BirdGut A bird's insides, run by machines

The bee hatches wrong. Two legs instead of six, and the hive wants nothing to do with it. Exiled and alone, it gets snapped up by a bird, which sounds like the end until the stomach turns out to be an industrial complex: every bug the bird eats is brainwashed and set to work in the mechanical facilities standing in for its organs.

Down the esophagus and beyond, each organ is a new region with its own obstacles, its own residents and its own grim little system running on swallowed labor. It is absurd, and the game plays it completely straight, which is exactly why it works.

This is physics-based platforming with classic jumps and machine puzzles, spread across nine levels of moving parts, conveyor belts and hazards built from biology. Some sections are kindly. Others, one famous conveyor belt run in particular, will kill you repeatedly, and there are stretches where the checkpoints sit further apart than you would like.

The saving grace is that dying is funny here. Exploding into a scatter of misshapen bug parts for the twentieth time reads less like failure and more like a running gag, and the crude, sketchbook look keeps the whole thing endearing even when it is being difficult. Most of the game goes down in a few sittings; the late sections ask for real patience and a willingness to just try again.