I Am Bird by Acr515
I Am Bird is a fast-paced top-down shooter game where you play as a flock of seed-shooting birds seeking bloody vengeance upon your enemies, sacrificing them to satiate your hunger for destruction!
Upgrade to better types of birds as you progress through the game; sacrificing members of your own flock (or just flatly letting them die off) will speed this up. You can use tokens found during gameplay to purchase upgrades, boosting each of your run-throughs!
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Types of birds
The Finch: A basic bird with single-seed autofire. This is your first bird!
The Nuthatch: A stronger bird with slower fire.
The Sparrow: A bird who shoots a spread of seeds!
The Woodpecker: A bird who shoots quick volleys of seeds.
The Cardinal: The strongest bird, shooting spreads of seeds with power and speed!
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Your enemies
- Pigeon: A standard enemy bird who shoots straight forward seeds.
- Crow: Comes close and flies away shooting a volley of seeds!
- Flying Squirrel: Shoots exploding acorns!
- Drone: Darts around, shooting volleys of... real bullets?!
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Use the WASD keys to control your flock and the spacebar to shoot. The large bar in the top left corner indicates your hitpoints. The small bar below this is your upgrade bar. Killing enemies increases this bar a little, and the deaths of flock members makes it increase a lot.
Killed enemies have a chance of dropping these items:
- Token - Use these at the shop in the main menu to buy upgrades.
- Health - These restore 10% of your main bird's hitpoints.
- New Bird - This pickup will add a new bird to your flock. Any level bird up to your current level will join your flock and fight alongside you. You can tell if a member of your flock is about to die by it flashing red.
Press escape to pause your game.
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Screenshots
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NOTE: The native platform for the game is Windows. If you're capable of playing Windows games, then I highly recommend you download the game instead of playing on HTML, as the most thorough testing occurred there.
Version History
There were a couple tiny bugs I found during post-submission testing I needed to iron out. Full lists of changes for every version will be posted here.
Version 1.0.0:
- Original, unmodified 72-hour release
Version 1.0.1:
- Fixed an issue where the high score was being reset after every game
- There is now a spawn cap on drones; 4 at Woodpecker level, and 6 at Cardinal level
- Made progression at Sparrow level take a little bit longer
- Made Sparrow sound effects slightly less obnoxious
- Drone kills now award more points
- A 1500 point bonus is now awarded when the upgrade bar is filled at Cardinal level
Version 1.0.2:
- Fixed a crash which occasionally occurred when being hit by bullets at close proximity
- Doubled the damage Woodpecker deals
Ratings
| Overall | 489th | 3.457⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 324th | 3.5⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 892th | 2.674⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 994th | 2.326⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 801th | 2.913⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 498th | 3.023⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 743th | 3⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 14🗳️ | 13🗨️ |
One thing I feel is missing are infinite upgrades. You only have a few bird types, but you could increase flock size virtually infinitely. If you unlocked infinite bird flock upgrades once you finish all basic upgrades the game could have one more awesome up its sleeve :)
@ternarycat, thanks for telling me about the background, I'll definitely take note of that. Could you tell me more about what you thought of the gameplay itself?
Great job :smiley:
All jokes aside, it is a nice entry. I really enjoyed it. Simple yet effective. Thanks to the upgrade mechanic it gets addictive.
I agree, @stevie-bushman. My primary intent was to make a rapid-fire bird without making the game too easy... but I nerfed their seeds too much compared to the other birds. Thanks for bringing that to my attention!
Concept itself is nothing innovative, but it is executed very well. Polishing is great, I also really like shop that gives you progression between play sessions.
I don't know any technical background of the game so I don't know if it is possible, but I think that the game would fit mobiles very well.
Overall, great job, keep it up.
:thumbsup: This game was so much fun... and I usually don't like scrolling shooters like this. I think the sacrificing your birds, and growing crazy powerful (before a squirrel or drone comes in and wipes out your fleet) made this feel really good.
:point_right: The music was really cool, so I was sad when it was drowned out by a bunch of multi-shot birds. Also it seemed the bird type upgrades made the game harder since you started later, with a smaller fleet of birds. The bird count upgrades were great for farming the coins to get to the last level though! At first I thought I had a bird army going up against airplanes, then I read the description and was a bit disappointed. ^_^
:star: Overall excellent job, I really enjoyed playing this!
PS. My highscores each game:
36 330, 13 880, 3 340, 9 360, 2 950, 2 130, 1 190, 830, 2 620, 2 740
(reset)
11 820, 6 460, 15 580, 13 860, 15 940, 17 300
(all upgrades)
55 510