This is a fun, easy game that also gives some knowledge about Natives and the issue with pipelines. It definitely has created discussion!

I was really excited to stock up on some apps by the indigenous communities, but this plays the very first video and crashes with no option to skip ahead. Definitely has some bugs that need worked out.

I don’t know why this game has such a majority of five-star reviews. I, um, wouldn’t give it that. Obviously.First off: There are videos that play between levels, and when I allowed the videos end by themselves, the game crashed and I had to restart from level one. (There are only three levels, so this wasn’t a huge issue.) I avoided this by closing the videos before they ended.The stylized art is really good, cute animations of deer, cool snake boss, very nice.The gameplay is somewhat unclear? I knew I had to tap the bird to create lightning, but the game didn’t indicate where the bird needed to be to zap objects. (Slightly to the right of the object, it turns out.) I still don’t know whether I was supposed to hit the deer (and protesters) walking around, it didn’t affect my score. In levels one and two you can literally just start the level and leave your device for like five minutes and you’ll advance to the next level, the only difference is the score. (Also it crashes if you don’t close the video fast enough.) On the third level, lightning seems to do nothing, the only way to advance is to grab the garbage bags, so just kinda keep the bird next to the snake’s mouth? Not hard or fun, just tedious.The message is fine, oil pipelines on Indigenous lands are bad, trashing the environment is bad, I wouldn’t say this game is educational though. Unless there is a tradition of the Thunderbird resurrecting animals and humans to fight a great snake? There IS information on the Thunderbird Strike website about both the pipelines and the Indigenous stories that inspired the game. If the game directed the player to the website or other resources, I feel like the message here would’ve been stronger. Kind of a missed opportunity.This game is an impressive project for a small group of creators, and they should be proud. Making a (mostly) functional game is absolutely an achievement. This is a great proof-of-concept and it’s cool that they put it out for free, buuuuuuuut if you’re just looking for a fun game then this is probably not it. I only played the whole thing so I could give it a fair review, and I only wanted to give it a fair review because I was suspicious of all the five-star ratings. If you don’t encounter any crashes, then this might fill up fifteen minutes of your life, but maybe you could spend that fifteen minutes researching environmental justice instead.

It’s a pretty minimalistic game but that doesn’t really take away from the gameplay and the art is gorgeous!