If you ask almost anybody their greatest wish, it’s most likely to be able to shoot laser beams from their eyes. But in a close second place comes being able to fly. 

That desire to spread a pair of wings and fly has been pursued by humans ever since the made-up Icarus flew too close to the made-up sun. From airplanes to wingsuits in wind tunnels, we just want to take to the air and glide. But we made a choice. We chose to develop large brains and the heavy skeletal scaffolding required to support them, and thus we abandoned any hope of being lifted by an updraft. However, those same large brains also afforded us the ability to invent computers and then the bird games to play on them.

To satisfy that urge to soar, we’ve compiled a list of games in which you get to be a bird, where you can fly and swoop in all the ways our pesky corporeal forms will never allow. Or simply waddle between gates tipping over people’s property.
 

AER: Memories of Old

Few games meet the remit of a human who wishes to fly like AER: Memories of Old. With its gorgeous low-poly art and astounding ambient music, this is a game about just soaring. We play as Auk, a young woman on a pilgrimage, who possesses the rather splendid ability to turn into a bird.

While AER offers a lot of story, with characters to meet and some puzzles to solve, the majority of it is simply about exploration. There are many floating islands in the sky, and with a second press of the jump button, Auk can magically transform into a huge, eagle-like creature, capable of freely flying between them.

It’s a lovely game to play, and it’s worth following its story through, but AER will always stand out most for its aerial freedom. While most games wherein you play a flying creature will surround you with restrictions, AER sets you free, lets you feel the pure joy of powerfully flapping your wings and gracefully gliding as the music reacts and swells in response. A huge part of that is thanks to Cajsa Larsson’s incredible adaptive score, which is well worth listening to on Spotify even when you’re not playing.
 

Flyto

Where AER opts for a minimalist, low-poly presentation, Flyto reaches for the opposite extreme. This is embracing Unreal Engine’s realism, aiming to create an RPG in which you play as a bird and do bird-type things. You know, like hanging out with other birds, hunting for grubs, and competitively racing.

The game plans to expand in the coming months by adding what developer 7M Game Studio rather sweetly describes as a “nice story mode,” but at the moment, Flyto intends for players to create their own stories.

I admit, I wasn’t expecting the prompt “Press E To Talk” after being told to speak to “the race manager,” but then I’m also not privy to the private lives of birds, so maybe this is how it all works. It certainly explains why you so often see gulls all flocking madly in one direction while screeching about trophies.
 

A Short Hike

Adam Robinson-Yu’s A Short Hike captures a side of a bird’s life that we too often miss: their vacations. We all know they fly south for the winter, but what do they do when they get there, and how is their relationship with their aunt?

In A Short Hike, we play as the adorable Claire, a young blue bird visiting her aunt at Hawk Peak Provincial Park. To get a better phone signal for an important call, she decides to finally climb to the top of Hawk Peak, taking in the stunning views along the way. On the journey, you can goof about, make friends with the locals, complete little challenges, learn to get better at climbing, and take part in some foot races. But you can fly too! Mostly downward, but the gliding mechanic is absolutely sublime.

This is an adorable game, and while flying isn’t its core mechanic, it’s a vital part of the game, most especially at its adorable ending.
 

The King’s Bird

The King’s Bird really leans into the way humans dream of flying as it's all about limitations. As a human character attempting to escape the apparent oppression of an authority figure (it’s all very esoteric), you gain the ability to leap and swoop in temporary flight. So despite the name, no, you’re not a bird, but you aspire to be.

In the spirit of platformer Dustforce, this is a game about making precision moves to clear increasingly tricky levels, pushing you to use your limited aeronautics to the best of your ability. It’s a momentum-based platformer, meaning you need to learn to run, glide, and weave your way between a level’s obstacles and pathways, where success feels like glorious flight. Failure, meanwhile, feels like landing on spikes.
 

Blazing Beaks

Okay, admittedly there isn’t really any flying in Blazing Beaks, but you are unquestionably playing a bird. A duck, in fact. And like most ducks, one hell-bent on senselessly killing absolutely every other creature in the swamp.

This top-down, twin-stick action roguelike is very much in the mold of Enter The Gungeon, where each level is a single screen in which your little waterfowl must smack the life out of all manner of revolting, burping creatures to open the exit. As you go, you pick up new equipment, skills, and bonuses, which are all then lost as soon as you lose your last blip of health, whereupon you must start the whole thing again.

And start again you will, because the loop is compulsive, and the game is a ton of fun to play. Especially when so many of the drops will do you enormous harm, but the temptation to try everything is so overwhelming. 
 

Untitled Goose Game

If you’ve ever directly looked into the eyes of a goose, you know the truth. They’re grade one a-holes. You know the story of the Ugly Duckling, where the cygnet accidentally gets raised by the ducks, and all the other ducklings are mean to it because it looks so goofy and scrawny, but then grows up to become a beautiful swan? Well, there’s a version of that story where it’s a gosling, but it grows up to be a goose, and the ducks only hate it more.

Hence, Untitled Goose Game. It’s a documentary-level rendition of the daily life of a goose, in which the foul fowl goes about ruining everyone else’s lives. You play as that goose, and it’s a cathartic good time.

There is little to no flying in Untitled Goose Game, although there is wing flapping and honking, especially when performed to upset or scare those around the goose. It’s just tremendously fun, especially silly, and an exposé on the true nature of these wretched beasts.
 

KeyWe

As the most perceptive may have guessed, the homophonic title of KeyWe does rather rule out a bird game that involves flying. The Kiwi is, of course, a flightless bird, although you’ll be pleased to know that doesn’t prevent its ability to send telegrams.

Yes, naturally, KeyWe is about a pair of kiwis working together to stamp on letter keys for an enormous telegram machine to send out bespoke messages within a time limit. It’s not exactly New Zealand Story. The game is primarily designed to be played in co-op, with one person controlling each kiwi, attempting to coordinate moves such that messages get stamped out as effectively as possible. This is made tougher by the bizarre layout of the keys, which involve the little birds dashing about all over the place, trying to make sure they time their jumps to get the letters in the correct order.

It can also be played solo, which involves switching between the controls for each bird and occasionally needing to control them both at the same time. It gets quite a muddle.

For such a peculiar concept, it all comes together very nicely in a bonkers, sweet little game that eventually moves on to many other tasks, like baking and decorating, just like a real kiwi.
 

The Pathless

From the creators of the wonderful underwater adventure ABZÛ, The Pathless is another game that’s deeply rooted in nature—only this time above sea level. And in this game, we finally find synergy between mankind and bird, as the two work together.

This stunning game is all about movement, whether it’s a human's as she glides around the world, powering her speed by firing arrows at targets, or whether it’s a bird’s, as an eagle picks up distant objects and flies them to help solve puzzles. But most of all, it’s about when the two are combined, the eagle lifting the woman and flying her between cliffs and platforms.

However, this is no precision platformer, instead a far more open realm, which encourages exploration as you master the combination of human and bird in running, leaping, flying, and gliding. And you’re doing it all to save the land from the evil Godslayer and rescue the “children” of a vast, god-like bird of prey. It’s as birdbrained as gaming can get