Birdigo Review

Birdigo is a Word Scramble style rogue-lite about bird migration, which I’m pretty confident puts it in a category all its own. The goal of each run is to get your flock to their winter weathering grounds, with their journey represented by a series of stops, each of which will present you with a word puzzle. Score the required number of points, or “flaps” in the game’s parlance, and your flock will move on to the next stop. Fall short and the journey ends in failure.

Each level will present you with a series of letters drawn from a deck of letters. You’ll begin the game with a standard deck of letters, but as you progress you’ll have access to other decks which will give you a greater frequency of some common letters, but at the cost of some penalty cards tossed in. You’ll then need to try and form a word from those letters. Once you make your play your word will be scored and the cards used to form the word will be replaced from the deck. You’ll have a limited number of plays to reach the score required to pass the level.

There are a few twists to the gameplay – it’s not just a matter of making the longest word possible, although that usually helps. The letters do not have points assigned to them, although some will provide a bigger boost to your final score for the word. As you play, you’ll collect feathers, each of which has its own unique score bonus such as bonus flaps for words of a certain length or score multipliers for words that begin with a vowel. Once you collect a feather, it will bestow its bonus for the rest of your run. You can also collect songs, which are one-time use items that allow you to manipulate the letters you’ve been dealt or allow you to manipulate the rules a little such as adding an extra turn for the level. The game is a rogue-lite, so if you fail to advance past a level, you’re run is over, you’ll lose your feathers and songs, and you’ll need to start the migration anew. Complete a migration and you’ll unlock a new one to try – there are six total in the game.

As you can probably guess, success in Birdigo isn’t simply a matter of building the longest word that you can from the letters that you’re given. That might be enough to get you past the first couple of levels on a run, but to keep going you’ll also need to play to the feathers that you’ve collected and make use of the higher value letters whenever you can.

If you don’t like word games, then you should stay away from Birdigo. If you do, though, Birdigo adds some unique twists to the standard scramble gameplay formula that you’ll probably find both novel and challenging. You’ll also appreciate the game’s visual style and animations, which give the game a lot of charm and will bring a smile to the faces of bird lovers. Spread your wings and give the game a go!