“Get this tweet to 10k RTs and we will make Pekken” says Jon McKellan of No Code, the studio behind the lovely Stories Untold and upcoming Observation. Pekken is a two-player fighting game starring violent pigeons, in the Tekken paradigm. A short video of a prototype build delighted the hearts and minds of the internet yesterday, because PS1-styled pigeon brawlers is an inherently wonderful concept.

I… I don’t really want it to happen. Am I a bad man?

To be clear, I’m just as tickled by the idea of greasy urban wildfowl wing-slapping seven bells out of each other as you are. It’s just that the idea of it will almost certainly be funnier than the eventual reality of it.

I speak as someone still mildly ashamed of joining in with the breathless excitement around Goat Simulator, a gag which swiftly wore itself out once the thing blew up and the game about endless physics pratfalls became real, and everywhere, always, forever (for about a year). Just because you can make a wonderful joke into playable reality doesn’t mean you should. Please don’t let us down, Untitled Goose Game, please don’t let us down.

All that said, take a look at Pekken’s prototype in feathery action and fail to quell your bottomless delight:

Made a pigeon themed, PS1-styled fighter called Pekken this weekend. Thinking about Hatoful Boyfriend crossover opportunities @devolverdigital pic.twitter.com/P9XZQYghLI — Jon McKellan (@jon_NoCode) January 27, 2019

Our cooing clobberers there are Walter Peck and Jackie Bird. Let’s hope we get to dress ’em in absurdist outfits, Tekken 7-style, once they’re out in the wild.

Because, after starting a joke that got the whole world laughing came the follow-up promise that 10,000 retweets would make Pekken a reality. At the time of writing, we’re at 9.8k, so it’s almost certainly happening. First No Code need to finish up the intriguing Observation, but it sounds like we might get to at least sample Pekken sooner rather than later:

So my twitter exploded due to #Pekken and had to mute for now. To all those asking or a copy of it, it's not really fit for public consumption yet but it WILL COME TO YOU. — Jon McKellan (@jon_NoCode) January 28, 2019

While we’re here, let’s remind ourselves why Observation, a game in which you play as (sort of) HAL from 2001, is so promising. Here’s Alice B on why playing it had her “reevaluating my treatment of AIs in loads of games”, and here’s a trailer:



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Pekken is a very good name indeed, but I must admit I prefer one of its previously-considered alternatives, Beaks Of Rage.