Bird by Example
What is Bird by Example?
Bird by Example is — and I say this with great passion — an RPG sandbox where all the occupying NPCs are grotesque birds who mimic your behavior with deep learning algorithms. Nothing is scripted! Everything is emergent! Be the bird you want to see in the world!
Steam has asked me to be more explicit with the game’s features:
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world
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objects
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jump
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crawl
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punch
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squawk
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bite
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physics objects
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other*
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stories??**
It’s an artificial intelligence sandbox acted out by birds with concerning musculature! Help them see, help them love, help them eat a big fat bug! Right now at this very second, the metaphysical bounds of this game hold a throng of hungry birds who wish nothing more than to be like you! Like Mama!
_*: Imprint psuedo-neurologically upon independent bird agents, using recurrent neural networks, gradient descent, and a custom-built system of semiotic metadata evocation (to afford transferrable behavior between distinct objects and agents which share characteristics along an n-dimensional space).
**: Isn’t life a story? Aren’t we all little stories, flying on this crazy rock?_
You said this was a game? Who’s Mama? I’m Mama? Who are you again?
Please pay attention. These birds are equipped with artificial neural networks that optimize themselves against your own actions! Using trendy deep learning algorithms found in a black box at the bottom of the sea, and something called ‘gradient descent’, they will try to become mathematically perfect distillations of you! It’s very computationally expensive and very math!
But what do you actually do?
Explore, follow self-imposed rules, and cultivate your flock! Tutor a bird to act just like you! By simply doing things, they will learn from you by witnessing your play! Bite an orange and you may start to see other birds doing similarly! Squawk at a another bird and watch your flock erupt into squawkage!
Oh! That’s interesting. So they have brains!?
Woah, strong word! Let’s avoid that word!
Have you ever played a game, and thought: “This is fun, but I live in such fear that I cannot enjoy it…”
Yes, I do live a life of fear! And thank you for blowing off my silly and ethically challenging question!
Yes, you do live in fear! You’re like any brain-wielding creature! But in Bird by Example there will be nothing to be afraid of! In bird world there is nothing to be afraid of! Nothing to be afraid of! Turn that brain off!
Okay. And the game is fun? It’s a game?
You must teach the rest of the birds basic life skills! If not, they will all starve to death!
Wait, you coded these birds to feel hungry but didn’t teach them how to eat?
That feature was out of scope! Please!!! Hungry!!!
Hold on… What’s a bird?
A bird is a fictional creature which came to me in a dream on a particularly cold night in February. I woke up in a sweat the next morning and quickly tried to recreate the apparition from memory. The results? Remarkable.
Earliest known footage of a “Bird” from that morning.
They were perfect. All they needed was a name.
The word ‘Bird’ is a mix of the word ‘word’ and the letter ‘b’ This is because I needed a word — or “wird” — to describe the birds. Sadly, a word using ‘a’ was already taken. It’s like gamertags!
I experimented for many weeks with flight, but no matter how much I stretched out their arms they would not.
Whatever. Doesn’t matter.
Per Aspera
It’s rare for a city builder / logistics game to have a good story, but this one sure does. Through monologue and dialogue options we follow the self-discovery and existential ruminations of the player character, an AI tasked with terraforming Mars. The planet visuals are beautiful. It’s incredible to zoom in and look at the contoured terrain and watch it change as it fills in with water and plant life.
Gameplay is less elaborate than most city builders and the logistics are not even close to the level of complexity of something like a Factorio style game. Managing the interconnected temperature and atmospheric composition is interesting. The end result is a casual, relaxing builder with a memorable story.
– Real player with 95.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Artificial Intelligence Space Games.
===SUMMARY===
This is my favorite game of 2021. I like simulation games as a group, and this is a beautiful installment of this growing genera. I love what simulations teach me, being spoon fed facts off a list. I love that (having played Per Aspera) I know the landscape of Mars better. I know some of the names, sure, but grokking the SCALE, the oddness, sparking my curiosity about Noctis Labyrinthus, just from working on the planet is priceless. I became familiar with Mars in a way that Surviving Mars never did (though I played that a lot too).
– Real player with 68.7 hrs in game
Darwin’s Aquarium
The game is a realtime fish simulation with realtime learning artificial intelligence.
Build up a tank, start training and breeding your own fish and maybe some day, start defeating the big evil bossfish!
Earn money by advancing your breeding capabilities, improve your breeding grounds and unlock more valuable fish.
You’ll see plenty of unbelievable fish interaction: Fish that start hunting, fleeing, cooperating. Some might learn to farm algae, other might start to bait less harmful fish… who knows..? There is no limit to the interaction of the fish and every evolution of species can bring new features. Make sure you select your fish carefully and only breed the fittest, so you can compete against the other fish.
