Feathery Ears

Genre: 3D Platformer

Players: 1

.

Review:

Feathery Ears is a 3D Platformer originally released on PC in 2019 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2020, with a story about an ordinary schoolgirl magically transported to the world of her fantasy doodles. And I’m going to preface the rest of this review with something you will see me saying repeatedly here: every facet of this game feels unfinished.

The graphics here have a very “Nintendo 64” vibe to them, with relatively low-poly characters and a world suspended in inky black abysses. At the very least I can say the character designs here are interesting and appealing, but otherwise this game puts off a very “retro” vibe, and in a way that doesn’t exactly scream that this is a professional effort. Meanwhile, the music and sound does little to really distinguish this game apart, feeling mostly generic, although the wordless, simple, 2D cutscenes at least have a little personality to them.

This game’s unfinished feel extends to the gameplay here, which doesn’t seem to be doing anything original for a 3D Platformer, but has an unfocused level design, goal design, camera controls, and move set that feels like it was slapped together haphazardly, resulting in a very uneven difficulty curve right from the start. It doesn’t help that there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the way levels are put together, you’re just supposed to search around them for all of the stars (how novel), often needing to make use of odd quirks in the level’s geometry just to get from point A to point B.

There’s the potential for a good classic-style 3D Platformer in Feathery Ears, but as it is this feels like an undercooked mess that needed more time in development on every front. The level design, goal design, character move set, visual presentation… so much of this game needed more work, and without it, I can’t very well recommend this game, even to fans of the genre. Playing it would likely just leave you wondering, as I do, what this game could have been if it spent more time in development.

tl;dr – Feathery Ears is a 3D Platformer that has a very retro “Nintendo 64” feel to it, but in so many ways it just feels like an incomplete product that was released well before it was finished. It’s a game that had potential to be interesting, but needed more time in development that it simply did not get.

Grade: D+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}