Birds Watching turned my comforting hobby into a fight for survival at the end of the world, against a monster that will haunt me for the rest of my life

I didn't think there was any way birdwatching could become fear-inducing, but Birds Watching proved me very wrong. Instead of the relaxing walking simulator you'd expect from a game primarily about watching the birds, it keeps you nervous: looking over your shoulder at all times in case some towering monster is lurking behind you. I should've known this from the brief description declaring "you spend your days bird watching. You're not alone on the mountain." But frankly nothing could've prepared me for what was coming.

At the beginning, you're told that the entire world was engulfed in flames but, conveniently, you are the only human left alive after escaping to the mountain. Fortunately, you've got a pair of binoculars and have spent your days wandering around looking at all the birds who fled there too. You've also developed a relationship with a little bird who's been visiting your cabin, who you get to name. It's definitely a bleak start, but it doesn't feel too ominous.

After this brief introduction, you wake up in your cabin and you're free to explore. I immediately picked up the bird guidebook hanging out on my desk and started looking up where the birds I needed to find were. You're given the silhouettes and where they spend their time, but no clues as to what birds they are, and it's your job to track them down. I was naive enough to think this would be the game's only challenge—survivng the end of the world and tracking down all the birds. But, as it turns out, that's not the case.

Once you've studied the few birds hanging around this starting area—like a redstart, swallow, and whatever bird visits the feeding table—your radio buzzes. Suspicious, given the fact you're meant to be the only human alive. You're given various dialogue choices, but most of them lean into you becoming a servant to the voice on the radio and agreeing to find him a food store before he comes to the mountain. So, I agreed, and was ready to leave the starting area when my companion bird popped up and started talking to me.

This bird tells you not to trust the voice (which I thought was a given) and explains that all birds can talk, and you need to get them on your side, but your first interactions are less than pleasant. The birds don't want to speak to a human, which is fair enough, but ever-so-slightly disheartening. My companion bird explained that I needed to become less human and more bird-like to get them to trust me, and the first step was stripping down and covering my body in leaves to look like feathers before trying to speak to them again.

Each of the areas around the map is home to a variety of birds, but the more you log, the more the game begins to unravel. I had a few positive interactions with the birds, with them agreeing to help me take the opposition down, before they started to cotton on to the fact I was human again. My companion bird took me through various appearance-altering stages to get me to be more bird-like, like carving off my nose and forcing me to eat worms as some sort of humiliation ritual. But it worked, and I got a lot of birds on my side after letting this happen.

However, as I went through this process I started to feel more like I was being watched. I kept looking through my binoculars and seeing shapes moving in the distance, or walking along a cliffside and my vision began getting blurry as I tried to make out the oddly human-shaped mass in the distance. This was when I started getting a bit nervous to spend more time than necessary in the game's darker areas, like the swamp or the woods.

As I was walking through the orchard, listening to the birdsong and trying to figure out if there were any unidentified species here, an unruly, distorted screech from behind me made me jump out of my skin. I didn't know what it was but I genuinely felt too terrified to turn around, and the deafening footsteps were enough of a clue that whatever it was had started chasing me, so I just started to run.

You have a limited stamina bar, which meant I could only climb up half the mountain before I had to stop and rest, so I took this opportunity to turn around and look at the unsettling, half-bird-half-man monster that was hot on my tail. Frankly, I wish I hadn't. I think I would've been better off not knowing what it was, as from that point onward I started to see this creature watching me almost everywhere and was paranoid it would start chasing me again. But hey, it definitely forced me to make my way through my bird book a lot faster.

Eventually, after a fair bit of trial and error, I got all the birds on my side and reached the end. Depending on which quests you complete and how much you listen to the voice on the radio will affect which ending you get, but I would much rather listen to what the birds have to say. I can't say Birds Watching has made me feel desperate to get to the forest any time soon, and now I've got a weird feeling about all the birds hanging around outside of my house, but at least I'm safe from any horrifying bird man creatures. Hopefully.