Of Bird and Cage

Another walking sim? Not this time! Of Bird and Cage is a unique blend of action-adventure game and metal album, created by people who spent more time in bands (such as Guns N’ Roses) than among developers. It’s a blast to hear. But is it playable at all?

But really, Of Bird and Cage is a really hard sell. It’s not only the kind of game that you can finish in an afternoon, it’s also the kind that doesn’t leave much of an impression on you after the fact. While it’s able to roll down the road, it’s doing so holding things together with zip ties and a dream. It’s the kind of hot mess where the best experience would be to just give the album a listen on Spotify, because everything else just doesn’t do it justice.

I greatly appreciate whenever a developer attempts to do something totally different. With so many games simply following the few molds of those that have proven successful previously, most of them start to blur together after a while. Some of them are wonderful, like The Stanley Parable, while others fall flat, like Telling Lies. So when I first heard of Capricia Productions’ Of Bird and Cage, an experimental playable metal album, my curiosity was piqued. Would this prove to be a stroke ...

Indie games are a great place to innovate in interesting ways. The door is open to new gameplay models and ideas. The door is also open to creatives of all kinds to carve out their own place within the scene. With this ideology in mind, Of Bird and Cage sets off with some ambition to craft an interactive metal music video experience. As a music video, it’s fantastic. As a game, let’s just say it’s quite a nosedive.

Of Bird and Cage has a couple concepts to respect in isolation, but that doesn’t disregard its head-banging assault on good taste.

It really blends together a love for video games and a love for music beautifully.