Free beta · Windows & macOS
The third-person MOBA where every hero is a bird, and flight is a budget you spend.
Two Clutches, Sunfeather and Duskwing, push waves of Fledglings down three Flyways to break the enemy Nest's Great Egg. You fight over your bird's shoulder, aim every ability with the mouse, and decide every few seconds whether to take off.
How it plays
The depth you expect from the genre, with last hits, lane control, item builds, a draft and a neutral boss. Every hero, item, map and story is new.
Take off and you move faster and see farther, but lift drains every second you're up, and landing roots you for a heartbeat. Read the enemy's lift bar, bait the landing, then strike. Flyers, Gliders and Hoppers each spend the sky differently.
Over-the-shoulder camera, WASD movement and mouse-aimed abilities. Most spells are skillshots or aimed areas, so landing them is a visible skill. The server rewinds hits to judge them fairly under latency, and the rewind is capped so a laggy connection isn't rewarded.
Height is information. Airborne birds see half again as far, and they can be seen from farther too. Day and night roll over the Shellfall, shifting vision and favouring one Clutch a little. Skyward abilities, the Grounded status and Perches that shoot birds down keep the sky honest.
Fewer, sharper systems: earn Seeds, spend them at the Magpie Market on Trinkets, and grow your bird through 25 Molts, choosing a Plume at key Molts to shape your build. Matches are tuned to land around 35 minutes, with comeback tools for the side that's behind.
The roster
Every bird in the beta is a real species, with real behaviour behind its kit. Ten are playable now, five for each Clutch.
The neutral boss
When the Long Wind folded its wings and became the land, one gust curled up instead and woke with fur. The Stillstorm is the only mammal in Welkin: a storm cat that sleeps on the Divide, belongs to no Clutch and watches the sky from below. Wake it with your Clutch, knock it off its crag, survive the Pounce, and carry its Stolen Feather back into the fight.
Ways to play
Learn a bird on the Canopy, a compact 3v3 map, against bots on Easy, Normal or Hard. They last-hit, push the open Flyway and punish greedy flying.
The full battlefield: three Flyways, the Wilds, the Stillstorm's den and two Nests with a Great Egg each.
Queue alone or with a party, accept the ready check and draft your Clutch. Empty seats fill with bots, so you're never stuck waiting for a full lobby.
Host a lobby or join a friend's, invite through Steam, talk in team chat, and fill the rest of the field with bots.
New in the beta
The beta grows fast. Here is what recent builds added; the changelog has every detail.
English, Deutsch, Русский, Español, Português, Français, Polski, Türkçe, 简体中文, 日本語 and 한국어. Most are machine-drafted for now, so tell us when a line reads wrong.
When a new build is out, the main menu offers it. One click downloads it, checks it and restarts the game.
Friends and recent players in one place, team chat in online matches, and mute, block and report when you need them.
Earn colour variants for every bird by playing; everyone in the match sees the one you wear. Each bird has its own call for every ability.
Screenshots
Captured in-engine from the current beta build. The art is still climbing.
Questions
Yes. The beta is free to play. Online matches connect to our servers at no cost.
Download it from the download section above, or from the Birnest releases page on GitHub. It's free and needs no account: unzip it and press Play.
Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) with a 4-core CPU, 8 GB of RAM and a Vulkan 1.2 graphics card with 2 GB (GTX 960 or RX 470 class). On a Mac, macOS 11 or later on Apple silicon. These are early estimates.
English, German, Russian, Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), French, Polish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Pick one in Settings. Most translations are machine-drafted for now; corrections are very welcome.
Install the game once. After that, the main menu offers each new build: click Update now and the game downloads it, checks it and restarts. On a Mac, keep Birnest.app in Applications so it can update itself.
Yes. Practice against bots on Easy, Normal or Hard, or queue for a match and let bots fill the empty seats.
Not yet. For now the beta is downloaded from birnest.com and GitHub. Steam friends can already invite each other into lobbies.
Open an issue on GitHub or email beta@birnest.com. A screenshot and what you were doing help a lot.
No. Birnest is an original game. The genre's ideas (lanes, last hits, items, a neutral boss) are familiar, but every bird, item, map and story is our own.
Free beta
The beta is free and open to everyone. Download the build for your computer, unzip it and press Play. Online matches connect to our servers automatically, and the game updates itself from then on.
Version 0.1.0-beta.8 · All releases and changelog · Install help. The beta isn't code-signed yet: on Windows click More info then Run anyway; on a Mac (Intel Macs untested), open it once, then allow it under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. By downloading you agree to the beta terms.
