Birb Island by ursagames
You awake on a deserted island beach and must survive for 5 days before you can be rescued!
Game Controls
- WASD or Arrow keys to move
- Tab or left ctrl to open action menu
- E or left alt to search
- Hold space to climb
Menu Controls - sorry no mouse support
- WASD or Arrows to change selection
- Space or E to continue / confirm
- Q or Esc to cancel menu
Controller - 360 tested
- Joystick for movement / menu selection
- Y for menu
- Hold A to climb
- X to search
- B to cancel menu selections
The yellow bar is your stamina and the green bar is your hunger. If you are too hungry your stamina will not regenerate.
To feed the bird
When you are close to it, go to the action menu then select an item in your inventory and you will get a new option.
If you do not keep the baby bird fed, the parent will hear its call for food and will then attack intruders on its island.
Missing mechanic
Since I ran out of time for audio, there was supposed to be an audio cue to let you know how hungry the baby bird was, and also to let you know that the parent bird would be summoned to protect the baby.
WARNING
here are no out of bounds invisible walls, so don't try to walk off the edge of the map. I was going to add them, but didn't get around to it before the deadline hit
The original idea was to keep the baby bird alive, but I didn't want to animate it dying. Hence we got the parent bird protecting the island mechanic
Most of my time was spent getting the procedural generation and UI systems in place. I also probably spent too much time with 3D modeling and animating.
There was some stuttering with the movement that I couldn't seem to fix, but it wasn't consistent.
Sorry for the lacking gameplay, but I'm happy that I got the core mechanics in the time of the compo!



| Youtube | https://ursagames.itch.io/birb-island |
| Youtube | https://ursagames.itch.io/birb-island |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/birb-island |
Ratings
| Overall | 654th | 3.305⭐ | 79🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 834th | 2.864⭐ | 79🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 713th | 3.052⭐ | 79🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 692th | 3.494⭐ | 79🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 520th | 3.455⭐ | 79🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 462th | 2.891⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 617th | 3.09⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 83🗳️ | 112🗨️ |
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.

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
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.
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:)
Also, it's refreshing to see something related to survival that doesn't have twenty million little dials all ticking down.
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:
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!
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!
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.
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:
@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!
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
- 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.