Bird of Passage, it's like taxis Confessions of an urban legend

It can be difficult to find the time to complete a video game, especially if you only have a few hours a week. In our biweekly column Short game we suggest video games that can be started and ended a weekend.

Cities at night can be magical. There is a turning point: after the night, people have gone home, before the early risers get up to work, when things start to feel weird. Familiar places do not become unknown, exactly. But they do not feel well. You will pass through a place like Times Square, lit up as if you were trying to look artificial like it was still day, but no one could see it.

Bird of passage does not exist so much in this setting, but mine for all it's worth. The game follows a … nobody? Bird? An eyeball umbrella? As they wander lost taxi cabs through the streets of Tokyo late at night. But all you see of the city is in the lights of the night reflected in the taxi and the occasional sidewalk where our wandering protagonist is left behind by a taxi before being quickly picked up by another.

Narration takes place in the text through conversations that the anonymous protagonist has with the different drivers they meet. In the style of a visual novel, you have the choice between different dialogue options, which then allow you to conduct these conversations on different paths. Sometimes they give a glimpse of why the wanderer is lost, or what it might actually be.

Each taxi is different from the last, but when playing, things become familiar. The look of different sidewalks and taxis begins to look similar, but not exactly the same. A cyclical trend occurs when conversations with taxi drivers begin to repeat themselves. In a way, it mimics the confused wanderings of this lost passenger, but it also allows you to explore different dialogue options you did not choose before. During this process you will learn more about what is really the wanderer.

It's an intelligent structure, because visual novels often require several games to see the whole story or unlock the real end. Bird of passage manages to find a way to put this experience in one session, while relating it to the story. This is especially true after going through the cycle several times, apparently having run out of dialogue options and new paths for the story to collapse. At this point, you begin to try to reconstruct in your head the different paths you have taken in the dialogue while continuing your journey through the conversations.

In a way, this structure mimics the wanderer's experience in his frustration and confusion about how to get where they go when they do not know where they need to be. As a player, this rehearsal does not last long enough to become frustrating. But it's long enough for you to feel it, enough for you to start feeling empathy with the wanderer. So when you finally have all the information and they understood where they were trying to go, it is a moment of all the more powerful and relieved.

Bird of passage was created by The Space Backyard. You can get it Itch.io to pay for what you want (Windows and Mac OS). It takes less than an hour to finish.