ORIGINAL GAME PREVIEW / GAME OPENS ON CREATOR'S SITE
SANDBOX / SINGLE PLAYER, OR LIVE ROAM ONLINE WITH OTHER PLAYERS' PIGEONS
COO: Covert Ornithological Operations
You're a robot spy pigeon in a comic-book Toronto built from the real city: fly it, poop on the Birds Aren't Real protesters, land on a car and steal it.
TABBINO'S PICK“there's a button for cooing. it's labeled act natural.”
OUR TAKE / EDITORIAL
Why it's on the wall
We flew a robot pigeon into a Birds Aren't Real protest in Kensington Market. Stealth works the way a pigeon would do it: coo to blend in, chirp to kill a phone that's filming you, sit on a power line to recharge.
It went around X and the press this week: Yegor Sak's November 8 post about it passed 55,000 views, and Gizmodo and Dexerto wrote it up on November 10. We played it and listed it on November 12.
Written by Neon Gamewall. An opinion, not a player rating.
FROM OUR PLAY
Screenshots
GAME BRIEF
What's the game?
COO (Covert Ornithological Operations) drops you on a roof by Trinity Bellwoods as P-7, a government bird drone, with a handler called ROOST talking in the corner of the screen. Take off and the neighbourhood names pop up as you cross them (ours was West Queen West), the CN Tower on the skyline and the lake off to the side. Your battery drains while you fly and charges when you sit on a power line. People notice you: an Exposure meter fills when someone gets suspicious, and when a phone starts filming you, X chirps it into a blackout and C makes you coo and act natural. Left click tags people with a tracking compound, E lands you on things, and landing on a car lets you jack it and drive it off with WASD, Space for the handbrake and Shift to boost. The people most worth finding are the Bird Truthers: they stand around Kensington Market with signs that say BIRDS AREN'T REAL, PIGEONS = DRONES and IF IT FLIES IT SPIES, and they are right about you. Point the Lens at one and the game pulls up an ID card that lists his type as Bird Truther; fly at their heads and one shouts “ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?!”; one of our drops missed, and the bubble that went up was “MISSED ME! HA!” There are eight covert Operations, Free Roam at any hour and in any weather, and Live Roam, where other players' pigeons share the city with you.
BEFORE YOU PLAY
What to expect
Free in the browser, no sign-up for Free Roam. It downloads about 75 MB and spends a couple of minutes "unfolding Toronto" before you're on a roof; Gizmodo's M4 MacBook Pro struggled to hold a good frame rate, and our RTX 2080 Super ran it on Medium. Yegor Sak, a Toronto co-founder of Windscribe, says the map covers 630 square km, from Steeles to the Islands and from Etobicoke Creek to the Rouge, with 438,819 real buildings and about 5,700 km of streets; he puts it at about 9 times GTA 5's map. He also says it's 165,000 lines of JavaScript with no game engine, built in 7 days. He keeps updating it: hijacking cars, raccoons and the City's 688,000 street trees on November 9; the subway, planes you can hotwire at the island airport and destructible buildings on November 11; Live Roam on November 12.
Controls: W, A, S, D walk (in the air: flap, sidestep, brake), the mouse looks and steers, Space hops (hold to take off, tap to flap), Shift hurries and dives, E interacts, jacks and lands, left click tags, right click holds the Lens, F scans, X chirps, C coos, Q drops what you carry, M opens the map, Tab the Dossier, V the bird's-eye camera, P photo mode, Esc pauses. In a car: W and S drive, A and D steer, Space handbrake, Shift boost.
IN THE NEWS
The story behind it
Yegor Sak posted it on X on November 8, 2026, as a "bird GTA simulator"; GTA here also stands for the Greater Toronto Area.
QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK
Common questions
Where are the Birds Aren't Real protesters in COO?
We found them in Kensington Market, in pairs and small groups outside the shops on Augusta Avenue, Nassau Street and Baldwin Street, and a bigger group by the park at Denison Square. They are out in the daytime. Free Roam lets you pick the hour; Live Roam runs on real Toronto time, so at night there they are gone.
How do you poop on people in COO?
Left click. The game calls it tagging with tracking compound: fly over someone, wait for the red ring to sit on them, and click. A SPLAT! comes up when it lands.
How do you take a photo in COO?
P opens photo mode, where you can move the camera and press Enter to snap the page. Holding the right mouse button opens the Lens, a scope that locks on a person and shows their ID card.
Is the pigeon GTA game free?
Yes. COO is free at coo.mx with no download, and Free Roam needs no sign-up. Live Roam asks you to pick a callsign.
How big is COO's map?
Yegor Sak says 630 square km of Toronto, from Steeles to the Islands and from Etobicoke Creek to the Rouge, with 438,819 real buildings and about 5,700 km of streets. He puts it at about 9 times the size of GTA 5's map.
Was COO made with AI?
Yes, by its maker's account: Yegor Sak says he built it in 7 days with up to 10 parallel AI workstreams and 35,218 Claude model calls, and that Claude Fable 5.2 worked overnight on the update he posted on November 11.
Does COO work on a phone?
Its settings list touch controls (a stick to walk and steer, drag to look, hold Hop to take off), but we only played it on a Windows PC. It's heavy: about 75 MB to load.
SOURCE & CREDIT
Meet the maker
Yegor Sak is a co-founder of Windscribe, the VPN company, and of Control D, and lives in Toronto, where COO is set. He also built a browser simulator of the Diamond DA40 plane, and his X bio says he flies planes sometimes.
The creator publicly credits the AI tool shown above. Visit the creator's game page for current details.
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