Play as a magical bird in Shattered

Shattered is a little exploratory platformer in which you play as a bird who must climb up a mountain to rescue his brother from strange, threatening glitch-creatures using the power of his magical bell. It’s also easily one of the prettiest games I’ve seen lately.

Making your way through this colourful, construction paper style world requires surprising amounts of concentration. As well as the standard WASD for movement, ringing your magic bell requires well timed use of the arrow keys, so you have to keep both hands independent but coordinated. Pulling it off feels great though, as showers of purple and pink magic notes burst out in a pastel chime and stave off these nightmare enemies.

I won’t spoil anything, but the game's got a neat little story, too, though perhaps one to avoid if you’re only looking for happy endings. On the other hand, they do give it away in their gameplay video, so you can see for yourself below:

It’ll only take about fifteen minutes to ascend the mountain, and uncover all the secrets hidden there, but there are some cute extras to find. It's sweet to hear your bird friend reminisce about trips to the shrine that he and his brother used to take, and there are lots of NPCs to chat with as well. Perfect for if you really want to spend some more time just soaking in the beauty of the world that developer Curlscurly have created, which I certainly did.

Shattered is available for pay what you want with no minimum on itch.io.