Birdland

by Brendan Patrick Hennessy profile

Part of the Bell Park series
Teens
2015

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Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
(84)
4 star:
(51)
3 star:
(14)
2 star:
(4)
1 star:
(1)
Average Rating:
Number of Ratings: 154
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- Dawn Sueoka, September 27, 2019

- beecadee, September 15, 2019

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Full of lovely dialogue and choices, September 15, 2019
by Greg Buchanan (United Kingdom)

“You dream you are the sheriff of a wild west town populated entirely by bird people."

Birdland has some of the best dialogue I've seen in an IF game -- not only for its believability, but how it helps characterise our protagonist through the range of choices on offer at each juncture. We get a sense of the way our mind works by seeing the kinds of things Bridget might do or say or lean towards, and even when we don't select options, the fact we saw them does a lot of subtle (but heavy) lifting.

The dream mechanic was excellent. We live vicariously in dreams and do things we wouldn't do in real life partly because we can and there is no consequence, just like we might do in a video game. The two levels of reality in this IF -- dream and real life -- and the stat-based overlap from what dream behaviour does to our state of mind, is really effective at delivering consequence for our vicarious, "wouldn't this be funny or fun" dream decisions. The skill of the author is in making us still treat those fun segments -as- dreams rather than somehow min-maxing our stats. And later in the game, as the dream logic seems to spill into everyday life, this plot strand is brought to its inevitably conclusion.

So much lovely stuff here, both comedic and coming-of-age. When we step-by-step get to make choices to write a bad sentence in French, or when I claim to my instructor that my poorly performed sport action is a "Lazy Susan", and they respond: "A) There's no stroke called a "Lazy Susan", B) if there was it I would expect it to involve some kind of circular motion."

So good. My only vague critique - and this is reaching - is that the pace of the IF led me to expect reasonably short sections broken up with choices, even if those choices just helped me personalise my character. So on the few occasions where there was a large amount of text on screen, especially those with huge paragraphs, it slowed down the flow quite a bit for me. Not a deal-breaker by any means as the quality of writing meant I was happy to read, but I think they could have benefited from being cut up a little considering their breach with usual pacing (apart from an excellent 'feathers' moment I won't spoil, which was completely amazing).

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- Whom (Wisconsin, United States), August 20, 2019

- Liza Daly, July 17, 2019

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
"State your job title." "Reviewer.", June 16, 2019

I'll make a confession straight away - I'm not a big fan of fiction about teenagers, and I'm even less of a fan of summer camps. If you are like me, don't worry - despite being about teenagers and set in a summer camp, Birdland is an incredible piece of interactive fiction that is enthralling from beginning to end.

It's a story of emotions and having (or not having) the freedom to express them; a story of youthful attraction, of coming to terms with one's inner nature; and it's a story of strange dreams and even stranger things within them.

The mechanic of determining what mood you are in - and therefore determining what choices are available to you at various points - may seem a little arbitrary at first, but there is a method to that madness, and it helps that the mechanic itself is hilarious.

All in all, a fantastic and well-crafted experience. Five plasma spheres.

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- lunaterra (GA, USA), June 7, 2019

- bradleyswissman (Virginia, US), February 9, 2019

- Max Crow (United States), February 7, 2019

- JoQsh, January 18, 2019

- wohanley, January 15, 2019

- mapped, January 3, 2019

- Bartlebooth, December 6, 2018

- anarchaferromagnetism, November 26, 2018

- IanAllenBird, September 21, 2018

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Consistent and engaging, September 18, 2018

What I like about this game is how consistent its themes are. The effect of introducing the characters as a cast, complete with beautiful illustrations, is sustained by the focus on dialogue and the names of the speakers for the rest of the game. I got the impression of reading the transcript of a play, especially with the date and time stamps at the start of every chapter. The mystery introduced in the very first dream, with regard to the strange speech styles of the bird-people, is also followed through in the other dreams and eventually acknowledged and resolved. As a result, the plot was believable and I didn't feel like there were any loose ends untied.

However, I felt somewhat disappointed with the dialogue, which occasionally tended towards melodrama. While I realise that emotional scenes are characteristic of young adult fiction, the scenes in which the protagonist exhibited strong emotion just felt too rushed, in my opinion, and my feelings for the character were disrupted as a result. On the other hand, the dialogue options provided for the player are excellent. Many lines of speech felt appropriate for the situation at hand, and I was happy to see that the game both provided and followed through on these options. The ability to pick the murderer felt particularly meaningful, even if its implications were not clear.

Another area that left me feeling a little unsatisfied was the protagonist's toned-down reaction to the increasingly odd behaviour of the counsellors. Considering a large part of her unwillingness to act out was due to her lack of faith in the validity of her dreams, it might have been better if the bit about her dreams bleeding into reality was emphasised more, so that her initially apathetic stance would have had a more realistic explanation. Still, the way the severity of the situation was ultimately acknowledged and dealt with felt very effective, with the success of the protagonist coming across as surprising yet plausible, a testament to the author's efforts in establishing the rigidness of the bird-people as a critical flaw.

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- Joey Jones (UK), September 15, 2018

- Accatitippi (Italy), August 27, 2018

- Jaxcap (Arizona), August 12, 2018

- airylef, August 8, 2018

- mrfrobozzo, June 26, 2018

- deathbytroggles (Minneapolis, MN), May 3, 2018

- csitrin, April 16, 2018

- Wanderlust, March 17, 2018

- thedigitaldiarist (Canada), January 30, 2018


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