In this blog I'm going to talk about the mechanics that were implemented in Birdlife that did not demonstrate trust the way we intended and also the thought process behind each of these mechanics.
I feel like the main mechanic of the game, taking care of the bird, is the most obvious mechanic. This mechanic was designed so that the player automatically feels attached to the chick and realises that it is obvious helpless and will rely on you for food. We placed food in front of the chick and the player was ideally supposed to realise that the reason it wasn't eating it was because it was too young. This in turn would help the player feel responsible for the chick and the trust between the player and the chick would kick in, making the player feel like the chick trusts them to feed it. I feel like the reason this didn't work was largely due to the feedback that we gave the player when feeding them. It wasn't very obvious when you were feeding the chick and when you were feeding yourself. I should have ensured that it was obvious by adding more particle effects, eating noises for the chick and your player and also perhaps adding an eating animation and feeding animation.
The chicks death in the game wasn't as impactful as I would have liked. The death of the chick was supposed to symbolise a sad moment for the player. I hoped that the player would feel remorse at the fact they let the chick die. Unfortunately, this wasn't very impactful because it was quite unclear when the bird died and a lot of the time because the player a) didn't have an attachment to the bird or b) didn't even know the bird existed to begin with. I feel this was largely due to the positioning of the chick and due to the fact that it was small and wasn't positioned correctly in front of the player at the beginning. Also, the player had no idea what to look for so perhaps having the chick on the main menu would've helped a lot. The chick was able to die in a few ways, getting attacked by crows, hit by cars or starvation. Starvation was not represented correctly as if it was hungry it was sad and if it wasn't it was happy. This is a very unclear way of representing hunger. Also, I feel the little worms above the chicks head wasn't very clear either, even when it did disappear after it was fed. It should also be mentioned that getting hit by a car wasn't clear either and it was also very inconsistent. It should definitely have been made clearer that the bird was hit by the car and also clearer that the cars were a threat to begin with as a lot of people weren't sure how the chick died. Also, when the chicked died it didn't fall over or anything which I think should have definitely happened.
Another mechanic in the game was calling the chick over to you. This mechanic is one of the few that somewhat worked as intended. Having the bird follow you around was designed to represent the bond between the bird and the chick. Once you feed it, the bird was able to follow you. It was not clear that this was the case however and a lot of people didn't have the bird following them at all. I way to represent this could have been instructions or even a cutscene at the beginning of the game that said something to the effect of, "A small bird that looks lonely has started following you, either feed it or leave it behind. It's up to you." It was also a big hassle to continue to call the bird over to you. For a while the chick followed you permanently but after realising this made feeding yourself hard we decided that chirping would call it to your current location which is where it'd stay until it was called again.
Where the chick was placed was below a nest in a tree, which sometimes gave off the impression that the chick was your chick and that was your home when in reality it was supposed to represent that the chick's previous home that it had fallen out of. This could have been made clear by having the nest slightly damaged or even showing the chick falling from the nest in a cutscene. A lot of people were trying to fly into the nest and land in it and others just straight up didn't notice it. This could have been fixed by placement of the nest.
One of the main mechanics of the game was leaving the area. When the chick dies or you feed it enough that it leaves the area you could fly through the fog and it would tell you something like, "You left the chick behind to fend for itself." or "The chick died and you left the area." This was designed to create clarity about what has happened in the game. Unfortunately this mechanic failed a lot of the time because most people weren't even aware that leaving the area would end the game. This could have been combated by explaining to the player in an instructions screen or adding some text in the game to tell the player that they needed to leave. That, or with visual indicators like an arrow or even making the fog look more obvious; like they can be passed.
Rewards and punishments for feeding the chick and feeding yourself were mechanics intended to give the player the motivation to decide between feeding the chick and feeding yourself. Ideally I wanted the player to feel like they could fly higher and faster for feeding themselves but also feel like they could run faster on the ground for feeding the chick. This feedback wasn't represented properly and honestly wouldn't really have helped the player want to decide between the chick and themselves anyway. Some ways we could have helped fix the feedback was by adding particles to the speed and flying powers and also by adding even more colour effects to the eating. This would have exaggerated the rewards and punishments for feeding yourself or the chick and the player would definitely have had an easier time understanding what they were supposed to do.
Overall I feel like some of the mechanics had a good foundation whilst others could and probably should have been removed or completely revamped. On the up side, I learned a lot from this project and I now feel like I have a much stronger understanding of the concept of trust and furthermore a better understanding of critically thinking about game mechanics before implementing them. Mechanics that are unnecessary should be culled whilst mechanics that help exaggerate the theme should be accentuated. I feel like if we had done this better the game would have met the brief far more consistently than it currently does, and I'm hoping that our team can come together during the holidays to work on making the game fit the brief even more than it currently does, and also to make the game even more polished and fun.
Thanks for reading.
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