Of Bird and Cage Review (PC)

Fiddle with musical instruments. Throw darts to score tequila shots. Use Quick Time Events to get away from enemies or to free oneself from a chair. Fire a weapon at bottles. Fistfight enemies in a dream sequence. Chase a bluebird. These are just a few of the things that players will have to do to push forward the story and music in Of Bird and Cage.

The title is created by Capricia Productions and published by All in! Games. I played it on the PC via Steam but the two companies say it will also come to the Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 sometime in the future. The title aims to create a new experience that carefully blends music, gameplay, and story. Sadly, it does not succeed.

The protagonist is Gitta Barbot, who is 25, working a dead-end job, dealing with creepy men and drug addiction. Her day is about to get worse. Bres Lupus, a loner in a leather trench coat, kidnaps her. This all happens relatively fast. From then on players will have to decide how Gitta should deal with some escalating situations and how she relates to a cast of characters.

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The problem with the narrative is no one acts believably. Almost everyone is horrible in a very clear way and there are almost no redeemable qualities for most of the cast. They do not act as humans do. They are only automatons designed to push the narrative forward. A general lack of consequences does not help with immersion. There are multiple endings to explore, although I fail to see who would want to explore the story more than once.

The gameplay is also in bad shape. Of Bird and Cage starts off like an adventure game where the focus is on interactions and talking. They feel a little clumsy but they work. And then the game introduces its first Quick Time Event and everything does downhill. The prompts make no sense, they are not linked to any context and the timing is way off.

The game also has some platforming sections, although most of the time is simply asks the player to run so that a music track can play out. There are some environmental puzzles later on, which serve mainly to showcase the awkward jumping animation. The main character also gets to fire a gun and drive a car. None of the gameplay feels good. The dreams (or hallucination?) sequences at work on dream logic. But the real-world escape sequences and fistfights have no reason to feel as weird as they do.

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Of Bird and Cage does not look good. It would be easier to put up with clipping and limited textures if the narrative or the gameplay were good enough. But as it stands the world feels empty and the characters look bad, especially when moving. There’s never any sense of immersion or connection. But I suspect that the development team would argue that limited graphics are justified by the investment made in the musical integration aspect.

Capricia Productions boasts about the involvement of several artists (the order is that provided by the developers): Davidavi Dolev aka Vidi of Gunned Down Horses and Subterranean Masquerade; Kobra Paige from Kobra and the Lotus; Ron Thal aka Bumblefoot, who featured in Guns N’ Roses; Rob van der Loo from Epica; Ruud Jolie of Within Temptation; Casey Grillo. Formerly with Kamelot; Rocky Gray (ex-Evanescence); Mike Lepond from Symphony X; Danny Worsnop of Asking Alexandria; Tina Guo; Snowy Shaw, formerly with both King Diamond and Therion.

I am certainly no expert in progressive, operatic rock or any other type of music. But the soundtrack for Of Bird and Cage feels to me like an attempt to capture some of the magic of big concept albums from around 10 or 15 years ago. There are some soaring moments and well-crafted lyrics. At times I thought of Scenes from a Memory from Dream Theater, but with less coherence and more instrumental pieces. Most of the album does not feel special in any way and its limitations negatively affect the rest of the game.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion