Games about birds
Eleven video games where birds are the point, not the background.
- 11 games
- One of them mine
- Prices checked 8 Nov 2026
I spent a good part of this year reading about where British birds build their nests, for a game I’m publishing, and somewhere along the way I started noticing birds in every other game too. It turns out there are a lot of good ones. Some are about actual birds behaving like birds. Some are about a goose being a nuisance. One is a dating sim at a school for pigeons.
Here are eleven, from a board game about building a bird sanctuary to a detective duck. I’ve said what each costs and where you can play it, and I’ve only listed the platforms I could check.
One of them is a game I’m publishing, which came out on iPhone this week. It’s at the top because this is my website and I’m allowed, but it’s labelled, and the rest are on here on merit.
If you only read one bit
- Most about birds Wingspan You want the one that’s really about birds
- Be a bird A Short Hike You want to be a bird and go somewhere lovely
- Bird with attitude Untitled Goose Game You want to be the bird that ruins everyone’s day
- Bird puzzle Duck Detective: The Secret Salami You want a bird puzzle game that makes you think
I’m publishing this one, so I’m biased
1. Nyth
Pomo Games
- iOS
Price Free, with ads. One payment removes them. Android to follow
Pick it if you like logic puzzles and want to learn a bit about British birds.
I’m publishing this one, so take what I say with a pinch of birdseed. Nyth (Welsh for nest) is a logic puzzle about where twenty British birds build their nests. Each level is a grid split into coloured patches, and you place nests so there’s one in every row, every column and every colour, and no two nests touch.
Then each bird adds its own rule, based on where the real bird nests: kingfishers by water, woodpeckers in trees, puffins out on the coast. There are fifty levels per bird, so a thousand in all, and every one can be solved by logic without guessing. Solved nests fill up a nature reserve and a journal about the birds. It’s out now on iPhone and iPad, with Android to follow, and I wrote up where British birds nest while researching it, if you want the real thing. More on the Nyth page.
Most about birds
2. Wingspan
Monster Couch (with Stonemaier Games)
- PC
- Mac
- Switch
- iOS
- Android
Price £15.99 on Steam and Switch, £7.49 on phones. Expansions extra, including a British birds pack
Pick it if you want the one that’s really about birds.
The digital version of the board game that won the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2019. You play bird cards into a forest, grassland and wetland, and each bird you add makes one of your actions better, so by the end of a game your turns set off little chains: lay eggs, draw cards, collect food. The birds’ powers are based on how they really behave. Hawks hunt, pelicans fish, geese flock.
There are 170 birds in the base game, each one animated and with its real call. You can play it solo, against the computer or online with up to five people. If you search for bird games, this is the one most people mean, and rightly.
Be a bird
3. A Short Hike
adamgryu
- PC
- Mac
- Linux
- Switch
Price £5.79 on Steam, £6.29 on Switch
Pick it if you want to be a bird and go somewhere lovely.
You’re Claire, a young bird on holiday in a park, trying to get to the top of the mountain because that’s the only place with phone signal. Golden feathers let you climb and flap for longer, and once you’re high up you can glide down over the whole island. It’s short, it’s gentle, and you can spend as long as you like fishing or helping other hikers instead.
Bird with attitude
4. Untitled Goose Game
House House (published by Panic)
- PC
- Mac
- Switch
Price £15.99 on Steam, £17.99 on Switch
Pick it if you want to be the bird that ruins everyone’s day.
You’re a goose, let loose on an English village, and each area has a to-do list of mischief: steal a gardener’s keys, get a boy to buy back his own toy, ruin a picnic. There’s a button just for honking. A free update added two-player co-op, so two geese can cause twice the trouble. Anyone who has ever been chased by a real goose will recognise the attitude.
Bird puzzle
5. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami
Happy Broccoli Games
- PC
- Mac
- Linux
- Switch
- iOS
- Android
Price £8.50 on Steam, £8.99 on Switch. Free to try on phones, then £5.99 to unlock on iPhone
Pick it if you want a bird puzzle game that makes you think.
Eugene McQuacklin is a duck detective who’s had better days, and somebody has stolen a salami. You look over suspects and clues, then solve each part of the case by filling in the blanks in a sentence, so you can’t just guess your way through. It takes an evening or two, it’s fully voiced, and you can throw bread. There’s a sequel, The Ghost of Glamping, if you want more.
6. Feather
Samurai Punk
- PC
- Mac
- Switch
Price £8.50 on Steam, £8.09 on Switch
Pick it if you just want to fly.
