We were very excited to present A Bird in the Hand at Let’s Break Games, presented by WAGIC on 2 November this year.

We set our table up with a variety of decorations and merch; concept art, stickers, gummy worms, prints and business cards. We also set up some stationary and sticky notes so that visitors to the table could draw a bird to add to our collection.

We had an issue with the outline shader at the start of the event and had to spend 40 minutes fixing it before starting the playtests. We also had a crashing issue between the scene switches, and had to close the game and restart it between rounds occasionally. For the next event, we could prevent this happening by doing more rigorous tests on the build the night before.

Four and a half hours went by extremely quickly; we had a bunch of players and heaps of great feedback.

Some of the improvements suggested were adjusting the map so that players wouldn’t get stuck on the geometry as much, including more breakable objects in the level, and adjusting the push control for the bird characters so that they could break objects more effectively. People also requested a clearer tutorial, so we will make it more prominent in future builds.

Things that players enjoyed were the silly atmosphere of the game, chasing each other around the level, and throwing other players out of windows.

One of the frequent issues that attendees had was carrying the A4 prints around. They liked the artwork but found the prints inconvenient to carry around the event. Next time we could provide some cut up cardboard rolls, so that people can roll them up and carry them.

Stickers and gummy worms were a big hit, as were the bird sticky notes. We amassed an amusing collection of bird drawings by the end of the event.

Our next showcase is coming up on the 21st of November, so we are looking forward to implementing the feedback and introducing our game to a new audience!