Just because you're a flightless bird doesn't mean your life is devoid of meaning. If Non Flying Soldiers teaches us anything, it's that with a little help you can be molded into a rough and tumble fighting unit. Unfortunately without that help you'll be walking into electrical currents, but no one said the plan was foolproof.

Welcome to a game that revitalizes a puzzle concept not really seen since Lemmings. Each level consists of a miniature obstacle course and it's your goal to get the birds from start to finish all in one piece. Through the use of angled barriers, spring boards, speed boosts, and a host of other place-able modifiers, the birds can turn, jump, and waggle their flightless arms to hover over all manner of hazardous materials. Along the way you can collect medals for the secondary objectives, and also coins to allow you access to the arcade game Space Destructors.

Each level has an edit mode where you get to survey the landscape and place and adjust everything you think will guide the birds to safety. Once you let them out of their cage, the game takes control away except for a retry and fast-forward button. This lets you see if your puzzle solving skills were sufficient enough to save the soldiers from an untimely demise. If not, you can pop back to edit mode where dragging and tapping will allow you to place, rotate, and delete everything you have to play with. The controls are adequate but things do seem a bit fiddly, especially when it comes to the camera. You can switch between a top down perspective or the isometric perspective used when you let the pigeons loose (which is just a saying. Pigeons of course can fly).

The cut-scenes and loading posters invoke not only bouts of laughter, but an old World War II era aesthetic, with the grainy film, faded artwork, and sepia overtones. The game has a strong sense of identity and uses this to great effect. Mention should be made of Space Destructors, which is a fun little shooter game, but it really just serves as an amusing diversion side dish to the main game. Puzzle fans and those looking for something a little old (yet a little new) should find themselves entertained by what these flightless feathered fighters have to offer.