The Legend of Dominic: The Last Chip

It starts with a notice

The chip shop is shut. Not shut for lunch — shut with a printed notice on the door and four drawing pins holding it up, which is a lot of pins for one chip shop. The notice says the gull population of the island is to be managed.

Nobody on Cape Dominic knows what managed means. A pigeon called Nigel, who reads, works it out in about a minute and then wishes he hadn't. It means a man with a clipboard writes down how many of us there are, and then that number becomes a problem to be solved.

Meanwhile Big Kev has taken the fish market. He is enormous, he is unpleasant, and he is standing on a stall in the middle of the morning with nobody telling him to get down. Everyone assumes Kev is behind the notice, because Kev is behind most things.

He is not behind this one. And the thing that is turns out to have been doing it since 1961.

What you are actually trying to do

You cannot peck a policy. You cannot fight a form. The inspector's entire job is to produce a number, and everything that happens after that is somebody else's department — so the plan, when the flock finally lands on one, is not to hide and not to fight.

It is to turn up. All of you. And be impossible to count.

Whether that works, and what it costs, is the other twenty-two chapters.

Why there is a game at all

Bird Republic started as a drawing of a seagull who looked like he was about to do something he shouldn't. He went on a hoodie. People bought the hoodie. That should probably have been the end of it.

The trouble with putting a character on a shirt is that people start asking what he's like — and badly behaved is a personality, not a story. So we gave him an island, and the island needed people on it, and the people needed something to be worried about. The something turned out to be a council notice, because the most frightening thing that can happen to a bird is not a cat. It is being counted.

None of it is bought. Every sprite on this page is drawn a pixel at a time and lives in the game's source as text — the seagull at the top of this page is the same handful of characters the game reads to draw him. The music and every sound effect are synthesised in the browser rather than recorded: there is not one audio file on this site.

The script is drafted with AI and then pulled apart and rewritten by hand, line by line, until every character sounds like nobody else in the game. That is the part that takes the time, and it is the part worth doing.

The game is free and will stay free. The shop is what pays for it. Buy a hoodie and you are not buying merch, you are funding the next island.

Play it now Shop the drop

What you actually do all day

Dominic is a seagull with no job and no manners. What he has is time. The whole town is open from the moment you press play, and there is no tutorial and nothing to unlock first, so walk in any direction and see what happens.

Two ways to play

Story mode runs twenty-four chapters. The council have shut the chip shop and put up a notice about managing the gull population. Big Kev has taken the fish market. A pigeon called Nigel works out that those two facts are the same fact. Getting to the bottom of it takes an ancient seagull off the cliffs, a crab who walks very slowly, two pigeons who are brothers, a crow who is enjoying herself, and a cat who does nothing for free. It also takes a great deal of squawking.

It plays out in cutscenes and in conversations you answer yourself. One objective sits down the side at a time, so you always know where you are meant to be going. It saves after every beat, which means you can put it down mid-chapter and pick it up a week later.

Pick a difficulty when you start. Chick gives you eight hearts and softens everything. Gull is six hearts and the island as intended. Proper Menace is four, and everything bites harder, sees further and wants more of it.

Casual mode has no plot, and comes two ways. Peaceful is the whole island and a long list of jobs, with three locals at a time wandering about wanting favours doing. Chips fetched, geese moved on, a fish landed for somebody who cannot reach. Finish one and somebody else turns up with the next.

Waves is a fight. The locals come for you in waves, a few more of them each time, with nastier company as the numbers climb. Clear a wave and you pick one upgrade out of three: a sharper beak, longer wings, a wider swing, lighter feet, another heart. Sometimes the hat turns up a weapon instead. There is a water pistol that soaks and slows, a rubber band that pings off walls, a chip launcher whose victims stop to eat the chip, a party popper that shoves a whole crowd, and a wet sock on a string that hits like a brick. Ammunition refills every time a wave ends. Your best wave is kept on your profile.

The swipe

Dominic attacks with a wing swipe, on space or right-click. It sweeps through an arc in whichever direction you last pointed him and catches everything inside it. The arc is drawn as it goes, so there is never any doubt about where the blow went. E is for picking things up and for talking. Q squawks. R fires a weapon if you are carrying one, and with a mouse you can left-click to fire at the cursor instead.

Fourteen places, and what lives in them

The whole thing is one island with the sea all round it. The pier and the beach face north. The carpark, the cliffs and the back lanes run down the west side. The fairground, the fish market and the city take the east, and the meadows, the pinewoods and the wetlands fill the south. Press M for the map. Everywhere has its own residents, and everywhere has something worth stealing.

