Presenting a unique game style that I can immediately tell you I hope to see become a regular genre that developers embrace, Of Bird And Cage takes players into the story behind the music. Capricia Productions has created a game that is literally led by the music album that was written with it. This truly was an interesting experience overall and I am glad they were able to work with All In! Games to get it published, but it definitely wasn’t without its issues as well.

Story

After having a rough life growing up, Gitta finds herself at a dead-end job and addicted to drugs. This addiction has led her to have some sketchy relationships and is the reason she meets a man that will take her life in a whirlwind of situations. It is through Gitta’s decisions and actions that she will reach one of the many outcomes that lie ahead of her. The question is, what will she do?

Gameplay

At the start of the game, you are introduced to the controls and how you can interact with various parts of your environment. This is done by having Gitta go into a bar and letting the player complete a few mandatory tasks that show of everything works. From experiencing what it’s like when you are starting to have withdrawals from the drugs she is hooked on to speaking with people and exploring things to interact with.

Once you end up getting the DJ to play your CD, the true game starts and the tutorial is over. From the moment the CD is put in, the game officially becomes an interactive music album. What this means is that when it comes to how much time you have to explore and interact with the area you are in, along with the decisions you will need to make and the quick-time events to complete, will be based on how long the song playing in that part of the game is.

As far as controls go, they are pretty much what you would expect for a mouse and keyboard game. ASDW movement, F to interact, mouse click to grab, and the quick-time buttons can be R, E, Q, LMB, F, or Space. They are a little bit clunky in some aspects, but not to the point that it can’t be worked with while still being entertaining.

While you are going through each scene, you will find that you actually don’t have a lot of time to find hidden things, or even objective things, as you would in a standard game. This game will have you moving quickly through areas to focus on the main objective first before trying to look for the optional objectives. It will take more than one playthrough if you are hoping to free all the birds, find all the CDs, and unlock all the visions. The main thing you should focus on during your first playthrough is your choices because they are going to lead you to one of four endings and I will admit that I got what I consider to be the worst ending from my first playthrough. Bad situations with limited time is a recipe for bad decisions with worse results.

Visuals

Definitely the worst part about this game is the visuals. While it is obvious that they put some effort into making the environments look filled out and give the proper atmosphere, a lot of the graphical quality was rather poor. Still good enough to portray the story and provide the proper atmosphere, but don’t expect something great to look at when it comes to characters and fire.

Sounds

Music is the focal point of this game, as it is a music-driven narrative title. I really liked the album and didn’t find myself disliking any of the songs. I would say that calling it “Metal-based” to be false and that I think the term “Rock Ballad” is much more fitting. It has a few hard rock songs and even one that could be considered 80s metal, but the majority of them are more alternative rock.

Still, I liked how the words in the songs were used to provide the dialogue in the game, and even during the exploration sections they had meaningful music. It really gave this game the grounding of what made it an entertaining and great game.

Replayability

As a decision-based game with multiple endings, there is definitely room for replayability! Plus, the whole music album is worth listening to more than once, so I definitely recommend playing through the game more than once to get different endings.

What Could Be Better

The overall gameplay mechanics were pretty well set but came out pretty clunky in a lot of aspects. These definitely need to be improved and when it comes to future titles in this game genre (which I certainly hope they make more games like this) I hope they get this set up properly from the start.

When playing through the game a second time, give the player the option to just hit “New Game” or at least override the “Continue” option on the menu to pick up where they left off on their new run. When I played through the second time, it was a little annoying to have to use the Level Select screen when I loaded back up.

Conclusion

Of Bird and Cage is an awesome game that breeds a new genre! I hope to see more albums made into a game experience like this because it was a great change of pace while being entertaining. It really blends together a love for video games and a love for music beautifully. While there were a few aspects of the game that could have been better, mainly in the gameplay area, I would recommend this game to anybody who has even the slightest interest in a music-driven and/or decision-based narrative game.