Steambirds Alliance
By Michael Lafferty,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Cats vs. birds with planes equals multiplayer fun.
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Steambirds Alliance
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What’s It About?
STEAMBIRDS ALLIANCE is a "bullet hell" shoot-em up where players attack enemy targets while avoiding large amounts of incoming fire. The plot of the game is an old story of the rebel alliance tackling the evil empire, but with a twist -- the rebels are birds and the empire is comprised of cats. Players take to planes and fly through a variety of zones to take on the enemy. You'll fly and destroy enemy planes (which come in different sizes with different attacks), level up, and build up a hangar full of planes suited to each kind of mission you engage in (like bombing runs, dogfights, etc). There's cooperative online play, and even crafting of materials once you get to level 20.
Is It Any Good?
While this is a different take on a familiar theme, there's no discounting the quick-paced fun to be had. Steambirds Alliance is a shooter that requires some strategic elements to survive, or just a quick finger to fire the afterburners and get out of harm's way while waiting for your health bar to regenerate. What's interesting and also different about this fast-paced play is the inclusion of permadeath into the already hectic action. If you're defeated, that sparkly plane you invested time and possibly real money in (thanks to its in-game purchases) goes bye-bye, and you have to build up another plane from scratch. That manages to raise the stakes even higher than ever before when you're on a mission. The graphical elements are two dimensional, but sport some nice colors in the backgrounds and the planes. Unfortunately, the audio is flat and consists mostly of repetitive background music, which can get old fast when you realize that you fight a mission, collect points, improve your plane, and do it all over again.
There were some problems logging in at times and the current player base for the game is small. Overall, though, the action's easy to jump in to, and the enemies just keep coming and coming. Players can determine how long they wish to play, and can escape from a battlefield at almost any time, which is a nice element, especially if you need a break or want to save a plane that you've been improving for a long time. Steambirds Alliance is enjoyable, especially in short spurts, but the wash, rinse, and repeat formula does get old in longer play sessions.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about setting reasonable game time and screen time limits? What seems like a reasonable amount of time to game, and what else could players be doing instead of watching television or playing video games?
Is it the pacing and the challenge, or the story that makes arcade games so much fun? How do players handle the intensity when it builds up to a hectic level?
Game Details
- Platforms: Mac, Windows
- Pricing structure: Free
- Available online?: Available online
- Publisher: Spry Fox LLC
- Release date: August 22, 2019
- Genre: Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG)
- Topics: Robots, Space and Aliens
- ESRB rating: NR for No Descriptions
- Last updated: September 20, 2019
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