gamesplusjames 2020-04-21 22:55
This was fun! The crafting mechanics worked nicely, and I really liked the animations :) It's a pity you couldn't get audio in, but there is never enough time during a jam :D Nice work!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Birb Island
By ursagames
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 654 | 3.30 | 79 | |
| Fun | 834 | 2.86 | 79 | |
| Innovation | 713 | 3.05 | 79 | |
| Theme | 692 | 3.49 | 79 | |
| Graphics | 520 | 3.45 | 79 | |
| Humor | 462 | 2.89 | 71 | |
| Mood | 617 | 3.09 | 74 |
This was fun! The crafting mechanics worked nicely, and I really liked the animations :) It's a pity you couldn't get audio in, but there is never enough time during a jam :D Nice work!
There's just never enough time in the compo! Valiant effort. No doubt the procedural island implementation could be useful in a future project. The birb was very cute.
I really liked it, I think the mechanics blend well with the theme. _Audio cue to let you know how hungry the baby bird was_ - since there was no audio I tried to imagine this while playing xD
It's a good game. The graphics of the game are very good. To be honest, this project is a little big, including generating random map and collecting and synthesizing. So it's a little insufficient in gameplay and player experience. After entering the game, I don't have many goals. I picked up some things, synthesized axe and fire. I don't even know the function of fire, because I only see the physical strength and hunger of the characters Hungry value, and then I fed the bird seeds, and then nothing happened, so I've been picking up things, eating, picking up things. If it's a survival game, I hope to have more character attributes, such as body temperature, etc., so that I have a goal to do. If I just feed the birds, I should give me more feedback after feeding them，But you did a great job in a short time
I like the crafting mechanic and the art quite cool too. If got audio would be so much fun.
I like the idea of taking care of the bird. Would be cool if bird followed around. nice game
Thanks everyone! I would have loved to have had more time to implement more gameplay, the crafting mechanics were put in the final hour. I had just gotten to the point where adding content was going to be quick when I ran out of time. The lack of sound really bugs me since I was going to implement footsteps based on what you were stepping in and had some plans to do that quickly... and of course having the baby bird make noise when its hungry with varying volume levels / frequency to let you know how hungry it was.
I really enjoyed the exploration part of this game and collecting things. I wasn't sure what the use of the stone-axe was for. I assume the campfire is just for light.
I also love climbing up higher, it reminded me of climbing things in breath of the wild. I am sad you didn't get around to the sound effects, I would of loved hearing the birds and water.
overall impressive for a compo game indeed.
Liked the scope of this one, one of the more ambitious compo entries I've seen. I liked your graphical style and the stuff to do on the island. I wish there were sound effects, but overall this was really good!
It is a bit confusing at first, but once you figure out that you can get infinite branches from a tree it gets a bit easier. I survived for one day before I got a bit bored and "accidentally" walked off the map. Well: birbIsland.png
Don't know what I expected :D Either way this was really impressive for a jam, I hope there will be a post jam version with annoying bird sounds!:D
A lot of scope for a comp game, really impressive the amount you got in there, especially the procedural animation. Fun to explore around and craft.
hey hey, I've survived for 3 days on worms and mushrooms while petting my baby birb.
Can't really tell why, but the game looks better ingame than in screenshots.
I can guess how much work was put into the generation. Which is a fairly complex feature - in the end though I don't think it benefits the game a whole lot. Missing sounds are obviously kind of a bummer. The camera sway made me a bit motionsick. I guess you used cinemachine - maybe try only using the follow-target and leave out the lookAt and see if you like it better. (I probably would. :P)
While there is not much *game* here, I do think taking a weekend and trying out new stuff and techniques will benefit you as a creator - I think this was excellent practice.
Cheers.
Cool idea! I really liked the crafting and the exploration, also the visuals, I didnt survive so much though... haha. Nice entry for the compo, tons of work is behind this I'm sure, congrats for it, good job!!
I really like this. Great concept and there's a level of detail in it that's nice. The only thing that bothered me was the repeating textures, but that's nothing to get upset over haha. Runs good and feels good, thanks! And thanks for playing mine on stream!
Hey, it's ntwiles from your twitch stream! I had a lot of fun playing around with the existing mechanics. It's well done if not a complete game. Great job especially on the UI system for such a short period.
