Most attempts at making a new skate game turn out to be a watered-down Tony Hawk Pro Skater clone with less impressive characters. When I think about skating I’m not thinking about birds. Yet the people at Glass Bottom Games thought it would be a great idea to put birds on skateboards in Skatebird.
The dream
Skatebird is the pet of an unnamed human referred to as Big Friend. The job takes up more time than anticipated leading Big Friend to be barely home to even take care of you. The Skate dream Big Friend had is long over. Being a lonely bird with loads of free time, you decide to take up skateboarding instead. Through skateboarding, you hope to solve all the problems you face and even help out Big Friend along the way. After getting a rad outfit and a sick deck you are off on you big day out adventure. With the help of other birds, you’ll discover different skate spots and learn the ins and outs of skating.
The Birdman
Being a bird comes with some advantages and disadvantages. The main disadvantage you have is in your limbs and how it transfers visually. Your bird can do most skate tricks a human can do but due to the shorter limbs, it doesn’t really look all that different. A kickflip, heelflip, and even the grabs look more or less the same. When you land these tricks the game shows what trick you performed which was handy because visually I couldn’t really tell. Luckily the layout is pretty much the same like it was in Tony Hawk Pro Skater. The advantage of being a bird is the addition of having wings. You can “double ollie” by pressing the ollie button in mid-air giving you some new options.
Micro Machines
Although the novelty of playing as a bird is marketed as the innovative part of the game, the skate spots were the real star in my opinion. Skatebird uses the setup most known from the micro machines games in which it makes a mini world from everyday items. For instance, the rims on the halfpipe are made from straws, a toothbrush is used as a grindable object, magazines against a wall act as ramps, … The people of Glass Bottom Games used very original ideas to create a believable skatepark from everyday objects. A skatepark that could be fitting for a bird…
Sticky
As a Tony Hawk Pro Skater clone, Skatebird doesn’t do a good job with making the skating fun. The environments – although original – don’t look all that slick and the tricks often feel underwhelming because of the bird aesthetic. To make matters worse, I experienced getting stuck way too much. If I bailed close to an edge the game would reset me in positions I couldn’t get out of. By manually pressing the reset button a few times I sometimes got out from those situations. Another trick was to jump and turn, resulting in a bail followed by a reset in a better place. These shenanigans aren’t quite what I’m looking for if I want to enjoy a game of skate.
Wonky camera
The skate spots often exist out of different levels. The first park had a bed and there are some objectives to complete under the bed. This became a whole ordeal in itself because the camera would act wonky due to the ‘low ceiling’. When performing a jump (and trick) this would become apparent even more. The flow of a skate game is one of the most important aspects and Skatebird has moments where flow is certainly there (especially when using the mid-air ollie). Sadly there are too many spots where the flow is broken due to faulty camera behaviour or not optimal collision detection.
Conclusion
Skatebird is a novel idea. An idea that could be so much more in the hands of a bigger studio. It pains me to say but getting this idea right is probably a case of biting off more than you can chew.
