Game Review: Have You Met My New Birdie? He’s a Lawyer by Rachael Acks

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Rachael is back again to amuse us all with zir adventures. This time we assigned zir the game Aviary Attorney (to continue the theme we started with Hatoful Boyfriend) and giggled behind our hands. Check out Rachael’s take and then, in the spirit of MZ, try out this fun game.

Game Review: Have You Met My New Birdie? He’s a Lawyer

by Rachael Acks

Paris is on the brink of revolution—when is it not—and there’s been a murder most fowl. A hapless society kitten stands accused with blood on her paws. And the right bird for the job is… not available, so it looks like you’ll be defending her instead. Good luck.

You might just be playing Aviary Attorney.

Like the game Hatoful Boyfriend, you could describe Aviary Attorney as “game type X, but with birds.” Dating game with birds, meet Ace Attorney with birds. And wolves, and foxes, and various felines, and a rabbit as the world’s worst prosecutor—he’s got no killer instinct, you know. There’s significantly less pudding in Aviary Attorney than Hatoful Boyfriend, with all that empty space filled by an array of puns, political class jokes, and plays on French language.

But boy, does it get dark. Crying over my fictional pigeon boyfriend did not even prepare me for the journey Aviary Attorney took me on. Maybe I should have known, considering the setting is a fictional 1848 Paris that stands on the brink of explosive mob violence, and the main character JayJay Falcon is an attorney who defends those accused of murder. In the first chapter, you defend a cat accused of gutting a frog over her father’s business interests. In the second, it’s a fox who’s accused of attempting to assassinate the king—an extremely dumb penguin who would be endearing if he weren’t so infuriatingly privileged that it makes you want to haul out Madame Guillotine yourself—and accidentally murdered his guard captain instead. And in the third chapter? The bird shit hits the fan. You’re assigned to track down a mysterious arms dealer who supplies the revolutionaries. You’ll end up only wishing it was that simple.

That all sounds really serious, right? And it is. When you’re looking at the spooky backgrounds of the crypts under Paris and spying on a lioness casually talking about torturing someone? Boy is it. But it’s also sublimely ridiculous.

Panic Twice, Spin, by Malon Edwards

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Earlier this year in Shimmer’s “The Half-Dark Promise,” Malon Edwards wrote about a snake girl fighting tentacled shadow creatures. Here he writes about another strange girl fighting fantastical creatures. You may never look at Dance Dance Revolution the same way again.

Panic Twice, Spin

by Malon Edwards

You first noticed the miniature black hole in the corner of the playroom halfway into book one of the Cyber Sakura Seven series.

Your little sister, Mahina, was playing Panic Twice, Spin. Nintendo’s warning about cosmic repercussions was in big, bold red letters on the back of the game case, but you had thought nothing of it when you bought it with your allowance for Mahina’s re-up day. It was a game about fighting zombie-ninjas, for goodness’ sake. Besides, you used to play it all the time before Mahina died.

You had just gotten to the part of your book where Sakura’s cyber-suit is fused to her skin when you heard an odd sound in the corner of the playroom, left of the holo-vision. “That sounds like God flushing His toilet,” you thought. “But far, far away.”

Mahina, of course, heard nothing. And for good reason. Continue reading…