It felt really good to play! Only complain I have are the graphics, but still really good! ^^
Quite an impressive effort for such a short time. My only complain would be that I didn't know how to interact with the bird until I read it here in the comments, I think if you could make it more clear that there are additional options on the menu when being next to the bird it would be better.
cool
There are some pretty ambitious systems here and I like the low-poly graphics. Gameplay could be fleshed out with more time and sound would be great. At the very least there needs to be some feedback for the bird, maybe it's own hunger bar?
Hello - Very ambitious, loverly animations and the controls felt nice. Would have been nice to have some sound. Well Done :D
This is a really great start to a neat game. Hopefully you put some time in to flesh it out further, or reuse your code for a future project.
This is a great start! The game is pretty self explanatory, and I feel like I was able to figure most of it out through playing. Walking around the island to pick stuff up is fun, even if there wasn't much to craft. In general, the island was fun to explore, so congrats on your procedural generation code.
I thought the energy system was interesting. The dual stamina bars is an interesting idea, and makes sense physically (climbing is tiring, but so long as you have a full belly you can climb again shortly after).
I think the game needs a bit more going on to be considered "complete", but I enjoyed playing :smile:
(oh, also, the bird animations are super cute :heart_eyes:)
I was impressed overall with everything you got up and running but I didn't feel like there was much to do?
Also, it's refreshing to see something related to survival that doesn't have twenty million little dials all ticking down.
Thanks all! Yeah, this would have really benefited from me doing the jam so I could get in more crafting and things to do as well as SFX and music, but since I had work Monday I decided to just stick to the compo. I'm glad people do appreciate the systems I got in place even if I ran out of time to flesh them out with content. I tend not to update jam games, but this one is tempting to add more content to since I just got it to the point where it would be quick to do when the deadline hit.
Great job!
The game feels very nice to play, the crafting / inventory mechanic is working fine and is not overly complicated. The animations look great. For sure it is missing some music, invisible walls, and some clearer indication of win and lose condition, but it is already a very good Compo game as is! :bird:
This must have been a lot of work! I think it could be a little better with less features but more love spent on polish and fun factor, otherwise good job. I didn't like that you had to confirm dialogs after actions with space key. It felt like it is slowing down the gameplay.
A lot of work done. Congratulation! Here is a path for improvement: change the game play a bit to spend less time in the menus
You can pet the bird, so this became an instant favorite of mine! Also the first thing I tried to do was to eat my cellphone :laughing:
Two things weren't clear in the gameplay, however: The relationship between the mama bird attack and the player's failure to care for the chick properly (as the text isn't telling enough, and there isn't enough information about the chick's hunger state), and what does the campfire, leaves and burns do?
While your game suffered from overscoping, it stays very impressive for a compo submission! A lot of things to do, a ton of assets, and even a procedurally generated map! A game like this is definitely worth continuing, I am curious as to how you would make it evolve!
Well done!
Made it to day 2. Got lazy, waited at a camp fire for more food and then the giant bird attacked. But it was my secret dream since I became 18, to sit nex to a camp fire, inhaling the smoke and then get suddenly inserted into a giant birds rectum. At least this is how I will explain this image to my girl friend if she asks ;) urza.jpg
This was a fun take on a survival-y type of game, and it's impressive technically even without lots of gameplay! I would recommend highlighting the tile that is selected/about to be harvested? I had it happen several times where I accidentally harvested the wrong tile 2-3 times because the selection was ambiguous. Nice job!
11/10 You can pet the bird. Seriously huge scope for compo.
I had a small usability issue where I kept forgetting I had to hit "confirm" after gathering a resource. The look of them makes them and frequency makes them seem more like a passing notification rather than a modal to me.
I love this creative rendition of your typical collectible game. I can see lots of potential in this project becoming a full fledged game given enough time and polish. Like others have mentioned, I also feel like procedural generation for your islands would help keep the gameplay fresh and interesting. With your crafting system as well, there is lots of emergent gameplay to be had for your players within this game. Nice work!
Nice take on the survival game. It throws me off-guard that apparently every-collectible have the presented option to be eaten :smile_cat: It took a while to notice there's some context of feeding the bird (based on additional options on the inventory of collectibles).
Nice touch on having the overall level-design that's procedural generated and can access the particular levels via seed.
