4/5 ★ – sirvalkyerie's review of Casual Birder.

I was very excited to get my Playdate when I bought it, but in the end only fumbled around with it a little before tossing it in a drawer and forgetting about it. I loved the idea of the little thing and it did fill me with a lot of glee when it first arrived, but I never much committed to giving it a real go when it finally did show up in my mailbox. Now that Mars After Midnight has released, I've decided I gotta pop it back open and really give it some time. And with that, came me revisiting Casual Birder. It's short, very charming, some dorky writing and overall very reminiscent of Legend of Zelda style gameplay with some Undertale-ish dialogue. It's a little too try-hardy sometimes and a little too quirky for the sake of quirky at times. But it's still fun. It's certainly a shining star of Season One on the Playdate and one of the few free Season One games that attempts, and succeeds, at being a real full and complete game, rather than a gimmick or an activity of some sort. I thought about giving a lower score. But felt maybe I was being stingy. It's not the longest or most complex or most innovative game. But it was fun, I will remember it, I did really enjoy it and I think anyone with a Playdate would score this amongst their favorite titles on the device. Simple shouldn't be a penalty for a game. Sometimes really good games can be really simple ones.