Very Good But Needs QOL
I love this game’s idea, and I’ve been playing it on and off for the last few months. Recently, I got an iPad, and I found the experience is much better on the bigger screen. The game needs some QOL to truly stand out as the casual virtual birding game of my dreams. I’m a budding game dev myself, so I see lots of room for improvement. I’ve made a few IAPs (All-Access Pack, 8x Binocs, Yellowstone Night) and plan to get the Norfolk DLC at some point, but have been holding back b/c of the following issues: My most notable issue is that it’s missing a lot of UI elements that contextualize other UI elements/gameplay features. For example, there’s a bar underneath each bird in your life list. What is that bar? How do you make it go up? What happens when it’s filled? Other questions: What is the point of leveling up? Do you unlock new birds or feeders that way? Do you NEED to fill feeders to attract certain birds? How do you tell if a bird is rare? Are purchased spotting scopes location-specific/permanent? In the life list, how can you tell if a bird is from a specific DLC (i.e. Yellowstone Night, Norfolk), etc. The night DLC being exclusively toggleable is convenient, but feels strange in practice. I personally would prefer an integrated day-night cycle once the DLC is purchased, (perhaps a setting to swap between a day-night cycle or toggling) but I understand if there’s a limitation keeping this from being possible. The current gameplay loop is pretty lackluster. You ID a bird, you get seeds, repeat. Sometimes you see a new one. There’s really no long-term rewards or goals that encourage you to continue outside of completing quests and trying to compete the life list entries. Fleshing out the leveling system (maybe new feeders/food or sanctuary decor gets unlocked as you level) could be a way to help this. Another issue is the lack of proper audio settings. Being able to change the intensity of different sound channels is very helpful for people like me with auditory sensory issues. The seed collection noise is very jarring and I’d love a way to mute or reduce the volume of that. Basically, bird sounds, BG ambience sounds, and UI sounds should have toggles or sliders so they can be adjusted. Finally, a way to adjust which types of notifications you see would be awesome! I would much prefer to only see the “a bird has appeared” type notifications. The bird facts are neat, but got annoying really quickly when I was expecting the game to notify me of a