A bird, an island and nothing you have to do. You swoop and glide and do backflips over the sea while the weather changes and the day turns into night. There are songs hidden around the island to find, and you can fly with other players online if you want company or turn that off and go alone. No enemies, no score.
7. Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
ustwo games
- PC
- Switch
- Apple Arcade
Price £13.59 on Steam, or with an Apple Arcade subscription
Pick it if you want to go birdwatching with a camera.
Alba is spending the summer with her grandparents on a Mediterranean island, and her grandad is a proper bird nerd. You wander about photographing wildlife with your phone, identify each species and fill in a guide, and along the way you try to save a nature reserve from being built on. It’s about all the island’s animals, not just birds, but the birds are most of it.
8. Bird Alone
George Batchelor
- iOS
- Android
Price Free to start, £2.99 to unlock the full game on iPhone
Pick it if you want a few minutes a day with one bird.
You make friends with one lonely bird, and you visit it each day in real time. It asks you a question (about friendship, about growing up, sometimes about dying), and you draw pictures for its gallery, write poems together and grow a garden that plays music. The seasons change while you play. It won an Apple Design Award, and it’s sadder and kinder than you’d expect.
9. Placid Plastic Duck Simulator
turbolento games
- PC
- Switch
- iOS
Price £1.69 on Steam, £1.99 on iPhone, £8.09 on Switch. Extra duck packs on Steam
Pick it if you want to do nothing at all, with ducks.
Rubber ducks float around a pool, and every so often another one drops in. That is the game. You can name them, there are fifty different ducks and a slide, and very occasionally something odd happens. It’s more something to leave running than something to play, and it’s surprisingly good at that.
10. Chicken Police – Paint it RED!
The Wild Gentlemen (published by HandyGames)
- PC
- Mac
- Switch
- iOS
- Android
Price £17.49 on Steam, £17.99 on Switch, £8.99 on phones
Pick it if you want a grown-up detective story with feathers.
Two worn-out rooster detectives, Sonny Featherland and Marty MacChicken, take one last case in a city full of animals. It’s a noir story told mostly through conversations: you question suspects, catch them out and piece the clues together. The art is a collage of real animal photos, which is striking. The birds here are really people with beaks, and it’s meant for adults.
11. Hatoful Boyfriend
Mediatonic and Hato Moa
- PC
Price £6.99 on Steam
Pick it if you’ve read this far and want the strangest one.
You’re the only human at a school for birds, and you can date the pigeons. They’re drawn as actual pigeons. It’s a visual novel with lots of routes and endings, and it’s very silly right up until a later route where it turns out to be something much darker. In the UK it’s only on Steam now.
What about “bird sort” puzzle games?
If you search for a bird puzzle game on your phone, most of what comes up is a “bird sort” game: you move birds between branches until each branch holds one colour. There are dozens of them and they’re mostly the same game with a lot of adverts, so I haven’t listed one. If you want a puzzle with birds in it that makes you think, try Duck Detective or Nyth.
How I picked these
Every game here has birds at the centre, as the player, the cast or the whole subject. I left out games that are only announced, and a few where a bird is the hero but you’d never notice. Several of these are on PlayStation and Xbox too, but I only listed the stores I could check.
I checked every platform, price and link against the official store pages on 8 November 2026. Prices change and games get pulled, so if something here is wrong, tell me on the contact page.
Questions
Is there a video game of Wingspan?
Yes. Monster Couch made the official digital version with Stonemaier Games. It’s on Steam, Nintendo Switch, iPhone and Android, with the expansions sold separately, including a pack of British birds.
What’s a good bird game for kids?
A Short Hike and Feather are gentle, with no fighting and nothing to fail. Untitled Goose Game is daft fun to play together. Chicken Police and Hatoful Boyfriend are meant for older players.
Are there bird puzzle games?
Duck Detective is a deduction puzzle with a duck. Wingspan is a strategy board game. Nyth, which I publish and is out now on iPhone, is a logic puzzle about where British birds nest.
What game do you play as a bird?
A Short Hike (a young bird climbing a mountain), Untitled Goose Game (a goose causing trouble) and Feather (a bird flying round an island) all put you in the bird’s shoes. Or claws.
Nyth
A logic puzzle about where twenty British birds build their nests: one nest per row, column and colour, and every bird adds a rule of its own. A thousand levels, out now on iPhone and iPad, with Android to follow.
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