Is this even the same game anymore?

Why is the game portrait now?

Well, hello, and welcome to another devlog. You may be wondering, what is going on? Why is the game portrait now? Is this even the same game? Well no. 

This new game is currently dubbed Bird Watcher, and in it you play as a human challenged with finding and cataloging a variety of birds. The catch, is that you're main tool is your ears! So the core mechanics are now, can you A) identify that bird song and B) use spatial audio to figure out where it is coming from.

So who cares about bird songs anyway?

Old people... Old people care about bird songs. And what kind of gaming platforms do Old People have? That's right. You guessed it. Mobile.

Bird Watcher is coming to Mobile!

Horay! Well, actually there's no need for sarcasm yet... There are a couple of gems on the mobile market and I'd like to think Bird Watcher has a chance at joining them. 

So what's next?

Well, first I gotta flesh out this game design. It's a huge deviation from what we've been doing in the past with puzzle boxes, islands etc. Heck we are essentially starting from a fresh prototype. The only part that carries over is the toon shading and the art style for the birds. Oh and I'll still be licensing bird audio from Cornell's Lab of Ornithology.

Part of fleshing out the design means exploring the following ideas. These may or may not make it into the vertical slice:

• Playing with scale / size of levels
• Signage and in-game text
• Audio levels, song frequencies
• Song triggers
• Codex
• Distracting audio
• Flying birds

And then there's content stuff like:

• New birds
• More variety in tree type
• Grasses, flowers, shrubs
• Bugs (the kind that fly)
• Water features
• Seasonal variation