The Bench is an adventure puzzle game where you use pigeons to help you escape from a retirement home. No, that isn’t a joke, that actually is the basis for this adventure. Developed by Voxel Studios and published by Noovola, The Bench was released on October 24th, 2025. Playing as the grumpiest old man, players must use their flock of pigeons to solve puzzles, cause mischief and mayhem, and maybe even remember who you used to be along the way. With an interesting movement mechanic, multiple mini-games, and a whole lot of pigeons, The Bench is simple, comedic, and charming.
Overall, I really enjoyed The Bench. I like how they tell the game’s story and the moments of absurdity. I really like solving the puzzles and found them to be varied and an appropriate level of challenge. The Bench isn’t a very long game, but there are achievements, or stamps, to collect, small side quests to complete, and a few secrets to discover along the way that help prolong the gameplay. I must admit, at the time of writing, I did notice a few bugs during my gameplay. It isn’t anything game-breaking, but obviously I would have had a slightly more enjoyable experience if some of these bugs were fixed. So, get your slices of bread ready, because it’s time to discuss The Bench!
Escaping the Retirement Home
The Bench begins with players feeding a pigeon some bread outside of a retirement home. You toss the bread to the bird just before a nurse comes out, asking you to come inside soon to take your ‘sleeping pills’. Suddenly, after she goes inside, the pigeon speaks and teleports you to a strange world filled with floating benches. Then it walks behind a post and transforms into a mysterious figure wearing a hat and trench coat.
To say I was taken aback in this moment is an understatement. The entity encourages players to escape from the retirement home and gifts players their first golden egg. Upon breaking the egg open, you receive your first loyal pigeon follower. From there, the game walks you through some basic gameplay, and it really is quite simple. You grab a pigeon. You throw it to where you want it to go. Stuff happens. Done.
The ‘stuff’ that can happen varies. Pigeons can be thrown at sparkling trees or into dumpsters, and they may drop items like marbles—the game’s currency—or golden eggs that let you recruit more pigeons. You can also equip pigeons with different tools, including bricks, scissors, keys, and paint buckets, which gives each one a clear purpose in how you use them. A flock of pigeons can move things, such as heavy boxes blocking a bench or doorways needed to proceed. I did feel a bit bad about throwing pigeons around, but thankfully they don’t seem to be in any pain as they stand cooing around you.
You can also hit some things yourself with the cane, but it has to be in reach of the bench you are sitting on. Movement is done entirely by traveling from bench to bench. You can move to any bench that is in vision with a screen wipe of pigeons to expedite the process. I found this really appealing, mainly because for me it felt like a unique movement mechanic I haven’t seen done in many games. Sometimes the puzzle itself was trying to get the next bench in view, so it wasn’t always a streamlined obvious way to go about things.
As you travel, you come across envelopes that are brief noir style flashbacks of your life before you retired. I actually found these to be quite endearing. In a conversation, a woman asks you to promise not to be a grumpy, bitter old man. His response is that he won’t because he has his friends to watch over him and it cuts to some pigeons standing around. So touching, but also kind of absurd! For me, this moment somewhat created a feeling of comfort from my flock of pigeons. I love that they follow you from bench to bench, always vigilant, protective and forever loyal.
And I really do mean a flock of pigeons. At any bench, they will all surround you, standing in groups around you or on top of trees and posts. Pigeons with tools always move to the front where you can easily grab them, which is convenient, but I love how the developers committed to the feeling of being surrounded by pigeons, all eagerly waiting for you to toss them a slice of bread. I grew up near a city, so I am very familiar. I also love that the developers did not shy away from the number of pigeons you can acquire. Many puzzles award you golden eggs, and you can find plenty more scattered throughout the world. The game rewards you for exploring your surroundings, so go ahead and toss those pigeons at anything and everything to see what shakes loose. You may just find something.
Plethora of Puzzles
Speaking of puzzles, The Bench is filled with fun mini-games. One big area for mini-games is in the newspaper. The newspaper acts as your guide with a fast travel map of all the benches you’ve sat on and keeping track of your objectives, both for the story and also for the many puzzles and achievements. One page is dedicated to the photo objectives, a side puzzle that players can complete to earn extra marbles. Early on, you receive a vintage camera. Many NPCs across the five different areas will ask you take take pictures of specific things, such as chess pieces or graffiti spots.
Another page is for the stamps, or achievements, that you can collect. These require doing certain things or completing specific objectives. Some stamps are quite straightforward, such as growing your flock. Other stamps however are a bit more complicated. You are able to spend one marble at shops to get a random stamp’s picture and name as a ‘hint’. However, I found that I still struggled quite a bit in figuring out what I needed to do. I believe a developer said somewhere that they kept it somewhat vague to encourage exploration and trying things out. I can support that and this isn’t necessarily a critique on the stamps, but I would be lying if after a while, I gave up and looked up a guide.
