A game in which you fly around as a pigeon and have the goal of pooping on unaware bystanders below will grab my attention any day of the week, which is exactly what happened when I walked past The Godfeather on the PAX AUS 2022 show floor.

The Godfeather is a simple roguelike where you must move quickly and efficiently to poo on target. A commander — I’m not sure if it was the titular Godfeather or not — will give you orders, and you’ll move to follow them. Fly to a picnicking couple: poop on them. Move to the guy washing his car: poop on them; poop on their car for good measure. The person birdwatching in a tree, swoop them and then poop on them. 

However, I failed to complete the demo, dying twice as I was caught by a robotic machine that snatched me out of the air twice. I didn’t realise until afterwards that you’re supposed to hide in the trees by diving into them while playing, which was sort of annoying. 

You can’t go pooping crazy either, as you’ll run out of ammo fast, which requires you to dive into a dumpster to refuel. I’m not sure why a dumpster re-fills my poops, but either way, I found the one bin on the suburbia map to be hard to locate. Can’t a pigeon recharge by stealing some chips or something like seagulls?! 

The goals are simple, with some secrets to be found amongst the suburban level while moving about; these will let you unlock costumes for the pigeon in the full release. Funny bird outfits will win me over most of the time, so I’m keen to see what and how many outfits are added. 

My biggest gripe with this game? The name. Every auto-correct in the world won’t let me type it without attempting to change Godfeather to Godfather. The red squiggles of death in this doc may just have me swimming with the fishes.