Review for Of Bird and Cage
Of Bird and Cage by Capricia Productions is a challenging game to review. First of all, the publishing team claims that it is a metal album presented as an interactive story, which would imply that one should approach it differently than one would a typical game. Secondly, the theme concerns trauma and abuse, physical and substance-related topics that are difficult to ludically represent and touch upon, both as a player and as a reviewer. Finally, it's bogged down by clunky mechanics that hinder the flow of the gameplay and its effect on the player. The aesthetics add some saving attributes: the visuals match its bleak narrative and, somewhat expectedly, the best part of the game is its music. I am not a music aficionado, so I cannot comment on the value of the game as a metal album. As a player, I did not find any intrinsic connection to the music or the gameplay. Rather than enhancing the experience, the songs interrupt the narrative progression. Instead of a music album, it feels like a hectic final rehearsal of a haphazardly put together melodrama gone wrong.
The story itself further intensifies the above. It's about a girl who is a drug addict and suffers abuse at the hands of various men: her father, her boyfriend, and the prime antagonist, an older man who suddenly abducts her and torments her for a nonsensical reason we find out later in the game. The story emotionally manipulates the player using prototypically tragic events – a broken family, an abusive father, and a fatal car accident – with no deeper exploration. This superficial tragedy is paired up with poorly made fighting mechanics and unforgiving time puzzles. The claustrophobia and intensity that the time puzzles create fit the setting, but the minimal gameplay does not allow the player to connect with the heroine. The game jumps from one dramatic episode in her life to the next. It's divided into episodes, and the player is reduced to the role of a bystander, or at best, an impotent witness.
Even though the game is supposedly choice-driven and offers different endings, the gameplay is so difficult due to bad mechanics, and the story so uninteresting and devoid of nuance that it does not matter. The experience of the game feels like an endless loop of torment and helplessness, not because that was the creators' intention but because of how badly designed and developed the game is. Suppose the game wanted to intentionally portray this experience of a defenseless and weak protagonist plagued by her past and unable to escape her fate. Why have her try to fistfight her way out of any trouble she finds herself in? It is a design choice that creates an unbridgeable ludonarrative dissonance, a term that describes when the game story tells the player one thing, but the gameplay asks the player to do another. Also, the forced affection that the player is obliged to witness between Gitta, the heroine, and the antagonist, is contrived at best and sadistic at worst.
Of Bird and Cage is an incomprehensible, clichéd story with terrible design and worse mechanics. If you like to have a taste of experimental media, there might be some merit in the novelty of pairing a music album with interactive elements. Still, it quickly falls short of expectations regarding functionality, playability, resonance, and entertainment.
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