Just Crow Things is a new game developed by the creators of Rain on Your Parade. You’re a little crow trying to prove yourself in the world, working with other animal friends and pulling off mischievous stunts towards humans while stealing shiny trinkets whenever possible. The game is organized around levels that cover different zones; each level is a small sandbox where quests and items can be discovered.

First Steps

You start on a world map, allowing you to access various levels, although they are mostly greyed out until the first few levels are unlocked. Unlocking a level means completing enough tasks or quests – it uses points as a proxy – and as long as your score exceeds a certain amount of points, the doors to the next level will open.

You play with a top-down view, where the camera moves on a 2D plane to follow you crow along. The game is in full 3D; however, while the camera is mostly fixed in one place, your crow can go up and down between the sky and floor. This is necessary to fetch and move objects from one location to another.

The first level takes place in a Japanese city. Inside this level, you meet different animals who typically ask for help with various requests. A squirrel mom wants you to find her three baby squirrels by listening carefully at their sounds; another animal asks you to poop on two humans. Yet another request is to search for golden objects, coins, plates, and other items, bringing them back. The list goes on. There are also small racing challenges common in open-world games, where you have to navigate from point A to point B through a series of checkpoints before the time runs out.

There isn’t really a story per se. As I mentioned earlier, it feels like a sandbox game with random challenges. That’s not completely true; however, there are some levels where animals ask you to complete a sequence of tasks in order, unlocking scripted events that change the situation in the said level. This is as close as possible to a narrative arc. One time, you’re asked by cats to carry frogs and put them on top of clouds, so when it rains on the market, humans will see the rain full of frogs and run away in fear; afterwards, the cats can grab the market.

Travelling the World and Making Choices

As you unlock more levels, your crow travels to new places and areas. The second level takes place in Egypt, featuring deserts, pyramids, and sandstorms. A few levels later, you reach a fantasy level where an ongoing feud between cats and dogs results in both communities retreating into their castles and trying to win over the map. In this level, depending on who you help – either cats or dogs – a scale at the bottom of the screen will tip towards one group’s favor, making you an arbitrator of the outcome.

You see this pattern repeated several times. In another level, someone is asking for your assistance in getting rid of monsters that are afraid of light; arrows with torchlight on hand, you go around and clean up areas where these problems exist. As you come back, you find out that the requester is also like the monsters – sensitive to light. He asks not to use the light on him, but ultimately it’s your choice, leading to two different outcomes.

Other levels include Valhalla with Odin asking you to find his clothes, New York with the city full of gangs and the rats asking you to be their undercover agent, and more…

Funny but a Little Limited

Just Crow Things is well-designed overall and fun to play. There aren’t really any huge problems with the game: the camera works as expected, and when things are obstructing your view, you get a see-through bubble that ensures you can still see your surroundings.

It tends to be slightly repetitive due to the nature of tasks in each level. Each level also feels a bit restricted; it would have been great if there were bigger maps for evolving within, and maybe more tools at your crow’s disposal.

The music is average – sometimes mediocre, other times good enough – but often doesn’t quite match with the atmosphere or goofiness of the title.

The in-game menus feel cheaply made, though. It looks like some kind of default menu from a middleware; that needs a little more love.

There’s hardly any violence or anything inappropriate in the game - so it’s kids-friendly as well.

Note that the game is not too long. You can reach the end of the road (not talking about 100% completion here) in less than 5 hours. I am not sure if there are expansions planned at this stage, but it’s a little on the short side. There’s probably room for more content.

Steam Deck: Verified

This title is a great match for the Steam Deck. It runs very well and has controls perfectly adapted to it. It definitely deserves its Steam Deck: Verified status, with running at about TDP 8W of GPU giving you hours of play on an hour-long battery charge and a good framerate.

Note that we have received a Steam Key to review this game.