When I first saw the trailer for Birdcage, I was downright sweating. A bullet hell shooter that looks ripped straight out of 1998 but with modern design sensibilities? With a soundtrack by Barry “Epoch” Topping and sporting the tagline “Sword Action Shooting Game”!? To someone that grew up watching Cowboy Bebop reruns on Toonami, I’m not sure you could make something that oozes more cool to my tastes… with the caveat that I’ve never been able to wrap my head fully around bullet hell games.
Though not for lack of trying! I own the cult classic Ikaruga in at least three different forms, despite never managing to make it past the second stage in all of my attempts over the years; the barrier to competency in these games just always seemed overwhelmingly high. If it wasn’t for the masterful roguelite take on bullet hells, Star of Providence, I might not have even given Birdcage a shot. But I’m so glad I did, because while the road to mastery still feels completely out of reach to little old me, there’s a lot here to enjoy, even for people that don’t consider themselves fans of the genre.
Broadly, the basics of Birdcage are exactly what you’d expect from this type of game. It’s a vertically orientated, top-down shooter in which you pilot a spaceship called the HALCYON against an impossibly high number of enemies, bullets, and environmental hazards. Movement is set to the left analogue stick, while you can shoot a broad, weak spray with R2; a focused, narrower fire with R1 that also slows the HALCYON down for more precise movement; and, once the gauge is full, unleash a special HYPERBLADE attack on L1, which for a few seconds transforms the player’s shots into high-damaging (and enemy bullet-erasing!) waves of mass destruction.
Where Birdcage gets far more interesting and subversive, however, is the “Sword Action” part of its tagline: holding L2 will spawn a laser sword directly out in front of the HALCYON. This sword can be rotated around the entirety of your ship in 360° with the right stick and has quite a few uses. Most simply, it can be used as another means of firing at enemy ships, with the added benefit of being able to destroy things that aren’t placed directly ahead. It can also be used to absorb enemy bullets of the same light blue colour, provided the sword is rotated around fast enough to actually make contact with a bullet before the HALCYON does.
Lastly, and most importantly for score chasing, the sword can be used as a melee weapon, should you be feeling so froggy. This requires putting yourself in dangerously close positions to enemies, normally the exact thing that’s to be avoided in bullet hells, but no risk, no fun, as they say.
Figuring out that last part, namely fine-tuning the balance between deploying close-range tactics with the sword versus when to pump the brakes and give myself a breather with some long-distance firing, was when Birdcage really started to shine for me. That moment a few hours in where I finally ceased being so passive in my playstyle, opting to really get in a boss’s face and continuously poke it with my sword, instead of firmly yet fearfully wedging myself at the bottom of the screen and praying to a higher being that eventually my weak little gun would get the job done, was downright exhilarating and finally started to open my eyes to what bullet hell games could make me feel if I were to approach them a little more aggressively.
But for people that do prefer a more defensive playstyle, Birdcage has an entire second ship that can be unlocked after beating the game. The CEYX moves slower and trades the sword for homing missiles, as well as the ability to passively fire off even more missiles by purposely straying close to enemy bullets. What first felt like a downgrade due to its much slower speed actually became my preferred ship to play, as turning the enemy’s bullets into your own power let me really sit back and focus far more on defence and how to actually avoid damage without worrying as much about outputting a constant stream of damage.
It’s also worth noting that the game’s fifth stage, the one which introduces the CEYX as a playable ship, might be the coolest level I’ve played in a game in years, due in no small part to the gnarliest, some might say downright nastiest, saxophone performance in a video game this side of Mario Kart World; I promise you’ve never heard a saxophone solo as empowering and climactic as this one.
And that’s the bulk of Birdcage. Across 6 main stages (plus a little bit extra, at least on the higher difficulties), you’ll be sweatily encountering over a dozen bosses while listening to one of the best video game soundtracks of the year, with unlockable Arcade and Score Attack modes, as well as database entries to uncover the game’s lore (and unlock some screen borders!). There’s not much to dislike, though I will offer up that I find it kind of tiresome in 2025 that some games are still blocking off entire large chunks on Easy difficulty. I know, I know, it’s an arcade staple, but the endgame sequence on Normal difficulty is one of the coolest I’ve played all year, and I think it’s kind of a shame that some people might end up missing out on it, especially when the game does such a good job of balancing out its Easy difficulty otherwise; besides that small wrinkle, when it comes to delivering a more approachable, yet still white-knuckle, rollercoaster ride in the form of a bullet hell shooter, you’re not going to do much better than Birdcage.
