The Girl of Glass: A Summer Bird's Tale Critic Reviews

Its bold mixture of traditional adventure with a turn-based RPG combat system means The Girl of Glass won’t be for everybody, but those who are open to its genre-bending experimentation and exploration will find it a beautiful, captivating experience.

I found The Girl Of Glass: A Summer Bird’s Tale’s to be a rare, honest look at how complex people can be inside while appearing to be less than that on the surface, one that doesn’t shy from reminding the player that being a presumptuous person with a loud mouth might make for an amusing exchange in a game, but in reality, it will cause pointless hurt and tends to betray a lack of understanding from the joker. It touches upon societal issues like submission to authority and the place of business in the lives of common people in a way that’s absolutely not being discussed honestly in the predominantly American influenced video game scene and for that alone, if you are drawn to the power of interactive narrative, this game is worth your time and money.

Girl of Glass: A Summer Bird's Tale draws elements from point-and-click adventures, visual novels, and turn-based RPGS, blending them with a whimsical world and sympathetic characters to make a wonderful story. The battle system, while at times too difficult, adds flavour and action to the point-and-click formula that some might otherwise find slow, and the characters and their stories pique the player's interest and keep them wanting to dig in more and keep the story going. Where a lot of point-and-clicks feel slapped together to make a quick experience, this is a rare gem that feels like it was designed from the ground up to be exactly what it is. It doesn't try too hard, it doesn't cram in aspects from other genres in ways that don't fit. Girl of Glass: A Summer Bird's Tale is a wonderful story, built into a game that tells it wonderfully.

The Girl of Glass: A Summer Bird’s Tale is a difficult game to sum up. The setting, graphics, and fairy tale narrative all point to a great, family-friendly game that would make for a great introduction to the point and click genre, but the tonal inconsistencies and overly difficult battles seem to be aimed at an entirely different audience. I appreciate the narrative reasons for this disparity, but feel that many will be put off by the latter aspect. If you are willing to embrace the battle system then there is much to be enjoyed in this coming of age fairy tale.

The developers of The Girl of Glass did not lack ideas, quite the contrary – they had too many. The game would have scored higher, had it remained a simple point’n’click adventure, because its turn-based combat is a miss and later chapters focused solely on fighting are boring to the point of being unbearable.