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Comments on 'Untitled Bowerbird Game'

A topic by Garry Francis created Mar 14, 2020 Views: 163 Replies: 5
Viewing posts 1 to 4
Submitted

I played version 1.0.0.

Why is it called 'Untitled Bowerbird Game' when it clearly has a title? Why not just 'Bowerbird'?

Can you add a title screen to give it a bit of polish? You've already got the image on your itch.io page, perhaps such rescale it and reduce the number of colours to get the file size down.

I like the way the status bar colour changes to green when you're on the ground and blue when you're in the air. I also like that the treasures are blue, as that's the colour that appeals to bowerbirds.

I like that inventory says "In beak:". This emphasises that the player character is a bird and explains the limit on inventory items. You've also handled the full beak very well, as there's some things you can't do when your beak is full.

Here's some things I noticed that could be improved:

Consider overriding the system CREDITS with something more appropriate for your game. You can still see the system credits with *CREDITS.

"Very shiny but..." should be "Very shiny, but..."

"Nice shape but..." should be "Nice shape, but..."

"Must fly for more tree" doesn't make sense. I think you mean "Must fly to see more".

Some sentences don't end in a full stop, e.g. "Pretty blue flower".

I figured the underside of the table wan't very interesting because I was on the ground, but I couldn't FLY TABLE. Similarly FLY TREE and various other objects. You have to FLY then LAND <OBJECT>. This gets a bit tedious after a while.

At the picnic area, EXAMINE KID gives the awkward menu. You can EXAMINE FOCUSED KID to avoid the menu, but that's three-word input. EXAMINE FOCUSED says "Nothing special." In this situation, you should allow for EXAMINE FOCUSED etc.

I was baffled with the sleeping man puzzle. WAKE told me I was on the right track, but none of the things I tried were understood, e.g. I couldn't PUT, PLACE, POKE or INSERT anything in the sleeping man's ear or mouth. When I eventually worked it out, the word I used was pretty obscure, so make sure this has plenty of synonyms. (I can't mention them here for fear of spoilers.)

You can't DROP anything when you're flying. I thought this was a bit cruel, as I always thought that an obvious thing to do was to drop something on someone below, e.g. DROP PEBBLE on sleeping man's bald head. I think you should allow DROP when flying, give an appropriate message and the dropped object appears in the equivalent ground location.

Verbs like FEEL and TOUCH are not understood, even though they're used in the game, e.g. when you EXAMINE PHOTO.

PECK is apparently a synonym for EAT, but I was using it in a different way and "You're not hungry." didn't seem like the right response.

I didn't understand what was going on with the lovers' puzzle because I approached the east bench from the waste bins after examining the man there. I had never seen the woman by herself and I didn't realise that the man with her was the same man from the waste bins. You need to make sure that the man at the waste bins does not do what he does until you have seen the woman by herself. When you examine the man before visiting the east bench, say something like "Checking his watch." When you examine the man after visiting the east bench, do what you're doing now except that "...walks away" should be "...walks west." You also need to make it clear that the woman in the photo and the woman at the east bench are different women. Perhaps blonde woman in photo and brunette woman at east bench, or something like that.

I really enjoyed this game. The puzzles were very clever and thought provoking. They just needed more responses for things you might try that weren't the correct solution.

Host(+2)

I think the game title is a parody of "Untitled Goose Game" which is a game where you play the role of a goose causing mischief for humans in the game.

Submitted

Never heard of it. Is that an adventure?

Submitted

I enjoyed this one.  The sleeping man puzzle is definitely the hardest, but it's very satisfying when you work it out.

Submitted

Thank you, that's good to hear! That seems to be where most people have trouble. I haven't been able to do any "look over the shoulder" play testing so I've been unsure of how to improve it or whether I need to.

Submitted

Thanks for the thorough notes, Garry. You have a lot of good suggestions. If I have the time I'll try to work them into a v1.1.

Chris is correct about the title being a reference to the Untitled Goose Game.