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Right, this is an amazing game but could be so much better if there were not so many weird GUI issues, bugs and two odd choices.

GUI: Mixing the mouse and keyboard feels weird to start with and gets downright horrible later on with lots of birds, even the keyboard is objecting since pressing two keys at once often/always locks the vertical movement out and you slide awkwardly along the horizontal. Having to go to the bottom and then to each bird (especially pigeons) for each message (even when messages are grouped) is cute to start with but gets frustrating fast with lots of messages and birds... I spent more time giving messages than I did anything else in the game and paying attention to deadlines was not worth it beyond half-way through the game... make sure your birds are upgraded and just send them with the right size package plus don't take on the apothacary or the other short deadline patron... not worth the trouble because there is too much time just trying to get message to birds in the roost.

Bugs: Upgrades to birds cost nothing despite what it says. Birds taking twice as long as they should (occassionally but impactfully in the case of multi-parcel deliveries, especially with the queen given the hit to reputation is at least twenty well sent packages... plus the time it takes to do so given the decline in reputation over time. Looking at the bird seller screen when they leave the page makes it so you can't leave that page ever again... this is a HARD RESET BUG. Kernels seem to jump in price by ten times once you go into buying them individually (whatever the price marked) - I was within days tens of thousands in debt due to having run out of kernels... no the price being charged for kernels was not matched by what was being charged automatically. Going into debt doesn't end the game? It is not possible to leave debt though as the cost of kernels far outstrips your ability to make money.

Design choices: keyboard plus mouse. no save function. little to no information on the main stat in the game (reputation), it seems to be impacted by debt status, failed packages (by a huge degree) but not improved for delivering early or for larger deliveries (because four stork delivery a day ahead of time is entirely normal for a forge!?! Never mind four note deliveries over 1400kms on the same day - and that wasn't even a short deadline!?!?)

I have to say this feels a lot like a game that was always playtested from beginning to end (given the lack of saving this is even less surprise) and therefore the start of the game experience is very good and then the end of game experience is a terrible mishmash because little problems magnify to become big problems because the choice of "difficulty" curve was "all of them" (more packages, more reputations to maintain, more birds, less time (caused by a slow and inefficient UI) and way too much information that just can not be parsed in time... I would challenge you to create an automated bot to play this game to the end without having the same issues as human players (which given their speed suggests that the mechanics of the game themselves are the problem, not human skill).

Anyway, I have to say that this game starts out great and I could see it doing well in competitions where completion is not necessary but remember that fans will complete your games and may not stay fans if the game drops off in quality as one progresses through it... this is a real problem in clicker games, time blocking games and AAA games that playtest only the first few hours of their games because after that no refunds are possible.

All the best and keep on improving :)

Thank you so much for the extensive feedback! Just so i can understand the feedback correctly: Which version did you play? browser or downloadable? Post jam or jam submission?
We made the game in 3 days and then took a few days of that week to balance, polish some things and fix some bugs. From the description it does sound a bit like you played the jam submission.

Apologies for entirely forgetting to specify my system information. I installed the game using the itch.io app in Windows 10 which I believe usually makes it the latest available version of the app... but I've just double checked and it looks like it defaulted to the Jam version, so yes, I will need to double check this lot - apologies... I be back to you with what I can find once I've played the latest version. I have to say I'm a little perturbed as every time I've had reason to check previously it was indeed the lastest version installed by default, I wonder what happened this time?

Okay I've found why the PostJam version is not the default to install. The Jam version's data file lists the Jam version as having been updated  26th November, 2023 but the PostJam version is listed as having been created and updated at 23 May 2023 so the app finds the latest version to be the Jam submission and therefore installs that by default and it is not obvious from the interface that there are other versions... indeed the "Install" button is visible once seeing the very top of the page so someone my never see the list of versions before deciding to install the programme and then the drop down for other versions exists whether there are other versions in that dropdown or not and so it is not clear if a programme has an alternate version without active clicking on the dropdown to find what other versions there are.

All this means that since your latest updated version (according to the metadata the app uses) is the Jam version that was "updated" 26th November 2023 and so that is given as the default (by the looks of it). I presume that, if nothing else, you "update" the PostJam version this issue will be fixed nd you'll stop getting so many reports about the Jam version! ;) <3

Ah, now i understand the logic behind it. The installer will probably choose the first entry in the list that matches your OS. The jam build was older than the post jam (which makes sense), but it was listed as the first build. I fixed that, thank you for the info! That should make many player experiences better.