A Small Birdwatching Game With a Surprising Amount of Heart

Reviewed on PC.Score: 8/10

In my own free time, I actually enjoy casual birdwatching at local wildlife preserves around my home state. It is a relaxing and fun way to feel closer to nature without doing much besides using binoculars and getting that small sense of joy when you spot a “rare” bird like an eagle or an owl.

I never imagined someone could create a similar experience in a video game until Secret Plan Games released Flock Around on April 24.

Admittedly, birdwatching can be boring, but that is part of the chill nature of the hobby. Turning it into a game seems like a tall task if you want it to be engaging beyond a simple walking simulator with birds to look at. However, Flock Around gave me a real sense of wonder that I was not expecting, delivering on all things birds and watching them.

The game’s simple visual style works best when the environments feel calm and inviting.

Flock Around

Release: April 24, 2026

Genre: Casual, Indie

Developer / Publisher: Secret Plan Games / Secret Plan Games, Outersloth

Platforms: Steam

Making Digital Birdwatching Work

The game is pretty simple. Armed with a camera and binoculars, your goal is to take pictures of birds and earn scores based on their poses, how close your shot is, and how well the bird is centered in the camera.

With a small starting area and new areas unlocked through the stars you earn from good pictures, the game pushes you to fill your scrapbook with 3-star photos and fully clear each location. You are not just looking for one picture of every bird. You are trying to catch them from the front, back, side, and in flight.

Tracking birds by sight and sound becomes the heart of the experience.

Explaining it that technically loses some of why the game is fun, though. At first glance, I thought the simplistic art style might be too simple for something like birdwatching, but the birds are distinct and detailed enough to tell apart from a distance. That matters when you suddenly realize you are looking at the Bushtit you have been trying to photograph for 30 minutes.

The Sound Design Is Where Flock Around Really Shines

What the game truly masters is sound design. The first time I learned about Flock Around, I saw the development shorts on YouTube where the developers described the process of making the bird chirps and caws.

Because professionally recorded bird noises can be expensive, they chose to recreate the sounds using their own voices, matching slowed-down versions of tweets and chirps, then tweaking the audio until it fit each bird.

Right when you open the game, you can tell they nailed it. The distant cawing is beautiful, and it immediately put me in the mindset of being at one of those wildlife preserves. The trill of a hummingbird’s wings, the long off-caw of a crow, the sharp knocking of a woodpecker; all of these sounds work together to pull you closer to the nature in the game.

They also guide you. A sound in the distance can lead you toward a bird you have not photographed yet. That created a sensation I honestly did not expect from a game like this: getting genuinely excited when I heard a bird call I did not recognize and followed it until I found something new for my journal.

Shoot Them All With a Camera, Of Course

The journal mechanic does get a little repetitive. Photographing each bird in four different poses can start to feel samey, especially once you have upgraded your equipment and are hunting down the last few missing shots to squeeze out enough 3-star photos for the next location.

But Flock Around is not only a solo game about tracking birds. It also supports multiplayer for up to 10 players, and that changes the whole feel of the experience.

Flock Around turns birdwatching into a playful multiplayer outing.

With even one friend, it starts to feel like a virtual outing. You can walk around together, goof off, jump around the map, and stumble into special locations. It moves from a slow, somewhat faithful recreation of real birdwatching into a funny shared space where you are laughing, taking pictures of each other, and reacting when a bird lands on someone’s head.

That does not mean single-player is weak. Both ways of playing work. Alone, the game can still deliver those quiet moments where you stop, listen, and take everything in. With friends, it becomes more playful and silly without losing the core charm.

A Love Letter to Birdwatching

Flock Around feels like a love letter to birdwatching. There is so much effort put into making it feel like you are actually watching birds, not just checking boxes in a collectathon.

It is a game best experienced with a little patience. You need to take in the sound, walk around, listen, and let yourself get pulled into the simple act of searching for birds. That slower pace will not be for everyone, but when it clicks, it really works.

The game is a bit short, and it can start to feel repetitive near the end. But for only $4.99, if you have a few friends or if you are a bird lover, this is a cheap and genuinely charming experience. If you like collectathons, the scrapbook system gives you a simple but encouraging reason to keep going.

For me, Flock Around earns a solid 8/10. It set out to deliver a birdwatching experience, and I watched a lot of birds.

Related Reading

For more indie reviews and smaller releases worth watching, visit our Reviews section.

