Did you know I love Chulip? If not, hmm… You must be new here. Actually, I don’t think I’ve brought it up on this site very often, but whenever I touch something remotely adjacent to Chulip while writing for Destructoid, I’ll namedrop it. I love it enough that I’m always watching for new stuff from Yoshiro Kimura and Onion Games. I’ll probably have to wait until next year for Stray Children, but I’m already getting warmed up.

Black Bird is the third title from Onion Games after Dandy Dungeon: Legend of Brave Yamada and Million Onion Hotel. But while those first two games were mobile titles, Black Bird was made with the Switch in mind (and later other platforms). As such, it’s closer to what this house considers a “proper game.” It isn’t mired in bathroom-friendly microprogression. Although, you can eat through it rather quickly.

No, Black Bird is an arcade-style shoot-’em-up. It could be rather accurately described as Tim Burton’s Fantasy Zone.

I’M AFRAID I MUST ASK YOU TO DIE SOMEWHERE ELSE

You play as an impoverished girl who dies cold and alone in an uncaring society. For some reason, she then turns into an egg and emerges as the eponymous Black Bird, a shadowy creature only somewhat resembling an actual bird. Whether possessed or acting under her own wrath, she then wreaks havoc on the people who let her die.

There are four levels with a decent amount of diversity when it comes to enemies, but they go by so quickly it’s hard to really appreciate. It’s easier to appreciate the bosses, as each one has a different (but simple) pattern of attack. 

It’s simple as far as shoot-’em-ups go when it comes to gameplay. There’s a shoot button and another for bombs, and that’s about as far as it goes. There are no Fantasy Zone-esque stores to power up, though you can upgrade your speed. You also collect gems dropped from defeated enemies, which will level up your bird. Level up systems are designed to be simple satisfaction, but the one in Black Bird gives so much resistance that it’s especially awesome to finally see your bird mature. There’s no guarantee that you’ll reach the maximum level before the end of the game, so it feels extra urgent to suck up all the gems.

DEATH COMES ON DARK WINGS

Satisfying is probably the best word to describe Black Bird. There’s a lot of cathartic destruction as you tear through buildings and wipe out bystanders. You’re essentially a kaiju, with the citizens pulling out their weirdly balloon-centric military to try and put a stop to your rampage. It’s crunchy the whole way through as the world crumbles beneath your dark might.

Then you’ll sometimes find asparagus people hiding in the ground who will shoot into the air like rockets when you unearth them.

It can get hectic if you’re not careful. The hitbox for your bird is only around its eyeball, everything else doesn’t register. You need to keep that in mind, especially when it comes to bosses, as they’ll often try to fill the screen with projectiles.

The normal mode that you start with is pretty straightforward and easy, but after it’s complete, you can start “True Mode.” This is a much harder variation that will reward you with a number of “bad endings” depending on your score before giving you the true ending if you pass a certain threshold. This is best done by racking up your score multiplier when killing enemies.

Between every level is a short vignette that shows the girl going through… something. The story is kind of unclear and cryptic. The idea of a girl dying in an uncaring society is pretty clear, but it’s thrown into uncertainty when you get to the true ending. However, I don’t think it’s meant to have a clear ending. Yoshiro Kimura even talked about it in an interview with Limited Run Games and more or less suggested that the revenge angle is the correct one. If so, what does that true ending even mean?

Kind of a weird thing to consider when talking about Tim Burton’s Fantasy Zone.

TIM BURTON’S FANTASY ZONE

It’s the choice of graphical style and soundtrack that really sells Black Bird above all else. The graphics have a grainy, washed-out look to them while still featuring cartoonish figures similar to what you’d see in Chulip or Little King Story or Dandy Dungeon.

Overlapping this is an incredibly bizarre soundtrack by one of my all-time favourite composers, Hirofumi Taniguchi. The songs are all frantic, chaotic, and twisted. They’re overlapped by semi-operatic gibberish sung by Taniguchi (and later a contributing female singer). His voice rises, descends, breaks, and whispers. I mean, here: Onion Games features the opening song on their YouTube channel.

Above all, that’s what makes Black Bird worth playing. It’s a good game in its own right, but the twists put on it by Onion Games make it almost essential. At its core, it’s a simple facsimile of Fantasy Zone, but it takes that and gives it aesthetic depth. It plays like a classic arcade game that would be at home in a Japanese candy cabinet but wears a much darker mask. It’s like if Opa-Opa lost its medical insurance and couldn’t afford to refill its anti-depressant prescription.

8/10

This review was conducted using digital PC and Switch versions of the game. They were paid for by the author.