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As part of our coverage of London Games Fest's New Game Plus event, we sat down with Passion Pictures' producer, Karen Troop, to learn more about the cosy and adorable indie adventure, The Day I Became a Bird.
"Hello everyone and welcome back to Gamereactor. I'm still at London Game Fest at the New Game Plus event and I'm currently here with Karen to talk a little bit about The Day I Became a Bird.
So, now this is a game that actually kind of crept up on me a little bit, and for maybe the people out there who are less familiar with it, give us an idea as to what to expect from it."
"So, it is a little narrative adventure puzzle RPG. It's based originally on a French storybook.
So, it's a beautiful little emotional story. We, as Passion Pictures, originally turned it into a short film back in 2022, and then we decided it would make a brilliant little cosy game, and here we are.
So, obviously the title kind of gives it away a little bit, but what can we expect from a narrative sense?
Well, it kind of does, not completely. So, the story is, you're a little boy called Frank."
"It's his first day at school, and he meets a little girl called Sylvie, kind of falls in love with her, and wants to get her attention.
Sylvie is really into birds and bird watching, and so in little boy logic, Frank decides to turn himself into a bird.
And so, yes, it just goes from there. So, it follows the same narrative as the storybook, and there's lots of really nice little emotional elements to it. Little bits, little kind of Easter eggs and storytelling."
"The graphics are absolutely beautiful, and it's just a heartwarming little story.
Really nice little puzzles. It's just a lovely casual play. Sit on the sofa, have a nice cup of tea, play a nice little game. It's cool.
And you mentioned a minute ago that obviously the inspiration or the source material is the book.
How have you taken, you know, from page to screen, I guess?
So, it was originally... So, Andrew Ruerman, who is the founder of Passion Pictures, he originally, he basically found the book at the Bologna Book Festival, and he previously had done this with another film that had been very successful, he actually won an Oscar for, called The Lost Thing, where he'd found the book at the festival, turned it into an animated short, won an Oscar."
"So, he thought, I will go back to the Bologna Book Festival and do the same thing.
Came across this book, was immediately drawn to it, and then ended up working with Epic Games, because they were looking to find ways to bring more stylized animation into Unreal Engine.
So, that was turned into this short film. It's a really lovely 15-minute animation, which, incidentally, you get as DLC with the game, if you buy the game, which we thought was..."
"Yeah, we just thought that was a lovely little thing to do.
And then I came along as EP in the games team, and immediately went, there's a cozy game here.
It really confused everybody at the animation studio, because, you know, that's...
It wasn't their first pick for kind of things that might make a game, and there's not a lot of huge gamers there and things like that."
"So, I pulled this one out, everybody got very confused, and then I went away and made a game.
So, obviously, with the short film, it is short, 15 to 20 minutes.
The book itself, we're not talking about a long thing here.
So, how have you filled this space, shall we say, with the game?
So, that is all down to Hyperluminal Games, who we've co-developed the game with."
"So, we've sort of partnered with them.
Obviously, we've brought the look and feel, the art design, all of that that came originally from the film.
And then they have taken their expertise in game design and built that out.
So, lots of lovely little puzzles that just kind of build out the ways to move through the chapters."
"They have an existing sort of UI tool set that they've used in their previous games.
So, you use that to interact as well in places.
And then there's lots of little puzzle games, kind of the organize the squares, complete the puzzle, that kind of thing.
There's all that kind of thing all the way through."
"So, the game is here, effectively, right?
So, with that being the case, and people are getting ready to jump in and experience it for themselves, what's one thing you'd really like to highlight about The Day I Became a Bird?
Oh, I mean, it's just a beautiful game."
"The look of the game, the emotion of the game, obviously, the original narrative from...
So, the author's name is Ingrid Chabert.
She's written a lot of other lovely little books, very similar style and tone in terms of the types of story that she writes.
They're just amazing."
"She's been fully involved in this as well and kind of been involved in the process and loves the game.
She's thrilled that we've done this with it.
And, yeah, it's just a really lovely little gentle adventure to spend some time with.
You mentioned Ingrid there, and obviously you've got an eye for this as well."
"Is The Day I Became a Bird just the beginning of your sort of expansion into turning storybook into game?
I would like to think not.
I mean, sorry, I'd like to think so.
I'd like to think we are going to..."
"I mean, I'd love to make some more of Ingrid's books into games, yeah.
But, yeah, no, we're obviously looking at other games work as well.
We have other original IP in the studio that we've already started doing some work.
We're doing some prototypes with."
"We actually had another prototype in the indie showcase that developed last year, which is called Forager, which is based on foraging for mushrooms.
But I describe it as a cross between The Great British Bake Off and Stranger Things.
So, yeah."
"So The Day I Became a Bird, people can pretty much hop into it right now.
So if you haven't already had a chance to check out this game, go and do so.
Go and check it out.
I'm sure you'll have an absolute blast with it."
"And, again, for more from the game, potentially more from Karen in the future, and from Ingrid's works in the future, you know where to find it all on your local GameRants region.
Take care, guys."
