It’s a bird, it’s a plane…nah, it’s just a bird.  The next thing you can build in the Nintendo Labo VR Kit is a bird.  Make a cardboard bird’s wings flap to play bird style mini-games!  Hey, at least the thing you build this time lets you play games related to that animal, not like that VR Elephant!

Here is a bigger shot of the bird you can build.  I kept the left JoyCon in so you can see its ‘beak.’  That’s the only controller you need, as it just reads the shaking of the controller to move the bird.  You squeeze down on the bird’s legs like clamps, and rubber bands on the inside make the bird flap its wings and move its head.  You have to really hold the VR goggles tight otherwise there is a lot of shaking, though.  But that’s really the only problem I had with it.  There are some cardboard sheets that you can punch out and decorate and customize your bird with.  Like different wings and crests and whatnot.  You can also use some other VR accessories to help control the bird, like the pinwheel and wind pedal, but we’ll get to those in a bit.

The first of the main bird games you can play is Bird Island.  Here you can freely fly about an island as a crane.  Tilt to turn and flap your wings to fly up faster.   There are nests scattered about the island, and when you approach one and stare at it for a bit, it’ll hatch and a baby bird will appear.  It’ll ask for a certain kind of food that you can collect throughout the island.  These include apples, turnips, mushrooms, bees, and fish.  Find these foods and stare at them to collect them, then bring them back to the right bird.  When you feed a bird, it’ll grow up and fly alongside with you.  Your goal is to collect all the birds!  It kind of reminds me of a game I reviewed a while back called Feather, except this VR game is way more fun and is what Feather should’ve been in the first place.

You can use two VR accessories to help you out, but they’re not necessary to play.  If you attach the pinwheel to the bottom of the bird, you can blow into it and the bird will blow out gusts of air.  And if there are birds flying with you, they’ll dart out and collect far away items for you.  The next accessory you can use with the bird is the wind pedal, which gives you a boost of speed.  The game saves your progress, which is good since they remind you every five minutes to take a break, which is a good idea to do when playing these VR games.

The next game you can play is Bird Dash.  It takes place on the same island, but you have rings to fly through in a limited amount of times.  You don’t need it to play, but the wind pedal used here can give you some record times!  Aside from a few mini-games and activities for the bird in the VR Plaza, that’s all you can do with the bird.  It’s pretty neat, but I think the game would be just as much fun without the VR.  But then, that may be because of my vision.  Wouldn’t it be neat if they made a VR version of the arcade classic Joust with this?

Tags: Game Reviews