and things like day/night cycles and dynamic weather are either technically impossible or would actually "take away from the game," it's clear that Fugl is never going to evolve beyond what it currently is - not really a game, as there is no gameplay loop, but something more akin to a tech demo or interactive screensaver, as others have said. it's overpriced as well for what it is - this is one of the few purchases i can say i fully regret. not what i was hoping for. can't recommend.

Very relaxing to play. Biggest thing I would like in it, at this point in EA, is a setting for toggling the impact visuals when your bird hits something.

This game is lovely. Sometimes I just want something serene to play in the background while I listen to a podcast or chat with a friend, and this fits the bill. Very zen

Bird

да

For a flight simulator all about letting you essentially 'feel the air blow through your wings' with a pixel-y spin on it, there's no flight sim better than this game. HOWEVER, it seems like the longer this game goes on without touch-ups, the less it works like it did when i first played two things to fix this, i think, would be an option to turn off positioning auto-correct whenever you fly upside-down. when i want to tip upside down for a slow glide with my back against the water or the clouds, i dont want to be automatically corrected "right-side up" while im trying to do something cool. let the player decide when they want to right themself to make for a fluid and immersive experience as for number two, it seems like the game's recently lost the ability to instantly switch from left and right barrel roll. dont know if its a big or if that was a conscious change- but i dont want to feel like im forced to hope for the best when i slow-roll and turn side-ways when squeezing through a tight space, and have no response when manually correcting my position. bring the feature back where you could switch from left and right barrel roll, the moment you want to switch. waiting on the character to be "perfectly straight" BEFORE making the decision to switch rolling direction makes the flight clunky and feel unresponsive

i bought this game because it looked super cool and fun. it was not. the controls are bad, the shape-shifting mechanic is bad, the tutorial is bad, it doesn't save anything you've done either, and the avatar concept also doesn't work. overall, dont buy this game. even if its on sale its not good. buy something worth your money.

"one day, [u]i am gonna grow wings [/u] a chemical reaction hysterical and useless hysterical and..." <3

Aside from an oddity with getting the xbox controller to follow the tutorial on diving (swapped to using a Steam Deck as the controller to get around that), I really enjoyed the game as a relaxing experience after a stressful day. Not having any built-in goals after the tutorial means you can just go do what you want at your own pace, and sometimes that's all you need after a stressful day.