30 Birds is art. A unique piece that uses rotating lanterns to blur the line between 2D and 3D perspectives, and filling these lanterns with a vibrant city stuffed with quests and mini games. 30 Birds is a narrative puzzle game in which a goddess has been kidnapped, and the only way to save her is to round up 30 of her feathery friends that are dotted around the magical Lantern City.
30 Birds’ inspiration can be found in Persian art and mythology. The artwork of the lanterns, which are bright, colourful, and feature unique looking characters, are based upon Persian miniatures. The goddess at the heart of kidnapping is Simurgh, based upon a bird of the same name from Persian mythology. Within the world of Lantern City there are some mischievous djinns, and puzzles that require music to solve them.
The person to solve the mystery of Simurgh’s kidnapping is Zig, a detective. She arrives in Lantern City on the night of Simurgh’s disappearance after getting a mystical message from one of her informants. She quickly comes to understand that The Scientist is behind the kidnapping of Simurgh, and the only way to save Simurgh is to find the 30 Birds, who have their own problems that need sorting out. Take Hoop for example. Hoop is the first bird you are required to rescue after she gets locked in a cage due to gambling debts. To rescue Hoop, you need to match a pattern design, manipulating lines so they represent the puzzle. It is a bit like using an etch-a-sketch and can be just as finicky. This is just one puzzle type in 30 Birds. Others include animal based musical synthesizers from which you need to get a melody going. The puzzles themselves are generally pretty easy to solve, it is just using the controller and lining things to be near perfect can take a bit of patience.
After you rescue Hoop, 30 Birds really begins as you begin the quest to find the other 29. Now, that does not mean there are 29 individual quests to complete to find each one, as some birds are in pairs or groups. The discovery of each bird can be simple, from finding them in the world and having a conversation, to a bit more complex where you need to solve puzzles. One of the more complex ones requires solving a djinn’s puzzle of picking the correct direction five times in a row. Some birds cannot be recruited straightaway, requiring story progression or finding a number of collectibles. One bird needs feathers to be collected for it as a djinn cursed it and stole all of its feathers. You then have to restore the bird’s plumage after which it will join your mission to save Simurgh.
Exploring Lantern City is really smooth too. There are four main lanterns that make up different parts of the city – Central, Park, College, and Grand Bazaar – and you then have a few offshoot lanterns from each of these hubs. For example, you will find cafes, an observatory, and a market to name a few places. Each lantern has four sides to it, with the face Zig is on rotating to face the player as you move around. The flat 2D faces of the lantern can look a bit confusing at first for navigation, but the visual design of each is so well done that you figure out how to move around, and switch between levels with ease.
While the overall arc of the story is fairly predictable, there’s details within that can hold some surprises. There is also a decent amount of comedy spread out throughout the game, which was amusing though not laugh out loud funny. The game even has its own little minigame called Tiles, which is essentially a matching game using picture tiles. The objective is to clear your tiles before your opponents, smashing matching pairs to win. It is a fun little aside, and can also help in collecting items you need for completing some missions.
There were a couple of issues in 30 Birds that I found. One was a bug in Park Lantern where Zig fell through the world, forcing me to restart the chapter and losing some progress as a result. Another was that there was a moment where it was not clear what I had to do next, so I spent some time wandering the lanterns until I stumbled across the next checkpoint. One time I had received a task to complete before I had spoken to the character that would give the task, resulting in me talking to a character for the first time and completing the objective before getting any background. It is not the biggest issue, but it meant some conversation lines were missed.