Birds Of A Feather: Gathering Sky
The birds
Murmuration - a beautiful word and a beautiful sight. Swirling swarms of starlings sweeping are one of my favourite parts of autumn in London, and also a pretty fun tongue twister. I've rarely felt happier and more awed than floating on my back in a pond watching flocks form. Ooh, and d'you remember that fancy flocking AI from a former Valve chappie's showreel? Lovely, that was.
All right, all right, I'll move this along: hey look at Gathering Sky [official site], a game about a growing flock of birds.
Looks nice, doesn't it? Looks like a thing I'd like to play. Travelling across a colourful world building a flock of swooping birds is a thing I'm probably into. I'm not sure about the dodging-big-floaty-green-things but riding those gusts and currents looks swell.
Only after I cooed and aahed over this for a bit and started writing did I notice - hey! we posted this very trailer a year ago, when it was named Apsis. Well, I wasn't at RPS then so "we" didn't do anything, and developers A Stranger Gravity have changed the name and boshed its new soundtrack, and I like it, so we're still doing this. Maybe it's the first you've seen of it too.
This time we also know that it's unlikely to make its planned July 2014 launch. The current plan is for this April.