Birdyard

Birdyard is a backyard simulator/bird collecting game, similar to Neko Atsume(2014). The premise is simple: Decorate your own suburban backyard and collect all 45 birds!

- Make your yard a more bird-friendly environment and take their picture!

-Trade with magpies

-Cozy bird sounds

-realtime night/day cycle

-information sourced from Nationale Vogelbescherming

This game is aimed at a Dutch audience as it is meant to be educative on Dutch yard birds specifically. It’s created for bird enjoyers, and/or players who are looking for a cozy, idle game experience where you only have to check in shortly a few times a day.

Inspired by when I went birdspotting in my own backyard for the ‘nationale tuinvogeltelling’ (national yard bird counting day), this game is meant to teach the player a variety of birds local to the country, and above all, how to make your backyard a friendlier environment for local birds.

Yard bird numbers in the Netherlands have been plummeting in the past few years. As a bird appreciator myself I hope to make something that might inspire someone to help the cause by making their backyard a friendlier environment for local birds. All birds and objects in the game represent real-life birds and garden accessories you can get in real-life to attract these birds as well.

special thanks to Max for helping me out with some of the coding :)

prototype instruction manual:

there are a total of 6 birds to collect in this prototype. birds can be attracted by placing garden accessories bought at the local garden centre, Insta-tuin. take pictures of the birds in camera-mode and click on their newly added picture in your album to get a reward and add them to your collection.

you can find out more information about the birds in the vogelgids (click on icon in UI to open), as well as a sound sample of their song and a link to vogelbescherming.nl's page on the bird.

when the game opens the first time, your yard is empty. you will already have some insta-tuin stamps as you can see in the bottom-right box. This is the currency used at Insta-tuin. go to Insta-tuin by clicking on it's icon in the UI, there you will meet a friendly heron, and see a couple different garden accesories (as well as 'glinstertjes' used for magpie trading). click to buy and place immediately in your garden (this can be anywhere).

birds will soon start appearing on your placed items. click on the camera icon to enter camera-mode. use the crosshair to take a picture of the bird by clicking. if succesful you will hear a shutter sound. exit camera-mode when done. the bird isn't collected yet until you click on it's picture in your album, where you will get a reward in stamps as well. 

when you re-start the game new birds will spawn on your placed items. closing the game will save it and remember where you were upon opening next time.

another way to get stamps is through magpie trading . there is a magpie in your yard who likes shiny things, and is willing to trade for stamps. this feature right now is quick&simple: buy 'glinstertjes' at insta-tuin, they will be placed on the picnic table. a magpie will appear with stamps. click on the magpie and then the stamps it left to collect.

some things to watch out for in prototype:

-panels can only be closed by clicking the x button in it's top-right corner.

-garden items cannot be removed yet, so be careful where you place them (or remove save.data to start over)

-the shovel icon right now isn't responsive.

-when 6/6 birds are collected it will still say 'incompleet' in the box, but upon restarting it will display 'compleet'.

-getting rewards for pictures is activated again upon restart

-try setting your system time to night to view the garden at nighttime :)

future plans

-45 yard birds total

-bird animation

-a large catalogue of placeable items

-birds appearing slower between sessions for the full idle experience, as well as the magpie trading being slower

-birds being time-specific and object-specific

-buildmode where you can place the items you've bought and remove them (shovel icon)

-possible cat-antagonist?

AI use and sources

There are no AI tools involved in the making of Birdyard. All art is hand-drawn by me. information about the birds and corresponding appropriate garden accessories are sourced from www.vogelbescherming.nl . Bird sounds are sourced from xeno-canto.org . Game engine is GoDot.