It’s up to you and your fish to cooperate with other players or just defeat them- but be warned: Your fish are getting intelligent. They might have their own will soon!
WorldBox - God Simulator
Worldbox is the most advanced god game out there. Don’t let the pixel art fool you, there is complexity here. You have no limits on your power, create and destroy without cost. Create storms, rend the land with earthquakes. Assign the dry land a biome, be that a dense jungle, or arid savannah. You can even curse the earth, so that the souls of the slain are trapped, cursed to wander the land as a vengeful wraith.
These souls, the races in the game are one of the core features. Spawn a group of humans, orcs, dwarves or elves. They will spawn, knowing nothing at all about the land you have made. As the grow and expand, they develop culture and research technologies to help them survive. Will you help them grow into a High Renaissance trade civilization? Or will they be unable to unite, due to a lack of resources and marauding demons. Watch as thousands of years of history lay out before you. Greedy dwarf kings waging unjust wars, intrepid human explorers setting sail for the first time in 800 years, since the Collapse. What will they find? Untouched paradise, or the husked out ruins of a once great Elven Kingdom. 2 Immortal kings, plotting against each other for thousands of years. All scenarios I have witnessed in my own kingdoms.
– Real player with 161.2 hrs in game
I absolutely gosh darn love this game.
I have played it for definitely over a hundred hours in the Humble Alpha version and I am so excited that its here on Steam. I can’t wait to follow this game to the ends of the box in Steam.
I do see a lot of people complaining about the price and how it is not worth it for how much content is in it right now but guess what guys? ITS AN EARLY ACCESS GAME!
Just a little advice: if you know that a game is not yet complete just DON’T BUY IT!
Anyways, what I find good about Worldbox is that it is just what it claims it is: World + Sandbox. ‘Course it isn’t as big as the actual world, but it still is pretty big. Complete with dozens of creatures to kill, i mean, spawn, and a whole array of powers to use to torture, i mean, help those creatures, Worldbox is a masterpiece.
– Real player with 12.5 hrs in game
Ruinarch
A fun game that is definitely in early access.
Edited: 7/30/2021. The game has been significantly changed since I posted my first review, and its’ unfortunately not all for the better.
The Good:
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Villagers have been overhauled significantly, and their interactions with each other and the world are much more interesting. They earn money to buy resources, have more robust individual trades, craft items, and all sorts of other fun stuff.
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The way monsters are used has been vastly improved. Rather than just spawning them next to a villager and letting them have at it, they are formed into parties, led by one of your demons, to accomplish a specific purpose. Marauder parties from the marauder building break stuff and attack villagers to sow chaos, snatching parties kidnap villagers or monsters for imprisonment, and defense parties protect your base full-time. It’s a bit monotonous to reform the parties repeatedly if you make heavy use of them, but this alone has made Ravager a lot more fun.
– Real player with 36.0 hrs in game
UPDATE: hot damn, that’s one hell of an update. 10/10 guys, very cool.
At first, I thought this was the “Devil Simulator” I’ve always wanted. But the longer I played, the more frustrated I became with this game. I’ll start with the Good things, follow up with the Bad, and leave you with my suggestions for improvement.
The Good
-The AI is tremendously well made, just as advertised. Each NPC has different traits, different relationships with other NPC’s, and adjusts it’s behavior over time as it interacts with the other NPC’s. The level of care and attention that went into this facet of the game is dumbfounding, considering this is, at it’s core, “God Simulator meets Sim City”. As an example, if you turn enough villagers into vampires or cultists, they can split off and form their own societies.
– Real player with 23.7 hrs in game
Bow & Crystal Tower Defense
If you click fast enough you have a machine gun.
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
pretty terrible
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
One Military Camp
Design and manage a military camp, as well as its essential facilities for the sustainability of life there. Set the layout of buildings where your soldiers will train their physical and tactical abilities. Eating and resting are very important too! So take it all into account to achieve a profitable and efficient academy.
Every recruit is born to serve the country, but only a few are the best for your camp. Following requests from the army, you will have to check the fear in the eyes of your soldiers before choosing them to join the camp.
Each training course will transform regular soldiers into highly specialized ones. Check the attributes of your ensigns and set them in the right path for their born specialty.
Affirmative! Training and maintaining soldiers is expensive, but you can make it a profitable business. Managing as a real tycoon will turn your camp into a money-making machine by completing government missions.
Upgrading buildings will allow you to improve the training of your soldiers. Having many strong soldiers will help you to face all the missions. Enjoy blowing stuff up? Don’t forget to build the Bomb Defusal Training building!
The war is constantly evolving, so stay ahead of the curve. Each mission will require specific soldiers. You’re not thinking of sending your best divers into a land battle, are you?
