Puppet Bird is a game in which you are flying a small bird attached by a rope, avoiding obstacles of moving balls and barriers by winding the winch holding the rope clockwise and counterclockwise to lower and raise the little bird. It’s a very unique way of designing this style of game. There are challenges you can try and complete.
The graphics are really colorful and cute and a bubbly music accompanies the gameplay. Everything looks like a paper cutout or finger puppets and the different “puppets” you can unlock are all adorable and unique. Ice birds, vampire birds, invisible birds, and all sorts of little avian buddies to fly are available. They seem to be played the same with just cosmetic changes. You receive a gift of coins daily that you can use to purchase the new characters.
The controls are clunky and seem delayed and it was a struggle to learn how to move the bird in any precise direction. It might be deliberate to add challenge, but it can be frustrating as the push and pull of the rope do not seem to be constant. Moving a little clockwise will move the bird a different amount than moving the same distance counterclockwise. This makes it hard to judge how far to turn the crank holding the rope.
The gameplay is constantly interrupted with ads. They are not just pop up screens but often videos that aren’t able to be skipped. It was extremely frustrating to play a level just to go into a 30 second video for a different game. Often the “close tab” button wouldn’t appear for a while. Because of the short nature of the game I spent more time watching unavoidable ads than actually playing Puppet Bird.
Puppet Bird could have been an original take on the Flappy Bird craze with cute graphics, fun avian characters that were easy to unlock, and fast gameplay. But the sluggish controls and almost nonstop onslaught of ads made the game frustrating and almost unplayable. I didn’t get a chance to master the gameplay at all because I was watching so many ads.
A truly progressive clone that I believe will continue to grow in relevance and reach as long as it is regularly gets updated with new features.