Reviews

Review by Tharro all reviews by Tharro

It is a short & intense game. Nice drawn graphics and it seems to cover all the extra rules as well. Especially like the integration of a fable.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 4 Technical 3 Genre 4

Review by victorwss all reviews by victorwss

1. Rules implementation

1.1. Animals:
Good use of the birds as a core concept. The game would be significantly worse if instead they were robots, tanks, fruits, people, paper bins or whatever.

1.2. Fable:
There is a hint of fable about the force of the union for freedom - "With team power, we are finally free!" But it is only a hint that there is a fable there, it still is not really there yet.

1.3. Iridiscence:
There is a rainbow and the birds change color. However this is not exactly what iridiscence it, although this is something close. Further, if those effects simply were not there, the game would be essentially the same.

1.4. Speech balloons:
The usage of the speech balloons is clever and their absence would significantly degrade the game, so their usage was satisfactory as a core concept.

1.5. Charts:
There is a pie chart showing the proportions of how much birds were freed. However, it is completely unnecessary to the gameplay.

1.6. 2-players:
Not implemented.

2. Game concept and idea

The game idea's is about freeing up birds stuck in some sort of trap. This is a good idea.

3. Technical and code quality.

Shifting the birds hue is an interesting feat.

The code is done in Python with Pygame and is simple, small, straight-forward and of good quality.

4. Graphics

The graphics are ok for the game and they work well for it, but they are far from being something deserving a special prize for graphical achievement or something like that. The implementation of speech balloons was great. The implementation of iridiscence was on the way, although that just changing hues is not the same as being iridiscent.

5. Audio

Not implemented.

6. Fun

Unfortunately, once you finishes the game, it is done and there isn't anything new to discover. There is none or very very few replay value on it.

Also, it is very _UN_challenging: I could finish it in less than 10 seconds on my first try!

7. Suggestions for improvements

As it is, the solution to this game is very simple and obvious: Just click the birds as fast as possible to make them go up and re-click any of them that goes down. So, my suggestion for improving the entry is to not make the solution so simple and obvious anymore. So, I suggest that:

* The game should have a diferent number of levels with increasing difficulty. The level 1 could be the game as it is. But as the levels advances, other than just adding more birds, different birds could behave differently.

* In more advanced levels, you would need to free up the birds in some order, otherwise, they entangles themselves even more.

* Teher could be places where you would need to give a task to some birds, like grabbing a key or a stick somewhere in order to be possible to release some other bird.

* Implementing some form of river crossing puzzles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_crossing_puzzle), in which there are birds up and birds down similar to the case of people or stuff at left or right margin of the river. If things are done in the wrong way, then some bird die, or the situation becomes a great mess that needs to be undone or some other bad thing happen.

* Add some enemies, like cats or snakes that devour birds that aren't released or are released in the wrong way. Or perhaps the enemies are also trapped and shouldn't be released by someone who is just clicking everything on the screen.

* Add some hazards like electrical wires, lasers, tripwires, booby traps, fires, falling rocks, poisoned food or whatever. Do the things wrong and you screw it all up.

* Have the player need to do more to more to the birds other than freeing them. Like also having to feed them, take their fleas out, and caring for birds that can't fly due to injuries like broken wings.

* Make it very complicated for free up some birds. Instead of just being trapped, some birds could also be tied, chained, imprisioned, glued, tarred, sleeping, etc. And releasing them out of all that mess would need some really brainpower and the usage of a lot of stuff in a lot of different steps.

* What if some birds are egoistical or uncollaborative but you still need their participation to win and can't leave them behind?

* What about eggs and birds needing to take care of them?

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 3 Technical 2 Genre 2

Review by KillerWasp all reviews by KillerWasp

The text is read with a magnifying glass.

it's easy to solve the problem of flight once they are suspended in the air. I assume the pie chart represents the percentage of completion.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 2 Technical 2 Genre 4

Review by underthesink all reviews by underthesink

Very fun for the 12 seconds it took to complete

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 4 Technical 1 Genre 4

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

Ah, spoiler alert here.

Short and sweet, Birdies comes down to an unexpected pun about the "mouse" saving the birds from the snare, just as an eagle or an lion was saved depending on the fable's original telling. It's a decent piece of art, but given the arrangement of the birds, I had expected some intricate puzzle rather than a simple test of how quickly the player could click on all the birds before they fell back to the ground. I could see the concept being the basis of a more fleshed out puzzle, perhaps involving knots, line tensions, or weight differences between the birds.

Was the net your take on on the "graph" rule, with birds as vertices? If so, I liked it.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical None Technical None Genre None