There are many obtainable pages for Fillpoint, a mini-game where you must fill every dot in a cluster, without going back to previous sections. These progressively get more complicated as new colors are introduced and clusters get larger, but again, the ones in the newspaper are just side puzzles for extra rewards. I personally was a fan of trying to complete all of the newspaper puzzles, but I can certainly see them not being everyone’s cup of tea.
There are plenty of puzzles outside of the newspaper. Safes appear throughout the world and require specific number combinations to open. The game scatters various mini‑games around the map, including fishing and drawing on a statue. A full day–night cycle runs in the background, and you can skip time by snoozing on a bench. Certain secrets or puzzle solutions only reveal themselves at particular times of day. Overall, I enjoyed the puzzles. I thought there was a good balance of pretty easy to a little tricky. Some may have taken longer to figure out, but I was still able to solve them. I’m certainly not the sharpest crayon in the box. For the stamps that were really difficult, I wouldn’t mind a bit more of a hint, but overall I think the developers at Voxel Studios did a great job at creating puzzles.
Pigeon Customization and Twitch Integration
An extra layer of fun comes in the form of pigeon customization. You can come across kiosks where you can spend your hard-earned marbles. Outside of stamp hints, all purchasable items are for customization. You can buy different colored pencils and different ‘canes’ for you to use. You can buy various plumages for your pigeons, little hats for them to wear, and change their name, height and weight as well. I really enjoy when developers add customization in their games. I loved editing my pigeons, giving each one a name to match the eventual plumage pattern they would have. Some prices are a bit expensive when considering the amount of marbles you might reasonably come across, but it wasn’t too big of a concern.
However, I did notice quite a few bugs in this area alone. I should be able to cycle through my pigeons while in the kiosk menus, but the next pigeon wouldn’t show. I would need to exit the shop menu and then go back in to reset things. A workaround was to grab the pigeon you wanted to edit and then open the kiosk with it in hand. Editing the weight never seemed to stick either and would default as soon as you performed any other action. I also noticed a few moments where hats I have not purchased would quickly appear on a pigeon for a second before going away, even if I was no where near a kiosk.
Outside of the kiosk, there are a few other bugs. One time I hit an NPC and he flew into the sky and ended up stuck somewhere else on the map, even though they normally just ragdoll onto the floor and reset. When I relaunched the game, I noticed that some marbles reappeared, and while I won’t complain about the extra marbles, it doesn’t feel intentional. Like I said earlier, none of these bugs are game breaking. They are minor issues at worst, and sometimes they may even be beneficial or humorous. I hope that the developers are listening to bug reports and working on patches. At the time of writing, it’s been a few months since the game had an update. Maybe something big is in the works?
Another extra layer of fun comes from the twitch integration. If you’re a streamer, viewers/moderators can customize your pigeons. They can also spawn racoons that you need to beat away or they’ll eat your pigeons. However, I am not a streamer, so I’m a little on the fence about this. On one hand, it looks like a lot of fun! I watched a video of someone streaming and the pigeons will edit in real time, and spawning racoons seems like complete chaos. I think having twitch integration is a great way to appeal to streamers, which could lead to many positive outcomes for the game.
However, for all of us who are not streamers, I can’t help but feel like we’re missing out. I have to purchase all of the customizable options and there are no hungry racoons. They also seem to have customization options that are exclusive to the twitch integration, but don’t quote me on that. Both features could fit naturally into non‑streaming gameplay. You could unlock all customizations—or make them far cheaper—and add a randomize button so you don’t have to edit every pigeon individually. Raccoons could spawn unpredictably and attack the pigeons, or appear as fixed encounters when you sit on certain benches.
The Bench is Flockfull of Fun
Overall, I really enjoy The Bench and had a lot of fun playing this one. It’s a simple and cozy puzzle adventure that had me eating bread and cooing along with my flock. I liked the story and all it’s absurdities that I didn’t even touch on. Remember that meme conspiracy where birds aren’t real and are actually government controlled surveillance? The Bench remembers. The puzzles were fun and had a decent balance of challenges. The pigeons are, of course cute and despite the bugs, still super fun to dress up in different outfits and feathers. It is simple entertainment that I will certainly keep my eye on for future updates or future games.
In my opinion, the positives heavily outweigh the negatives. It may not have the action or excitement that every gamer is looking for. However, for those of you who enjoy simple fun, a good puzzle, and a cozy time, I can happily recommend this one. I could easily imagine this game releasing in VR, because the movement system and the grabbing and throwing mechanics would work naturally in that format. I can also imagine future games continuing or expanding the story, or even exploring the same idea with entirely different animals. Regardless of what they decide to do, I think Voxel Studios deserves an applause for this one.
