Tiny Bird Garden is a mobile game released in 2017 by Super Retro Duck. The player is given the task of monitoring a garden and caring for the birds that visit, providing them with feed, toys, and hats. In 2018, an enhanced version labeled Tiny Bird Garden Deluxe was released for PC and Macintosh adding new mini games and activities.
The game's official site can be found here
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Tiny Bird Garden contains the following tropes:
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Many of the birds sport very vibrant and colorful feathers. While it does reflect real-life bird plumage, these birds have particularly fantastical patterns.
- Ambiguous Gender: Cocoa, Tangerine, and Plum's genders are never specified, using gender-neutral pronouns in their bios.
- Anthropomorphic Food: Some of the birds have designs based on food: Tomatillo is based on a tomato, Sammy is based on a hamburger, Beans is based on coffee, Cheese is based on cheese, Sweets is based on candy corn, Cocoa is based on chocolate, Tangerine is based on a tangerine, and Larry is based on a donut.
- Art Shift: The human characters have very detailed shading and realistic anatomy while the birds are designed to be more cartoony and have flat shading.
- Author Avatar: Some of the birds are based off of named after members and friends of the development team.
- Big Eater: Tomatillo's profile reveals that she enjoys finding new foods and seed to taste. Most of her phrases and all but one of her mail quotes reference food.
- Black Bead Eyes: Under most circumstances, the birds' eyes are simple black ovals. A small number of birds use other eye designs that still follow along with the trope.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: A downplayed example. While you can use real life cash to acquire Rainbow Feathers more quickly to buy premium store items and new gardens, the birds visiting your garden can award you Rainbow Feathers in place of the basic feathers each time they visit. They're also easy to grind for players that check back often.
- Celestial Body: Nova's body is textured to resemble a starry sky.
- Dem Bones: Skelly is a brown bird with a skull and ribs pattern on his head and body respectively.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Naners. He's rude and sarcastic, but his bio states he's super loyal to any close friend of his.
- Little Green Men: Allan is designed after one, complete with green feathers and large eyes.
- Magical Girl: Senshi is said to be one, with her in-game bio suggesting she has a "secret identity" and a "magical secret".
- No Antagonist: The game lacks an antagonist of any sorts.
- No Indoor Voice: TATER. Even her bio is written in this style.
- Nonstandard Character Design: Version 1.2.0 introduces Thinkly, a bird based on the Thinking emoji with eyebrows and a humanoid mouth instead of a beak. His eyes are also positioned differently.
- Palette Swap:
- All the birds share the same body shape, differing only in their design, color, gender, and their speech.
- Certain hats and toys come available in different colors, listed in a group.
- Pumpkin Person: Spice is an all-orange bird with the mouth of a jack-o-lantern on her chest and a pair of triangular eyes to complete the motif.
- Shout-Out: Some of the birds take some cues from popular media.
- Serena is one to Sailor Moon. She has Usagi's Dub Name Change, the yellow pattern looks like the tiaras worn by the guardians, and the crescent contrasting off the black feathers resembles Luna. She even shares Usagi's love of arcades, though denies having a secret identity. She is also totally not a princess.
- Alex is the titular Alex the Honking Bird. He even does his signature honking noises when you interact with him!
- Virtual Pet: The "Nursery" lets you raise a number of newborn birds to adulthood- from there they wish you farewell and periodically come back to visit along with the other Birds. They're the closest the game has to full-on Character Customization, as you can determine their color based on what color biscuits they're given as they mature.
