I thought Endless Migration was going to be a new form of Flower.  The music seemed to indicate that.  A peaceful, although repetitive piece, the pace indicated seemed restful.  That is so far from the truth.

As the lead Canadian Goose, it is your job to lead a flock of geese, and some swans, through a minefield of planes and airships that would give the best air traffic controller nightmares.  Planes criss-cross across the sky randomly, taking out your flock, and you, along the way.  If you, as the leader, die, another bird in the flock will take your place.  It is only after the entire flock dies that you lose the game.  

Endless Migration is a pure survival game.  Most of my game sessions lasted about 50+ seconds.  As you progress and buy some of the 12 upgrades, survival actually becomes easier.  There are 29 achievements to attain.  Each achievement gives you more upgrade points.  Otherwise, you receive one upgrade point for every 10,000 points you achieve in the game.  

Points are achieved by adding birds to your flock.  Once you have gathered a full flock of 16 birds, you will go into Golden Goose Mode, in which every bird in the area flies to you, miraculously escaping being airplane roadkill on the way.  

The graphics are simple, grey and white graphics, although detailed and polished.  The music doesn’t really set the pace of the game; it is shocking to realize how fast your geese fly when you’re expecting a restful game.  The game is played with the mouse.  One-to-one tracking here is usually perfect, although a few times my mouse did glitch and the birds seemed to rush ahead aimlessly.  

The only real complaint here is that achievements and upgrades occur outside of the game.  While these items are usually on pop-up menus that are still outside of the play area, you have to completely go to the menu to look at your achievements and choose upgrades.  Here, every achievement you’ve received in your career is checked and highlighted, so that you have to hunt through the list to find the new ones.  It would be helpful if new ones stood out in some way.  Menu options are all separate so that you have to close one area to get to another instead of tabbing through them.  Also, there isn’t anywhere that tells you, outside of the upgrade menu, how many upgrade points you currently have.  So, you have to actually seek out the upgrade menu to see if you have enough points yet for the upgrade you’d like to purchase.

This is a minor complaint overall.  Endless Migration plays well, is fairly addictive, is quick to play, and gives you early success.  The “The Goose That Laid the Golden Badge” badge is worth only five points on Kongregate today.  All you have to do is buy three upgrades.  I completed this within 20 minutes, buying the upgrades I wanted.  It could easily be done faster.  If you like the game, you might also be interested in checking out the other offerings from HotAirRacoon Games.