Star Birds👁 Image
is a 2025 Science Fiction construction and management game developed and published by Kurzgesagt and Toukana Interactive👁 Image
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It tells the story of a crew of intelligent birds who set out on a mission to explore the universe, mine asteroids, and discover the origins of the mysterious, alien strangelets.
The game was released in Early Access on September 10, 2025.
Star Birds contains examples of:
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- An Early Access Update added the ability to choose not to play a cutscene when starting over a level you've already completed.
- The 100% score on each level does not include the waste products—Ash, Goop, and Scrap, which don't even appear on the Resources Tab until you start exporting them. Presumably because it'd be frustrating for 100% to include exporting 100% useless resources. If you export those anyway on top of everything else, you can get a score of higher than 100%.
- Until you put down your first Launch Pad in a level, you won't be allowed to scan more planets once your Tech Points balance hits 10. Since you need 10 Points for that first Launch Pad, this prevents you from softlocking yourself early in the level by scanning too many planets trying to pick one.
- If you break the requirements for an achievement you don't have yet, such as taking too long in Sector 1 or claiming four or more asteroids in Sector 2.1, you'll get a pop-up in the corner saying so, letting you know early on that you'll need to start over instead of only revealing this after you've completed the level.
- Asteroid Miners: The main gameplay is building constructions to mine resources from asteroids.
- Bird People: The birds, being based on the birds from Kurzgesagt, are anthropomorphic versions of various species of birds.
- The Captain: Captain acts as the player's in universe avatar, commanding the crew on their missions and having the final say in all decisions.
- Ensign Newbie: Ensign Yolk is implied to be the youngest member of the crew and behaves very childlike.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Captain is only ever called by his rank.
- Factory-Building Game: To complete objectives, resources sometimes need to be processed and combined in specially built factory constructions
- Feather Fingers: At several points the birds are shown using the ends of their wings as hands.
- Guide Dang It!: Kurzgesagt discusses this and their wish to defy it in this news update👁 Image
, which lists a handful of things that were reported as bugs that were actually intended. The developers mention that these kinds of reports are still helpful because they showcase where the in-game instruction isn't clear or intuitive enough. - Shout-Out: The opening cutscene is a shout out to 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a tribe of prehistoric birds learning to work together to pick fruit off a tree, before fading to the crew's ship launching off the birds' home planet.
- Sleeper Starship: The birds travel between stars while frozen in egg-shaped cryonic units.
- Solar Sail: Used for interstellar travel, the final mission in the birds’ home system is to build ten mirrors and a laser to propel their starship.