Black Bird is an interesting shoot ‘em up on Nintendo Switch with an interesting story and fun gameplay. Learn more about it in our Black Bird review!
A little girl wonders onto the road and dies. Just like that. People walked past her and didn’t notice anything was wrong. Somber, right? The girl eventually turns into an egg, and when the egg hatches a blackbird is born. After what happened with the girl, it’s easy to understand why the blackbird is out for revenge. You’ll take control of the new and powerful black bird that is more than ready to wreak havoc all over the place. Anything and everything that stands in its way are going to die!
Gameplay makes this a comfortable game to play. You can move the blackbird left or right on a 2D plane, and you can simply hold down the fire button to shoot all over the place. You will get to collect the gems dropped by the enemies you defeat, and you can use these gems to get upgrades for the blackbird. The game is heavily score-based, so one of the core mechanics is combos. The bigger the chain you can keep going the bigger your combo multiplier which will affect the points you get. This is a nice incentive since the game features online leaderboards to keep track of your performance. You also need to stay close to enemies to grab gems before they start to shrink in size, which lowers their value, giving this one a nice risk vs. reward balance.
The goal of the game is to find towers and take them down. Once you have done that you will then get the opportunity to face off against a boss, which often has two phases to complete. The available bosses are challenging, but only slightly more so than the levels themselves, so taking them down won’t be overly frustrating. The main game only offers four levels in total, which does sound like a very short game, but when you complete all four and defeat the final boss you will unlock True Mode which ramps up the difficulty considerably while introducing some new stuff here and there, giving you a whole new way to experience the game.
If you’re looking for a fun and different indie shoot ‘em up on Nintendo Switch, then you should definitely check out Black Bird. I really liked the 8-bit sepia-toned pixelated art style mixed in with some bright colors here and there. The game’s visuals are top-notch with a lot of attention to detail. Same goes for the game’s music which is a weird, quirky and eccentric soundtrack that perfectly complements the experience.
Disclaimer
This Black Bird review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Onion Games.
