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.
Russian Roads
TL:DR: Terrible but hilarious and kind of fun to play.
Cons:
Absurd physics
Mediocre sound
Terrible checkpoints around the corner so you don’t know which way you’re going,
The other npc vehicles are faster even after you’ve applied the 3 torque upgrades
Pros
Funny AF
Achievements
Trading cards
Computer AI so dumb it’s hilarious
Hasn’t crashed or bugged out
Worth the sale price because I’m enjoying it and want to complete it.
– Real player with 6.4 hrs in game
Russian Roads is a 3D third person road racing game made out of a series of Unity Asset flips. It’s designed as a mostly joke game to lambast the state of roads in Russia, as the tracks have a series of potholes and other aspects of disrepair that act as obstacles to the driver.
Despite some effort around assembling a game from a racing template and some low quality/asset flipped vehicles and environments, the end product is still obviously asset flip tier and of such poor quality that I can’t recommend it. The joke premise is mildly amusing for around 2 minutes. Laush Studio has a long history of these kinds of frankenstein asset flips, and this is no exception to their record of poor quality bundle fillers.
– Real player with 5.8 hrs in game
Farm Life: Natures Adventure
Poorly optimised android port and/or an unfinished port. But as not in early access approach this as a full game.
Way too buggy, including game ending faults at the moment. Not sure the game will contain enough levels to even compete within the genre with the gameplay coming across as cookie cutter. The engine feels clunky and delayed.
The fun of the game is not coming from challenge or story for me.
The tutorial shouldn’t even exist as it explains the easier sections of the game, then does not even touch on the more complex areas and the help files aren’t helpful.
– Real player with 6.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Artificial Intelligence Fishing Games.
Veeeeery clunky controls and game breaking bugs. The first time the game hicked up completely, couldn’t even get past entering all the data for creating the farm. On the second save I bought a milktool by accident and every NPC now says “Thanks for buying that.”, rendering me unable to purchase anything. I also have one strawberry seed I can plant endlessly. Developer, try harder please.
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game
Godly Corp
What a great hidden gem!
A game where you play as a tentacle monster working in an office already promisses originality.
I was reluctant at first, not beeing an avid indie games player, but after playing it for a bit, it really grew on me.
The controls take a while to master, which is a good thing: the feeling of achievement after beating harder levels on hard difficulty is truly great!
The game isn’t very long, about 2 - 4 hours on average to play through all levels. It isn’t a bad thing though, because you can always keep trying to beat the previous high score or other players' scores on theglobal leaderboard.
– Real player with 11.9 hrs in game
Check out my Steam Curator page, “Minorthreatt Gaming Reviews.” I have the most organized and extensive genre lists on Steam! Be sure to “FOLLOW” for more of my recommendations: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31339849-Minorthreatt-Gaming-Reviews/?appid=257170
The Short of it: Not exactly my cup of tea in the long run, but I get why it’s popular. It can be funny, frustrating, and challenging. I think the humour is its best quality. It truly tests your multi-tasking limits.
Reminds me of: If you liked any of those surgeon simulator type games, you’ll probably like Godly Corp.
– Real player with 11.1 hrs in game
WTF Is Wrong With You?
This Game! Bro… This game Right here! I haven’t actually finished it, because there are a LOT of questions…. But what I did play was super funny! I played this on Twitch. Me, my chat, and even hubby who was in the room with me were cracking up! We were blown away by some of these questions and DEF NOT for kids… But fun and hilarious for streaming if you want a fun interactive just chatting game. 10 out of 10 recommend for adults
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
Code word: Basic
Woul rate this game with a 6/10 (In comparison their game “The Journey - Episode 1” of the same developer would get a 10/10 from me.)
Pros:
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Unique
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Nice art
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Interesting questions
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Potential to make you accidentally shout “What? No way!” at your screen out loud XD ( – Actually did that. My poor soft-hearted pet nearly had a heart attack XD)
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Got a bit faster to the point in the beginning than in the Test series, though sadly not as fast as in the journey.
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You get to add a code word to your “collection”
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game
Dealer’s Life
I love this game! I have had it since it launched on the play store for mobile devices.
I like how I can play it in a windowed tab and often play while watching tv on my laptop.
I wish the game offered more things such as leaderboards so you can see how you compare to other players. I have beat the game a few times with 24 weeks been the fastest to complete. and was wondering how that compares to other players.
Other things I think that would be cool would be head to head competitions where you have 15-30 minutes to try and have more money at the end than your competitior. It would help make the game interesting for me again.
– Real player with 279.6 hrs in game
The Game:
This is basically the buy and sell portion of Recettear with a bit more depth added. You can add stats to yourself to be able to:
• Know the value of items
• Charm customers
• Read the customers' level of greed, desire for the item, and their patience for negotiations
You can hire people for your shop as well who will add a little to those stats, and who can also restore broken items, or authenticate them, or even create counterfeits.
Pros:
- Fun and addictive if you enjoy buy and sell games where you are the merchant (I love this type of game)
– Real player with 48.2 hrs in game
Fat Prisoner Simulator 3
Might possibly be the best game on the market currently. The graphics, the gameplay, the absolute talent required to even TOUCH this game is insane.
– Real player with 58.3 hrs in game
quite the exceptional game i would recommend this game to others in the future 10/10 from me
– Real player with 8.9 hrs in game
Your Show Has Been Cancelled
This game just keeps going. At least as much content after “finishing” the game as before. Really well put together 3!
– Real player with 104.5 hrs in game
I was not expecting to wholeheartedly enjoy this game as much as I did. From the amazing soundtrack to the laugh-out-loud humor (not even joking) to the real sense of growth in power as you progress, this game will remain near the top of my list for indie games for years. Best of all, you can feel the passion from the creator with every line of dialogue.
If the price is a bit daunting for you, I’d definitely recommend it on sale.
Overall I’d give this game a 8.5/10 - a game I would highly recommend, and I hope to see more from this developer in the future.
– Real player with 7.3 hrs in game
Line Simulator
Experienced on the Oculus Quest 2
You can view my review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/w38uLquSffo
Very close call on whether to recommend or not. I would ideally give it a neutral recommendation as there is something here, however, currently there are just too many issues for me to give this a positive recommendation. I experienced a game-breaking bug where I can’t get past the first level (mini-mart) after the latest update. I expect that issue to be fixed soon. This developer has been actively been updating this game since release back in November 2020. I have seen several improvements each time that I have played this game. However, although the game is better now, it still is clunky overall.
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
‘Line simulator’ is a funny cartoon-like VR game where you have to wait in line in every level like in a shop.
Some levels are located in shops and others in other places such as parties, but anyway, you will have to wait in a line of people anyway.
It is then up to you to decide how long you want to wait, throw cheeses or other items at the people in front of you until they give up their spot.
You will also have to do certain tasks, for example you will have to search and find items via dialogs or shopping lists.
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
Live Long Z
A zombie/monster survival horror game. Survive waves of creatures solo or with your friends. Craft traps and forts, and complete minor objectives. See how long you can live against the Z’s. Live Long Z!
Features online multiplayer and offline single player. As well as LAN connections.
Pick from a multitude of characters.
Fight a wide range of different creatures while trying to survive.