The King's Bird Reviews
The lovely aesthetics and graceful movement in A King's Bird are undercut by a too steep difficulty and imprecise controls.
While there are clearly some efforts to distinguish from other platformers of an allotted, check-list fashion on a visual/world-building sense, the inevitable blurring-together of seen-before sparse storytelling and relative simplicity in appearance mean that The King's Bird doesn't quite excel as a complete package.
The King's Bird is a tightly designed precision platformer whose gameplay loop consists of retrying the same frustrating areas until reaching the satisfaction of conquering them. Lather, rinse, repeat. The moments of flying through a dreamscape and sticking the landing are a true delight, at least. For fans of hard-mode platformers, this may arrive as a welcome treat and worth sinking a handful of hours into for that sweet payoff, but those with other tastes may want to keep looking elsewhere.
An excellent platformer that is as beautiful as engaging and challenging. It has some flaws,like its sometimes imprecise controls, but as a whole, is an entertaining experience.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
As N++, Super Meat Boy and other games alike, The King's Bird focuses on control and gameplay over story. Gain "momentum" and use it to glide and rush through the levels it's the key to complete the game and conquer the online rankings. It's a challenging experiencie, f you're the kind of player that loves speedrunning gaming.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
When things are going well, The King's Bird is a wonderful and fluid experience.
The King's Bird blends a beautiful design with superb and fluid mechanics to get a platformer that is just wonderful. A mix of parkour and aerial momentums that will show an amazing exhibition of movement and colors.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The King's Bird has a lot of potential in both the challenging and the serene, but its tolerances for mistakes get just a little bit too tight. It wants to be two games. On the one side, there's an almost Journey-like indie with beautiful gameplay, audio, and visuals that calm the mind and soothe the soul. On the other, Serenity Forge wanted to create tough challenges that would feel like a triumph to overcome. While I was completely on board with the marriage of ideas at first, the two began to clash somewhere along the way as the trials no longer supported the gameplay. What Serenity Forge managed to do with the visuals and sound is on another level, but the loose gameplay mechanics never quite fit into how precise the challenges are designed to be. I wanted more of what The King's Bird was, and less of what it became.
There are moments in The King's Bird where it's easy to lose yourself in the gameplay and striking visuals. Rocketing around colourful stages and indulging in the serene soundtrack is fun, but frustrating puzzle mechanics and little variance in the gameplay taint the experience.
The thing is, flying is hard. Getting serious air is a challenge, and when you hit the ground, the singing stops. But I didn’t want it too. I wanted to hear the beautiful improvised music. And so I wanted to fly. And therein lies the brilliance of The King’s Bird. Through its minimalist silhouettes, you get a cliched tale of oppression and freedom. The simple haunting music sets a tone. Platformers are one of the oldest genres of video games, and while this one controls differently, it is still a classical platformer at heart. But you want to hear the protagonist sing. You want to fly. She wants to fly. And in video games, there’s nothing more powerful than the moment that the player and the character’s desires become one.
The King's Bird has the potential to be wonderful—and in its art and music, it is. Based on that alone I would play it all day. But the sense of freedom it is trying so hard to evoke is held back by its finicky controls, and since the game's very foundation is meant to be freeing, it falls short. Altered controls and a slightly wider margin for error, especially on console, would really let The King's Bird soar beyond the confines of its cage, and boost its mechanics up to the high tier of its design.
The King's Bird is a good example of a platform game that follows the old adage "easy to learn, difficult to master", as its demanding controls will demonstrate. Players who muddle through it with patience and perseverance, however, will find a work that is very rewarding, and not just because of its marvelous art style. A very welcome addition to the Nintendo Switch catalogue, which could perhaps improve on its gameplay's repetitiveness in some instances.
Review in Portuguese |
If you enjoy a challenging platformer, The King's Bird will test your limits. Even if you don't, it is at least important to note what the indie title is able to accomplish with its physics. Still, a lacking progression system, threading the needle difficulty, and bad camera work currently hold The King's Bird back from being a great game, and it is instead merely a good one.
The King's Bird is a beautiful game. It's easy to learn, with movements that make for a unique take on the classic 2D platformer, set against a bold and stunning backdrop.
Rich gameplay concepts and lush aesthetics caged by suffocating level design and a weak story. The constant clash between free, flowing movement and repetitive, often claustrophobic levels puts a damper on the entire experience.
The King's Bird captures a freewheeling spirit in its aerial platforming but doesn't do enough to leave a mark with anyone but the most hardcore.
There isn't really much to say about The King's Bird. It's a simple looking game that comes down to using the world around you to propel yourself forward. At times this can be fun and other times extremely frustrating. When push comes to shove, it's good enough that I can see the value in it and has more than enough to keep someone interested, especially if they want to improve on previous runs.
The sound and art design, while done before give unique spins that make the world all the more rich in detail. While the story is nothing to write home about, only a handful of other small issues really caused me any annoyance or trouble while playing, and I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who needs a good stress reliever or an excuse to unwind at the end of the day.
A beautiful game marred by repetition yet incredibly playable.