A murder of Crows

A murder of Crows has one of the most descriptive titles in the Comp – this minimally-styled Twine game indeed has you following along with a group of birds as they go about their daily business, mostly trying to avoid danger and look after each other. It’s an appealing setup, since beyond the inherent fun of inhabiting an animal protagonist, crows boast surprising smarts, tool use, and a sociable nature. But as corvids go, this game is more magpie than crow – the former famously being known primarily for getting distracted by whatever shiny objects they see.

I genuinely have a hard time recapping what happens in the course of this ten-minute game, because something about the way the prose tries to communicate the nonhuman experience of crow-ness never clicked in my brain. There’s a combination of short, disconnected sentences that don’t always spell out what they’re trying to say, and an avoidance of any words that might seem too human-centric or sophisticated for a bird, which makes it hard to parse what’s happening:

"We got into less trouble thanks to Crowley, only teaming up when Crowley was angry, to show the meanies who they’re messing with!"

"Noodle needs scary place and Penny at sad place."

"Penny basked in the sun happily."

"As we waited an observed Penny, the green unfeathered returned and starting moving Penny elsewhere."

(As that last one indicates, there are some typos too).

This obfuscation is especially confusing when it comes to the player’s options; I often wasn’t sure what a particular link was trying to communicate, and making matters worse, sometimes options seemed to circle back on themselves, re-initiating chains of events that should have already concluded. There also do seem to be challenges resembling puzzles, though the above factors meant I didn’t feel very good at them; I was never able to figure out why a nice-seeming dog had been surprisingly aggressive with one of the murder’s members, or be sure that I’d ensconced an injured crow sufficiently out of harm’s way. And they move quickly from one vignette to another; often I’d feel like I’d only started to get to handle on a particular incident or problem before it was on to the next one.

Of course, these are nonhuman intelligences, so perhaps it’s apt for the thought process of the crows to be hard to follow. But I can’t help but think that if it’s intentional, this approach would have worked better with more of a vibes-based take on a crow’s daily life rather than presenting the player with puzzles that demand to be resolved and creating frustration at your inability to direct the crows accordingly. Or, alternately, the current structure married to a clearer prose style might have worked better too. As it is, A murder of Crows has a nice premise but in practice is less pleasant than its subjects deserve.