Little Aviary

It's a cute little idler to run on your 2nd monitor, however it has some issues that make me not recommend it. Firstly, the "breeding" mechanic is never explained in the tutorial, you have to figure it out yourself. Once you do, you realize it's very unintuitive and the timer UI is not working. Also, balancing is unfortunately really off. Higher tier birds sell for A LOT less than their egg cost, which makes absolutely zero sense. An epic egg costs 2.5m, takes around 5 hours to hatch, and epic birds sell for 130-180k. Yes, you can get free eggs by breeding, but they still take the same amount of time to hatch, and you need epic birds to breed in the first place. I'm now at a point where my next upgrade costs 100m, but I can't effectively sell birds for profit (for the above mentioned reasons) and I have a passive income from the birds I have of 500k/minute. BUT there's also no offline income, so getting those 100m is taking hours of running the game without making any progress or any way to speed it up.

Also, genrally the UI/UX is pretty bad. It doesn't give you any notification when you finish a quest (you have to manually navigate through the menus to check the quest page), the breeding UI is broken etc.

For the positives:

1. It's cool seeing a cross-section of different kinds of birds.

2. I like that the gold options as far as I can tell, have different alt options too, like the brown gold goose is very pretty.

3. The music is really lovely.

4. I like that you can get a free background to block out your screen, since I actually prefer the game this way. I don't like accidentally clicking into my desktop while I'm playing it (I also have the option to have birds land on my windows turned off lol)

5. It's clear a lot of work has gone into the art assets of this game! The birds, decor, backgrounds, etc. all look really awesome, and I like that there's some seasonal options too. :D

For the negatives, and the reason I can't currently recommend this game: There's quite a few QOL issues with this game that feel particularly punishing.

1. This game does not earn passive income while turned off, even though egg timers will continue while it's off. Even passive items do not earn passive income for you. Everything income/gold related (which is huge in an incremental game like this) only increases while the game is on. I don't mind if it earns passive income for an hour, or two hours, and then stops, as some games do. This one doesn't do it at all.

2. There's some sorting issues with the menu which are frustrating. You are going to have to sell a LOT of birds for gold, space, earning etc. However, if you sort by 'Value' - it will always reset the menu every time you close out of it, and if you don't remember that every time, it can become very easy to accidentally sell a high value, high earning bird. There should be an option for the menu to stick to what you choose and not reset every time. Confusingly 'group birds together' does stay checked every time, if you checkmark it.

3. The increments in this game are huge and somewhat punishing given point 1. It seems like the kind of game designed to keep you playing it for so long it artificially boosts its own playtime. I have the same sense of slow frustration at this point now that I do with other collectathon games in their slowest end-game parts.

4. Gold and Shiny birds are *incredibly* rare. That does make sense, but it makes Chillquarium look extraordinarily generous by comparison.

5. Most other collectathons / idlers / incrementals I've played generally have worked out the balance a bit better at this point. The game feels like it's still in beta (maybe it is and I just wasn't paying attention), and hopefully some updates can work out QOL and balance issues! I believe the dev is quite active, so I'm hoping I can come back and change this review at a later date to 'Recommended.'

I cannot recommend this game enough, to both gamers and bird nerds alike. An incredibly cosy little game, both beautiful and relaxing it makes for the perfect companion no matter what work you have to be getting on with.
The art is so vibrant and pixel perfect, with the cutest little round birds. One of the highlights for me was the way the birds interact with the rest of your desktop, making themselves at home on top of your other windows!
I completely adore the variety of birds and their colour variations (shoutout to the hooded crow). I really look forward to many hours of hanging with my feathered friends, decorating their little aviary.