Pigeon: A Love Story Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Play
A life-size London pigeon dating sim where you coo at one hundred and seventy thousand birds, collect landmarks for nothing
One pigeon in one hundred and seventy thousand. She said southeast, perhaps?
Pigeon: A Love Story is from Wristwork, published by Wristwork Ltd and Tiny Dragon. You fly over a full-scale London map, coo at strangers, and hunt the one bird that triggers the Polaroid ending. I played about two and a half hours across two demo sessions. My verdict is Play, with caveats.
Pigeon: A Love Story is a Play if you want a zen pigeon experience with a lottery attached, not a quick arcade loop. Go in knowing you may coo at tens of thousands of birds before the Polaroid hits. Try the London demo on Steam if that sounds like your kind of weird.
Pros
- Life-size London with one hundred and seventy thousand flapping silhouettes, wind lines, and a relaxing soundtrack while you search
- Clue pigeons, breadcrumb coo power, and reddening grid squares give the haystack actual structure
- Polaroid soulmate payoff lands when the search finally clicks; speak-to-coo settings are built for silly stream moments
- Auto-fly passive mode fits the slow-game-for-fast-times pitch when you want birdwatching more than input
Cons
- Altitude floor keeps you high above the city when rooftop skimming would sell the fantasy harder
- Soulmate search length swings hard; my first run was far beyond the dev's stated fifteen-to-thirty-minute average
Needle in a haystack with wings
The pitch is absurd on paper and calm in the air. You are a pigeon silhouette over a three-dimensional replica of London with wind lines, traffic below, and a soundtrack that makes the search feel peaceful even when it is not.
The demo ships one city at about one hundred and seventy thousand NPC pigeons. The full release promises more real-world maps.
You coo with spacebar, turn on auto-coo, or flip on speak-to-coo in settings and use your microphone instead of a button. I did not test the voice option, but it is already stream-bait. Wrong birds flip from blue to red and reject you with lines like not feeling it. Right bird means music, a Polaroid, and the run is over. As a Simulation in scale and an Adventure in how you read the city, it is closer to a mood piece than a traditional game loop.
Coo power, clues, and landmarks
Breadcrumbs float in the sky. Eat them and your coo hits a wider flock. Minimap grid squares slowly redden the more birds you have already cooed in that area, which is oddly satisfying even when you are nowhere near finished.
Wrong pigeons sometimes drop clues: southeast, you are getting warmer, nowhere near here, have you tried where the crowds gather. You can disable clues on the menu. I left them on.
Landmarks like Westminster and Big Ben get floating nameplates. Fly over them to tick them off. There is no reward beyond the counter. I still finished forty-nine out of fifty because once you are circling London anyway, why not.
Screensaver pigeon and the long search
There is auto-fly mode where your bird explores and coos alone while you watch. I used it when I stepped away, then grabbed control back for a landmark I had missed. That passive mode is a big part of why I call it an experience more than a game.
My first soulmate run took one hour, twenty-five minutes, and thirty-three seconds. The end card logged thirty-six thousand one hundred and ninety-seven pigeons encountered. I asked in the Discord and the dev said I was on the unlucky side. Average is apparently fifteen to thirty minutes. Multiplayer co-op exists on the store page if you want to race a friend to a soulmate or try to find each other in the flock. I did not try co-op in the demo.
You also cannot get that low to the buildings. I wanted proper rooftop skimming and the camera keeps you fairly high, which probably helps performance on a map this big but made me feel more like a surveillance drone than a grubby street pigeon.
Developer: Wristwork
View on Steam
Watch the video review: YouTube
Tags: Adventure, Casual, Simulation, Indie, Multiplayer, Wholesome, Cozy, Exploration, Relaxing
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