The post Flock Around Review: A Charming Birdwatching Collectathon With Real Heart appeared first on Fix Gaming Channel.

Outside the Blocks – Game of the Week 30

Reviewed on PC.Score: 7/10

Outside the Blocks could be the ultimate playground for builders and creators who want to express their artistic side in a relaxing, stress-free environment. Created by solo developer Michał Kubas. This “digital LEGO” approach sets free your creativity to build and create intricate dioramas, which are further enhanced by dropping in finer-detail assets in the form of little animations such as moving animals.
Currently, the game is limited to a small selection of these, but they do well to add more of a living, breathing aspect to your creations.

Outside the Blocks is the latest addition in the “cozy gaming” niche that does away with the pressures of time, allowing players (creators) to indulge themselves and build.

Outside the Blocks – Trailer

This approach to creativity is made a little easier with the Autobuild function that allows you to manipulate specific assets in size, height, and width, and then use adjustable materials to customise your creation – want to build a mock Tudor townhouse with green roof tiles? You can.

Additionally, creators can adjust lighting effects to set the way natural light bathes their creation. Furthermore, mist, wind, snow, and rain can be tweaked with sliders, as can contrast, brightness, and other more nuanced adjusters to really show off your build.
A huge range of background colours to enhance created dioramas is another impressive detail, and it appears Kubas has really considered how presentation is just as important for digital model makers.

The great thing about Outside the Blocks is you don’t really have to know or even understand architecture, although it does help to understand function.

Outside the Blocks turns your desk full of creative tools into a relaxed digital diorama playground.

Obviously, there are certain rule sets of what you can and can’t place based on how objects interact with each other – this is natural with any creation program, since it has to make some sense without being so overly complex that you need to work at NASA just to build a quaint Tudor townhouse.
The tutorial can be a little challenging and the learning curve is a little steep if you’ve not dipped your toe into creation games like this before, but with a bit of tinkering, you’ll soon get to grips with it.

The display function is another cool feature, allowing creators to choose from a selection of glass cases and bases, which you can also colour with a huge variety of colours. The display glass even has different shades too.
A built-in photo mode caters for those keen to show off their creations on social media, and already the builder/creator community for Outside the Blocks is keen to know if their creations can be exported for printable 3D models.

Outside the Blocks lets you shape terrain, place buildings, and add subtle animations—perfect for realistic miniature scenes. Image © Michał Kubas.

The modular architectural block system, coupled with the storytelling props to build out unique, one-of-a-kind dioramas, can literally steal hours of your life once you get started.
Success for Outside the Blocks relies on its content; even with the variety already on offer in the launch version, I was already hungry for more options – even subtle things like door and entrance variety, window options, more storytelling assets, different breeds of animals, plant varieties, and so on.
The job now for Michał Kubas, the game’s creator, is to prioritise the wants and needs of the community and feed them. That’s a big undertaking for a solo dev, but given how responsive he’s been to players, it tells you that he’s incredibly dedicated and passionate about his project.

Outside the Blocks

Release: November 4, 2025

Genre: Casual, Indie, Simulation

Developer / Publisher: Michał Kubas

Platforms: PC — Steam

If anything, Outside the Blocks is another example of how technology and creativity are bridging the gaps for people to explore their creative sensibilities without necessarily needing to understand complex coding.
Limited only by its range of assets, which will no doubt expand considerably in the coming months, I can see this becoming a firm favourite with digital artists, content creators, and those looking for something relaxing to waste a few hours on.

If you enjoy seeing how solo devs build worlds like this, you might also like our demo impressions of
Operation Purge
and our guide for players on helping indie developers,
The Right Way to Playtest: Safe Access, Useful Feedback.

Why We Like It

• It’s the ultimate playground for builders and creators who want to express their artistic side without needing to understand coding.
• It’s addictive and a time thief – you’ll spend hours perfecting your dioramas once you start.
• Great selection of building options and supporting assets to create unique dioramas, even from the limited number of design options.
• Room for huge expansion of assets, materials, and options as the game evolves in 2026.

Related reading

• Pattern Survivors: Bullet Hell — Create Chaos lets you design the danger
• News Tower hits 1.0 on Steam with an Overwhelmingly Positive start
• Operation Purge demo – promising sci-fi survival held back by bugs

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The post Outside the Blocks – Cozy Diorama Building Meets Creative Freedom (GOTW #30) appeared first on Fix Gaming Channel.