Suggestions: You may need to eventually create a solution for those who tend to explore out of bounds (eg. add Killzone upon significant fall, or an asteroids-style boundary-teleport for a 'seamless/tileable' world.). an option for user to quick-refer to the controls at any time (via pause, menu, Help-key, or a fun survival analogue: 'message in a bottle'). After 2nd day, giant bird attacked. Curious to see how much further you'll take on this game. :dizzy:
I'm glad people like petting the bird! When I realized I could add it in, I knew I had to do it and it became top priority. I'm glad people recognize that I overscoped this,
@talops So what I failed to fully hint at in the game was that the parent bird was just flying off away and it comes back when the baby bird gets really loud. Original idea was you had to keep the baby bird alive as the parent was missing, but once I made the baby bird I realized I didn't want to anime it dying. But it's all about keeping the baby bird fed so it doesn't call loud enough for its parent to hear. I think I mention giant bird tracks in the beginning text, but I ran out of time to add in much story stuff I had planned for all of that and of course the lack of SFX really ruins one of the core mechanics. I was going to make the campfire give you bonuses when resting near it- leaves are only used in the axe crafting as I ran out of time for more with them- and the burns were just a joke item for trying to pick up fire.
@rohezal I'm glad I finally made your dreams come true! Lol, yeah the death animation is a bit silly, but I had fun making it at least.
@loginaut I agree, tile highlighting would be great. Something that I seriously want in the game that I was originally inspired by for the start of this game (Animal crossing). If I do a post jam version, it'll be in for sure.
@ultrarat That's a good point, I had setup all messages to freeze movement, but adding in support for timed notification messages that don't would definitely be good too.
@saltfactory-studio I really wanted to add in the ability to built a tent and place down more items etc, and had a lot of the framework in place when I hit the deadline. Definitely something to think about if I make a post jam version.
@acronaut Eat all the things! I was going to add in more actions for items, but deadlines stopped that. I had planned on just adding in some invisible walls and even mentioned it a couple times while streaming the development, but just ran out of time. Letting people walk off the edge of the map feels pretty bad for sure. Also yeah, adding in some help dialogue from the actions menu would have been so easy and quick, hindsight!
I like it a lot! The generation is really cool and you had so much scope for this game, Great job!
Great Game but the Camera Jolts a tiny bit when moving... it really got me motion sick (Noticeable when you look at the edge of the screen while moving)
Sorry about the motion sickness inducing camera, I should not have added looking at the player and just made it track position, my bad there!
nice
Cool idea, i love it! It is a pity that there are not enough opportunities, but I hope that you will continue to work and it will be possible to play the release
Honestly, I didn't see anything interesting. For convenience, the game lacks mini maps, pictures of items and more variety in crafting. Now this is a ordinary survival.
This is lovely! Impressive scope and really cute baby bird. Something to make clear which tile you were interacting with would have helped but I really enjoyed the game. :)
Unbelievable what you did with the little time you had! Like others said, the scope is wild, and considering you had to craft the assets too... just wow! Thank you for your amazing job! And birbs!
Ambitious for a compo, but I think the 3D tile style you picked and the scope you accomplished worked well together for the event. The choice you made to not have the bird die was the right one, I think, as I liked the consequences of it, and could see it being a lot more fleshed out with time.
Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/615922637?t=2h16m08s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
Some unordered feedback: - The graphics are a bit too patterned, making it really clear how repetetive they are. - ...but they work well in communicating what everything is. - I have no idea what the campfire does? - Is the stone axe what is enabling me to get infinite branches just by clicking on them? - I wish I wouldn't have to always close each message before being able to move again. Ugh. - Why does it show me the "Eat" option even though I can't effectively eat most of these things? I wonder if it would've been better to have an "Eat" menu item that only shows me edible stuff afterwards, especially considering I can't seem to do other things with the items (expect feeding them to the bird, which could've been a menu option too.) - Having proc gen in a jam game is always impressive. - It wasn't really clear that there was another island than the tiny one I started on. I had to walk in water for a fair time to reach the bird, and maybe wouldn't even have done that if I didn't know that there was one.
10/10 would recommend getting killed by a demon bird again.
PS: "but once I made the baby bird I realized I didn’t want to anime it dying" ...awww.
Nice game! I liked the graphics and the animations for petting the bird was a nice touch. Looks like you got a lot done in the time. I didn't read the warning prior to playing and sadly walked off the map while exploring. Missed Sound effects and music but overall pretty nice game! good work.