Deisim
One of if not THE ONLY “God game” I have ever played that is not another RTS borefest.
You do not have to build everything for the people and I love that!
You place land tiles in a seemingly infinite grid. Land tiles such as grasslands, Forests, Deserts, Oceans, and the such. Each prividing different resources for little humans who live grow and die all on their own.
The game is still being developed and will continue to get better as the dev Myron continues to expand and advance the game.
Simply put, this is the first real God game!
– Real player with 31.0 hrs in game
It’s neither Black and White nor Populous, but that’s okay because Deisim actually manages to carve out it’s own identity as a God game somewhere in between. Actually, on the surface Deisim kind of makes me think of Godus, except this is actually a good game. And in fact, one mind blowing consideration is that even in its current Early Access stage, Deisim is already a better game than Godus, despite being made by just one guy.
So anyway, the emphasis is on the placement of land tiles that you use to shape the environment, which then leads to tribal villages popping up. The villages will then use the environmental resources you’ve placed to grow and prosper, and eventually evolve into small towns, leading to more believers and more mana. Although indirect interaction is mainly how you grow your world, direct interaction is possible too, such as picking up villagers and buildings, or casting spells directly on things to either help or hinder the villagers. Towns will inevitably begin to spawn heretics who if given too much leeway, will convert their town into a heretic faith, eventually causing them to wage wars of conquest on their neighbours. To deal with this, a good old dose of fire or locusts can convince the heretics the error of their ways and show them that yours is the true faith.
– Real player with 10.9 hrs in game
Far Sector
You’re a spaceship captain, and your objective is to explore the depths of the far sector. Build, research, and use the sector’s uncharted horrors to your advantage. How far will you go to accomplish your goal? What are you willing to sacrifice? The decision is all yours, captain.
Your own space base
- Build, improve, and optimize. Ensure that your station can withstand whatever is thrown at it.
Encounter the horrors of the far sector
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Meteorite fields keeping you from getting through the cold cosmos.
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Spatial anomalies that challenge the very laws of physics humans have used to understand the world around them.
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Strange organisms with qualities never seen before. They bring with them incredible danger as well as the opportunity for scientific breakthroughs.
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Space madness and paranoia that wrap themselves around anyone who has been in deep space for too long. While most people aren’t prone to this problem, a few of your crew members are going to get progressively worse as your travels go on. How will you avert a crisis?
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What else does the far sector have in store for you?
Make the best of catastrophes
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Use mold-contaminated cultures to filter oxygen.
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Study notes of madmen to find encrypted coordinates.
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Spill the blood of an all-consuming alien life form to create a regenerating ointment.
Text events
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Everything you do and anything you decide can impact what happens next, leading to unexpected situations.
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Choose carefully and make wise decisions knowing that each choice you make could be crucial.
Crew members
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Have skills, attributes, and weaknesses that impact their work speed, their stamina, the resources they require, and the situations they tend to bring on.
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Can get sick or make breakthroughs in their area of expertise. The Eureka! events that happen to scientists can leapfrog you into the future, even giving you new tech you wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
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Sometimes write personal journal entries that tell you more about what’s happening outside the confines of your mission.
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Need a watchful eye since it’s somewhat difficult to find new people in the depths of space.
Anything can happen, even in the safe zone
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Random events
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Meteorites
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Fires
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Short-circuits
The effort you put in now will pay dividends in the future
- Expeditions' data will be sent to coalition headquarters, and you can start your next mission with an even better technological base.
Starmancer
I rarely write reviews for games, but this game is a special exception. I can see exactly what type of game the developers are trying to make and the idea is great. It is a bit messy right now, but give it a few updates and I feel that this could become a really fun colony sim.
TLDR: If this game interests you but you aren’t sure about it, put it on your wishlist and wait a few months. Hopefully by then the game will be in a much better state.
Visuals: The pixel art is fantastic and I love it to pieces. It reminds me of starbound which is a good thing. I think the visuals are probably the best part of the game currently. The skybox is very pretty, the machines look great, character models are good, food actually looks like something I would eat (except the nutrition bricks), etc.
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game
There are definitely still some bugs but there is a good game there. If you are having some of these early game issues/bugs, here are ways that I’ve found to deal with them at this point.
Starmap Is Blank:
This seemingly kills the game because without being able to do missions, you’re just dead in the water. To fix this, I just save my game. Quit Starmancer entirely. Start the game. Load your save file. Check your Starmap. If it is still blank, try the same process again. Not sure what is going on here or why it sometimes take multiple restarts, but that’s what I’ve found to work. This is the biggest bug that needs attention in my opinion, because it could potentially ruin your entire save file if you can’t fix it.
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game