Birfia reminds me of Team Fortress 2, specifically when you had those huge carts that you need to move from one side of the base to the other in the Payload mode, but with something much more fantastic: Birds.
Playing locally — either 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3 — you can become a part of the chicken team or the duck team. Once your teams are hashed out you enter a small arena in hopes of your team winning. There are two different ways to win in Birfia; as you may have guessed, one of the ways requires you to move the payload in the middle of the screen into the tunnel on your side. This cart is full of bombs and can only be moved if someone is within range, moving it automatically to the other side of the screen.
Another way to win the game is to gather all your food (three packets) from one side of the screen (enemy’s base) into your basket on your side. This is a completely new way to win for me and I found it quite fun — when I played the game at GameFest 2019 — to throw the enemy’s food off of the side of the map. It does respawn, but it’s still quite satisfying to throw away their stuff.
You can also defend yourself, despite being birds, by charging up your punch before letting go and hitting someone. Others can block your punch with a well timed shield, which would cause the punching bird to get flung back, possibly off the screen. There are also various weapons that appear at random and can be picked up and used. One grabs birds and pulls them towards you while another simply does the equivalent of a punch.
Birfia currently only has one map, but it is a well designed map with a chokepoint in the middle that you can use to easily knock enemies off. These players will respawn, but it does take a bit of time, which can help you win the game entirely. For some reason, playing as birds seems much more fun than playing as human-esque creatures. Maybe it’s how silly the entire game is or maybe it’s the bright colors. Either way, it’s a fun time.
You can play an early demo of Birfia right now, on itch.io.
