Extreme avian sports game SkateBIRD has been delayed to next year, developer Glass Bottom Games has announced. Glass Bottom Games officially confirmed SkateBIRD for Nintendo Switch at the Indie World Showcase in December 2019, though the game will also be headed to PC.
In a post on the game's Kickstarter page, Glass Bottom Games confirmed that SkateBIRD will now be released in 2021, which is a delay from its original late 2020 release date. While other games like Kerbal Space Program 2 have been delayed because of COVID-19, SkateBIRD is taking longer to develop because of "normal iteration stuff." One part of this is the decision to give SkateBIRD a proper story mode that is far deeper than the side story of discoverable tapes that Glass Bottom Games had originally planned.
The delay announcement will come as a huge disappointment to those who were looking forward to getting to shred and grind as a birdie skating legend. SkateBIRD, which was also part of today's "#WholesomeDirect" event for wholesome and adorable games, is one of several quirkier and more chilled out titles on the release date calendar. Some others are Spiritfarer, the afterlife ferry adventure game from Thunder Lotus Games, and Ooblets, a farming and creature collection title that has been compared to Pokemon.
The huge success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons shows how the stress of COVID-19 is prompting gamers to seek out more relaxing titles. It could just be a coincidence that these games often seem to feature animal characters.
However, those looking for some sort of skateboarding gameplay will have more than a few titles to choose from later this year. In September, Activision will release the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 remasters, featuring Tony Hawk and his friends as they make skateboarding look easy. There have also been releases from indie developers such as SkateXL and Session, which has been called an indie version of EA's Skate series.
None of these games feature birds in cowboy hats though, nor do they have a bird version of Bernie Sanders (called Birdie Sanders, naturally). There are skaters in their 50s in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2, but again, this just isn't the same as what SkateBIRD is doing. The adorableness means that there is surely room for SkateBIRD in the roost. Fans can expect to see more SkateBIRD gameplay next month.
SkateBIRD will be released in 2021 on PC and Nintendo Switch.