Hello birders! We had the pleasure of showcasing at Awesome Con last weekend and got a lot of helpful feedback! We made a ton of changes in preparation for it, as well as some more patches to implement suggestions! While more changes are upcoming and on the way, we thought we’d give you a quick patch to keep everyone up to date!
Some highlights include a new start screen! (Watch the birds idle and wander, it’s like those live zoo cams). Additionally, we’ve done a lot of reorganizing in the start area, as well as a notification system, to help with intuitiveness and tutorialization!! Finally, the location outside the start area has changed! Due to this, when continuing from an old save, you will restart from the tutorial cave, but all bird discoveries and puzzles will remain saved! The rest are mainly small adjustments for balancing and overall game feel. As usual, the full notes are below.
General
Added new start screen
Replaced second area with new permanent “Flats” area
Added new automatic seed gathering totem to start area
Added extra props around terrain totem
Re-arranged puzzle layout
Overhauled tutorial segment
Overhauled animation system, farther birds now play at a lower frame rate
Added new notification system
Added secret surprise!
Gameplay Changes
Added the ability for birds to perch on ground
Rebalanced bird affection amounts
Added distance-based feed interest dropoff
Gave birds ability to fly next to player rather than directly in front
Forced birds to fly away if player is standing on them
Added affection cap if bird has not been observed yet
Added several cutscenes during puzzle interactions
Added point icon to ability target selection mode
Shrunk call statue footprints
Added save for player rotation
Input
Added settings to control camera and focus-mode smoothing
Added settings to invert mouse axis
Sound
Added open and close SFX for compendium
Bug Fixes
Fixed start screen settings scaling issue
Fixed interaction controls overriding ability selection