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Sometimes, the school becomes a forest. The lockers become trees and the corridors become pathways, sweetly dappled with moss and puddles and clusters of bright plants. The walk home is transformed from a lonely trudge into a woodland adventure, one that leads from the classroom, with its empty seat right at the back, to the equally empty apartment, with the note on the door from mum or dad, the echoing living room, the bathroom and kitchen both tidy and sterile. A Bird Story isn't a brilliant piece of work - it's often predictable or trite, and it drags a little despite its 60 minute running time. At its worst it seems to trade genuine feeling for the chilly wiles of technique. But it has brilliance in it, namely this walk home through the forest, and other scattered moments where the whole thing serves to remind you of the pressures and isolation and tempting slides towards fantasy that can be such a big part of childhood. There aren't enough games - or things approaching games - that understand childhood: A Bird Story really seems to. The absent or remote adults, the school that looms too large and lasts too long: designer Kan Gao is not quite this medium's answer to Maurice Sendak, but he occasionally gets close. Occasionally.
Like To the Moon, Gao's follow-up repurposes the aesthetics of a 16-bit RPG in the service of pure storytelling. And, like To the Moon, the results are both heartfelt and manipulative. The story being told this time is considerably simpler than To the Moon's backwards tumble through memory and regret, though. Here, a lonely boy finds a bird with a broken wing. He nurses it back to health. Friendship and gentle surrealism ensue.
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