• The pier: timber out over deep water, with rod stands at the far end. The rarest fish in the game bite nowhere else.
• The beach and the dunes: chips in the sand, umbrellas, and sunbathers who do not appreciate being robbed. The crabs pinch back.
• The boardwalk: bins, benches and the chip shop. The safest part of town, which is not saying a great deal.
• The park: picnic tables with lunches still on them, and a fountain to drink from. There is a dog here who takes his responsibilities seriously.
• The carpark: food trucks, more bins, and an ice cream van that has gone home for the day.
• The back lanes: cobbles, dumpsters, graffiti and rats. A cat lives down here and knows the ground better than you do.
• The fish market: stalls of fish laid out on ice. Two cats have already noticed you.
• The city: two roads, four lanes, and traffic that does not brake for seagulls. Hot dog stands and pastry carts, if you can get across to them.
• The meadows: wildflowers, beehives and washing lines with clothes on them. Nothing out here wants to hurt you.
• The pinewoods: conifers standing on a floor of dead needles, with logs to look under and toadstools between them. The foxes do not bluff.
• The wetlands: reeds, lily pads and standing water. The geese will absolutely start something.
• The cliffs: flat grey stone, lichen and boulders, with the old lighthouse at Cape Dominic on top. A rod stand sits out on the rocks and the deep water is right below it.
• The fairground: striped tents, bunting, a coconut shy, and a ferris wheel that actually turns. Nobody is watching the candyfloss cart.
• The nest: Dominic’s own hut in the long grass. Walk in through the door and you will find a rack holding everything you have collected, a shelf of your stickers, and a bed that puts your hearts back.

Fishing

Find a rod stand on the pier and press E to cast. Wait for the bobber to flash, then press E again to strike. Miss the moment and it takes the bait. Most casts bring up a sprat or a mullet. A proper snapper turns up about one cast in eleven. The White Whale exists, at roughly one in eighty, and it only bites at the two stands on the very end of the pier.

Scrapping

Crabs, rats, cats, dogs and rival seagulls will all have a go at you. The swipe shoves them back, and they bite for one or two hearts in return. How many hearts you have to spare depends on the difficulty you picked. Crabs and rats are manageable. Cats are not, and will put you on the floor if you stand still. Chips, benches, the fountain and your own bed all patch you up, and being knocked out only sends you back to the last part of town you reached.

Eighty-nine stickers, six rarities

Seventy-five are earned by doing something: eating a hundred chips, landing ten fish, seeing off thirty locals, turning up in a full outfit, reaching all fourteen corners of town. The other fourteen are hidden out in the world, one to each place, and you collect those by walking over them.

They come in common green, uncommon brown, and rare blue that glows. Above those sit epic purple foil and legendary diamond, with a shine that sweeps across the card. Then there are four mythical gold ones, and those are the hard stop: land the White Whale, find the single golden chip at the bottom of a bin, see the whole story through to the end, and collect every other sticker in the book. Everything you find is saved to your collection, and signing in carries it to whatever device you play on next.

Thirty-eight things to wear

Hats, glasses, hoodies, tees and socks, pulled out of crates, dug out of bins and taken off washing lines. Whatever Dominic has on shows up on the bird as he walks about, and there is a sticker waiting for anyone who turns up in a full set.

Controls

Arrows or WASD to move, and shift to run. Space or right-click is the swipe. E picks things up and starts conversations, Q squawks, and R fires whatever you are carrying. F opens the wardrobe, M is the map, and esc pauses. Hold shift and squawk next to a tourist to dive-bomb them. On a phone or tablet there is a pad on screen instead. It is free and it runs in the browser, so there is nothing to download.

Questions people actually ask

Is The Legend of Dominic free?

Yes, all of it. No ads, no download, no account and nothing to unlock with money. The clothing shop is what pays for the game.

Do I need to download or install anything?

No. It runs in the browser tab you are already in, on any modern browser. On a phone or tablet there is a control pad on screen instead of the keyboard.

How long is it, and does it save?

Story mode runs twenty-four chapters across six islands. It saves after every beat, so you can stop mid-chapter and come back to it a week later.

What are the controls?

Arrows or WASD to move and shift to run. Space or right-click swipes a wing, E picks things up and starts conversations, Q squawks, R fires whatever you are carrying, F opens the wardrobe, M is the map and escape pauses.

Is there anything to play besides the story?

Yes. Peaceful mode is the whole island and a rolling list of favours for the locals. Waves mode is a fight that gets harder each round, with one upgrade to choose after every wave.

Who makes Bird Republic?

An independent studio and clothing label in Melbourne, Australia. Every bird starts as a real drawing, every sprite in the game is placed a pixel at a time, and the music and sound are synthesised in the browser rather than recorded.

What does the shop sell?

430gsm oversized hoodies, 220gsm 100% cotton tees, heavyweight crewnecks and quarter-zips, in XS to 3XL. Each character is printed in a short run and then stops.