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THIS IS one of the
final pieces that the
former editor Zak
commissioned before
he left, and it only exists
because he found the
concept so amusing.
There’s a chicken, and it’s on a skateboard,
and it’s called SkateBird. We’re not dealing
with high levels of sophisticated humor
here, but that was never Zak’s way.
However, I’m glad he did commission
it, because I get to tell you that, for $ 20
(it’s on Game Pass too), you can have a
lot of fun, and you can do it on integrated
graphics. The recommended specs
part of the game’s Steam page doesn’t
mention graphics hardware beyond Intel
HD 4 000—the iGPU that came with Ivy
Bridge chips almost ten years ago. Almost
anything will be better than that, but this is
a Switch game at heart and looks like one.
Grinding your way through bird-sized
skateparks like Tony Hawk (that couldn’t
possibly be the inspiration, could it?)
zipping up cardboard ramps, and grinding
on drinking straws, the concept is clear.
It’s birds, on skateboards, and the more
you skate the more birds are attracted to
you. Being a bird, you can flap your wings
for a sort of double-jump, but otherwise,
you’re basically doing ollies and hitting
buttons on the pad to perform tricks. And
I recommend you use a controller, as the
kind of handling we’re looking at here
won’t respond well to a keyboard.
The whole thing is remarkably
easygoing. Fall and you get straight back
up or warp to a reset point you chose
with the touch of a button. The game isn’t
beyond the kind of cute spelling errors the
internet is so fond of, either. Not only are
you encouraged to ‘Create-a-Birb’ at the
custom character creator (birds are bright
What do you get if you cross a chicken and a skateboard?
SkateBird
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and colorful and wear a broad range of
hats, it seems), but you’ll also find yourself
being asked to ‘screm’—a squeak and flap
of the wings—multiple times, as it counts
as part of a trick and can be used to let out
your anger when you come off.
The combo system fills a ‘fancy’ bar,
which gifts you extra speed, and therefore
height, once full. The birds just seem to be
hanging on to the boards, never feeling like
they’re really in control. It’s a wonderful
kind of chaos, as eagles and larger species
give you ‘missions’ that frequently involve
collecting letters to make words.
However, it’s also not without its
problems. The camera regularly struggles
to keep up with the action, there are timed
levels where no timed level ought to be
(in fact, timed levels should just not exist,
period) and sometimes it can be incredibly
strict on a point of trickery that you’d
expect it to be as laissez-faire about as it
is on others. The physics can be wobbly,
in both entertaining and non-entertaining
ways, and I’m pretty sure it’s intentional.
The game may try to keep a straight
face about things—there’s a story about
the lead bird’s ‘big friend’ (its human
owner) being sad because of his job, so
the feathered pet gets to put on a bow tie,
pirate hat, and glasses, to make him feel
better—but it’s almost impossible for
the player to. There’s bags of personality
oozing out of SkateBird, and I’m glad that I
don’t have to put a score on the end of this,
as it would need to be a 9 and a 4 at the
same time, which is the kind of quantum
superposition we could really do without.
So thanks, Zak, for finding avian skaters
funny and thanks to Glass Bottom Games,
a tiny indie team from Seattle, for coming
up with the idea in the first place, even if it
is a pun on tiny hawks. – IE
$20, https://skate.birb.rocks/
MAXIMUMPC 67
