🕊️🦉🦜 Feather | Review | PS4 | "Do you want to fly away (yeah, yeah yeah)?" 🕊️🦉🦜 #IndieGames #GameDev

Feather is a casual game with no enemies, puzzles or challenge beyond enjoying flying around an island as a bird, Feather entertains for a short while but the complete lack of any goal and the relatively small size of the island you explore from above quickly catches up with you. 

The game does feature gates scattered around which can be flown through, at which point the soundtrack changes to another ambient track, which matches the pace and tone of the game (one of which, my partner was certain she’d heard before so please let me know if you can place it!). 

Alongside this, there are also portals that change the breed of your bird, this, in turn, changes the ‘tweets’ that your bird makes, a neat but superficial touch.

The game feels mechanically solid, running mostly at 60fps on PS4 but I did notice some frame-rate issues when the screen gets busy, such as when you dive from a higher altitude. 

Personally, when I want to chill out and play a game with no challenge I head for Yonder: The Cloudcatcher Chronicles (and, for a weirdly long time, Car Quest) as it does feature quests and interactable people and places to add colour and depth to the proceedings whereas Feather felt very much like a tech demo before the features were added. 

The idea of an explorable island is great but it almost feels like procedural generation could have been used here to give a sense of unique exploration and distance covered as opposed to the locked-off environment in the game.

Summary:
If you are a fan of relaxation games, Feather is a pretty game with a really mellow mood as you gently fly around but if you already have a game of this type that you tend to dip into, I can’t imagine it replacing that. 

I would say, however, if you have never tried playing a game purely to zone out and let your mind drift, Feather is a good way to start.

Developer: Samurai Punk

❄️💦 RATING: MELTING ❄️💦

Ratings Explained

ICE COOL (Great Game Recommended)

MELTING (Recommended with reservations, one to consider if you are a fan of the genre)

MELTED (Not A Recommended Purchase)