I have unfortunately again not had time to thoroughly play a console video game (hopefully will for next week). But I did have time to replay an Internet game called Damn Birds. In this game the player is a statue that protects itself from being pooped on by shooting birds. I just love that concept for a game, especially because the game is not gross when dealing with the excrement.
Players: This is a single player game that interacts with the computer that presents itself as a multitude of birds of various types that randomly drop excrements as they fly across the screen.
Procedures: The player uses a mouse to aim the gun and clicks to fire. Additionally they can use the tab key as well as the numeric buttons to switch between weapons if they have more than one. ‘R’ reloads and ‘P’ pauses the game.
Rules: The operational rules are that you shoot birds to remain as clean as possible using what weaponry and ammunition you can afford. Become too dirty and you lose and must start back from the beginning. The constitutive rules are all of the formulas that determine how many points and dollars you get from killing the birds, and also how much you must pay to clean yourself off at the end of a round. The only implicit rule I am aware of is that the player only shoots birds within the game and does not try to do this in real life. But they birds would fly away from the sound of gunshots so I say good luck.
Resources: Players are given what I will call a health bar, but it really is a bar that fills up the more substance falls onto the statue. The player also receives money for killing birds, which they can use to clean themselves, buy new weapons, ammunition, and something called defense points, which I can’t figure out exactly how much they help, but supposedly they make a difference.
Conflict: the conflict is between the player and the birds trying to make the statue dirty. There could also be conflict within the player if they find the game overall immature, or do not want to spend time shooting virtual birds.
Objectives: The objective is to kill as many birds as possible to avoid becoming too dirty. As far as I know there is no way to actually beat the game and it just goes from level to level until the player is defeated or gives up.
Boundaries: The biggest boundary from me is that when the game starts it prevents Pandora from playing, which aggravates me and I have to find an alternate source of music or just do without. It would normally seem that outside music would be a boundary, but I’m just used to it so not having it while I was just listening to it is detractive.
Outcome: The ultimate outcome is the player loses or gives up. But it is hard to tell when that will happen. Sometimes I make it much farther than other times. The health bar is also hard to read to determine when you are about to lose.
This game is surprisingly tough to get really far in. Either that or I am just pretty bad at it. It really isn’t a very good game, but it is fairly entertaining for a bit. The concept is better than any other part of the game.
Overall I give it 3 out of 5 stars.
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