Even when it feels shallow and a little tacky, judging a book by its cover – or a game by its art style, in this case - is a uniquely human thing. And though I’m not proud of it, there are definitely games – indie or otherwise – that have been just too much of an eyesore for me to actively want to play. But 30 Birds, a narrative-focused puzzle game with the one of the most eclectic, flamboyant art styles I’ve ever seen, has the exact opposite of this problem. This game’s screenshots look amazing in their own right but don’t even do it justice. You need to see it in motion to internalize just how marvelous a combination it is to set such vibrant 2D artwork in a creative 3D world inspired by Persian art. But incredible visual design can only do so much heavy lifting if the act of playing the game doesn’t hold up. So, does 30 Birds do more than just show off its gorgeous plumage? Let’s find out.
Let’s start with the plot of 30 Birds, which takes center stage and is immediately and delightfully weird. You play as Zig, a detective who’s greeted by a melodramatic dream coyote about finding an informant at a festival called The Awakening, where the people of Lantern City have been waiting decades for the… well, awakening… of their bird goddess named Simurgh.
The kooky premise of 30 Birds is honestly less confusing than it sounds, as the game takes its time to gently introduce you to each of its characters and build some lore around Lantern City itself. True to its name, Lantern City consists of two-dimensional districts drawn upon the sides of a variety of three-dimensional lanterns, with trams or flying carpets being used to travel between each one. How, you ask, does the rail of a tram car traverse the empty space between lanterns without any of the necessary infrastructure to allow for that? I don’t know, teleportation or something, stop with the questions.
In an early turn of events, the bird goddess Simurgh has been kidnapped by a villain known only as the Scientist, and only by recruiting 30 of Lantern City’s birds can they get together for a ritual that will bring Simurgh back. So begins Zig’s trek through the districts of Lantern City to catch these elusive avians and convince them to help her cause. While the overarching plot feels a little light on intrigue, the strength of 30 Birds is in the creative nonsense it throws at you with tongue planted firmly in cheek – this is not a serious game at all, and on multiple occasions made me laugh out loud at its unabashed silliness.
To recruit each of the birds, Zig and Hoop, her stand-up comedian sidekick (yes, she has a stand-up comedian sidekick, come on, keep up) will take part in a wide variety of minigames to play synthesizers, bet items in a tile-smashing card game, give love advice on a radio show, give someone a really bad tattoo, and many other scenarios that are consistently clever. And if a game could get by on just being this gorgeous and creative then 30 Birds would be absolutely top tier. But when it comes to actually playing it, suddenly we have a lot of problems.
The most pertinent one to start with is probably the minigames, which make up a large part of the experience. Many are trivially simple and impossible to fail, like using a few paint brushes and colors to draw a live model at an art class or following a basic pattern to give someone a tattoo only for them to be horrified by how terrible it is regardless of what you draw. Others will remain basic but at least qualify as puzzles, such as a short Simon-like memory game or playing a simple rhythm section on a synthesizer.
The lack of anything really engaging or thought-provoking is not a huge problem, as it’s clear 30 Birds is focused on its plot and uses gameplay elements as either funny little gags or just brief diversions to mix things up. It’s not Professor Layton and it’s not trying to be – but in its attempts to make things simple enough to keep the pace brisk, 30 Birds makes some baffling choices in its minigame design. For one, I would repeatedly start a minigame with no idea what to do and just about zero intuitive direction on what it entailed until I tried enough random things to make something happen.
The painting minigame was a great example, as I had no idea how to actually use my brush but was immediately placed on a 10 second timer to put paint to canvas. And again – my constant failure until I figured out what to do didn’t lose me any progress or ultimately matter. But what it did do was turn what should have been a silly, charming plot diversion into a weirdly confusing experience that was pretty much over by the time I figured it out. Even more bizarre was the aforementioned tile-smashing card game, which several characters asked me to take part in over the seven or so hours 30 Birds took me to beat.
At the start of the card game, Hoop will offer to give you a brief rundown of the directions, but his explanation is about as helpful as Google Maps navigating multiple road closures, having left out key details about how to play and only explaining a couple of the most basic bits without including anything actually helpful. I had no hope of winning my first game, but once I did figure it out sometime into my second game, I realized there was no depth to it whatsoever and I could settle on a singular strategy that would win me the game every single time.
A couple of the minigames do try to be actual puzzles though, and these were horrible beyond description. One in particular at the end of the game was so utterly baffling in its obscure logic that I wanted to quit the game entirely even though I was minutes from watching the credits roll.
The sections outside of the minigames have their own problems, too. Some annoying fetch quests can trip up the pace (a pace that the minigames struggle maintaining to begin with), and between core objectives I’d constantly have the dreadful experience of having no idea where to go next. That’s worth noting as a thing I get particularly peeved by in general, but 30 Birds’ sins in this department tended to be far too numerous and egregious. It felt really aimless at times having to run across the same scenery over and over to see what I might have missed to get me to my next destination. A more helpful map or clearer objectives would go a long way.
What would also go a long way, unfortunately, is fixing any one of the numerous bugs in 30 Birds. There were several times I’d Walk from one side of a lantern to another only to mysteriously traverse into empty space if the game didn’t recognize where I was going and pivot the lantern accordingly. There were also times where level geometry would work inconsistently, not allowing me to pass through an area that I could previously make it through unhindered and require me to find a roundabout path. And perhaps worst of all, there was one sequence where a character’s dialogue was supposed to trigger an event allowing me to progress to the next area, and that never actually happened, even after reloading a checkpoint. Thankfully, the game allows you to access any of its few dozen or so brief chapters right from the start, so I was able to simply skip ahead to the next one.
On the flip side, doing so totally messed up the status of my collectibles so completionists are bound to be deeply bothered by that. There was also the time the controls would suddenly stop working when I loaded up one particular save, or the fact that fast travel via flying carpet was explained in vivid, un-skippable detail every single time I tried to do it, or the fact that so much of the game has absolutely no music for some reason, until it suddenly does for a little bit and then it’s quiet again.
This was especially weird to me because 30 Birds’ Steam page points out its energetic ska/dub/reggae soundtrack as a key feature of the game, but I consistently wondered where this was almost my entire time playing. While there are plenty of fitting, immersive ambient sound effects in each of the game’s lanterns, the actual soundtrack feels incredibly sparse, to the point where I have to wonder if yet another bug was preventing it from kicking in. In certain scripted sections there was some great music that popped up, but most of the time there’s no music at all, even to the degree that some of its quieter locations become almost totally silent given the lack of voice acting (which – to be clear – is not something I expect from most indie games, and this is no exception). While it doesn’t go so far as to ruin the vibe, much of the game’s relative silence feels out of place and highlights an obvious dissonance between its colorful, boisterous visuals and its minimalist audio design. If it is a bug, I really hope it’s addressed because – again – what I did hear of the game’s soundtrack was pretty good, but there’s barely enough of it to be worth a mention, never mind list as a “key feature”.
I came into 30 Birds feeling that it had enormous potential. In some ways that potential is realized through fabulous art direction, fun writing and a creative assortment of minigames to take part in. But while it rarely ventures into the territory of being outright bad, the experience is too often held back by design that left me confused at how to play a minigame or unsure of where to go, and bugs that ran the gamut from merely inconvenient to occasionally game-breaking. I still enjoyed some of my time with it but have to tailor my recommendation according to what the game is now rather than what it might be after a few weeks or months of patches. And that may be all 30 Birds needs to be an experience worth a look – but at present, this one need some more time in the oven.
MEDIOCRE
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