Blog - Player Thoughts : Pigeon's Treat

16th July 2017

Each week, players send their notes on that week's release.
Let's take a peek at their comments, and share some random thoughts, too!

RSKGames

Initial Thoughts: Looking at the screenshots during the development I felt the game is going to be a fun flying game like "Flapaddidle" but the use of a bird and the background are the only similarities between the 2 games. The gameplay is totally different game. In this game the bird can only fly or dive once per key press no flapping around.

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Each week I try to find interesting control schemes that I've not tackled recently. In this case a jump with a flutter seemed to be the thing I was going for.
Initially I intended this game to be a Hoppy Bobby sequel, but once I added Flutter Jump the game went off in a slightly different direction.

Gameplay: Landing on rotating platforms from the start position is easy but once you die getting down from the top initial position to a platform is difficult if the platforms are spinning faster. Lost many lives trying to land on the platform from the top position

I typically try to land on the left-most side of the "circle". It's usually easier to drop down onto the platforms when they're moving up or down the side, than to try to make a perfect landing on the middle platform which quickly moves out of the way.

Following two points could have made the game a little easier 1. The initial starting position could have been reused after each life. 2. Able to do flapping 2 or 3 times could have helped to adjust the bird mid flight to land correctly.

Yeah, but again I opted to avoid making the bird "Flappy" to distinguish this game from Flappadiddle. The two are indeed incredibly similar looking games. If I made this bird Flappy, too, it would've felt like a redux.

Yes, using the "jump off" point as a restart point might've worked better. Much like Hoppy Bobby always returned to his previous point, too.
Maybe next time!?

All the difficulty is reduced if played in windowed mode, but I like to play in fullscreen mode.

Do you think?!
I felt the two views game the same amount of width. I didn't see the height as being "too" important, since you typically don't use up that much height in the game.

Graphics: Pigeon animation is beautiful. The stars visible in the holes of the bricks is very good. Pigeon and its animation is not flipped horizontally when left key is pressed.

No left-facing was done on purpose. I didn't want the player thinking they could turn back, and since the pigeon tends to waddle about the place, I thought he looked ok without the left-facing view.
It would've been REALLY easy to achieve, but honesty I didn't think it was needed.
*shrugs*

Scoring: Landing on a different rotating platform gives 10 points while getting the treat gives 25 points.

Only landing on the next "circle" will score you the 10 points.
Additionally, and rather frequently, there are 2 treats on the same platform, meaning you get 50 points instead!
I did the spawning of objects very very lazily.
See also..

Level generation: Found so many treats in between spikes, I thought if I land on the edge and move between the spikes it will not kill but that was the not the case. Treats in mail boxes is more manageable though but even many mail boxed had spikes.

Yeah, that spawning's not exactly perfect.
If I'd planned it out better, I could've ensured no objects overlap, but the way I generated the platforms made things stupidly overcomplicated.
Still, at least it managed to always leave at least one platform empty!

Music: The background score is excellent. The pigeon flying sound effect is very well done.

Nearly all of the sound effects in the game started life as synthy drum sounds.
Synthy toms, hi-hats and more, all warped using CoolEdit's "Pitch Bender" function until they sounded like they oughta.
The flap is simply a hi-hat and a snare, but with the snare reversed, mixed together and then a volume slide added to make it more flap like..

Overall an enjoyable and excellent game when played in the easy mode.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Views 203, Upvotes 39

Player Thoughts

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