Digital Bird Playground

While we all agree that Devil Daggers is the bestest best game of 2016, you might not even have heard of the year's second-bestest game. It's Digital Bird Playground, a local multiplayer sandbox made by Bernband creator Tom van den Boogaart, where birds ride bicycles and play with worms and chase frogs and play basketball with frogs and throw frogs into the pond and generally…

'Suspicious Developments' remains my favourite name for a games studio*, but 'Sokpop' might be my favourite name for a video games collective. That's because a) it captures some of the playfulness that they bring to their work, and b) it's fun to say. Sokpop!I can look forward to exclaiming it more often, because Sokpop Collective have announced that they'll be releasing a new game every…

We usually do our enormous GAMES OF THE YEAR posting fest at the end of the year (as would seem logical) but because it seems silly to reserve praise for special occasions we're doing a Games Of The Half Year collection to tell you about everything we've loved playing so far. It can double as a summer holiday recommendations list too! We've listed ours in…

The first game I played at GDC was Digital Bird Playground. It was on a big screen in the Mild Rumpus area so I collapsed into a beanbag and started guiding a seagull around a play area, hopping on and off a little yellow bicycle and throwing frogs through basketball hoops.