Greetings!

I decided to participate in the Touhou Game Jam, where the goal is to make a bird themed Touhou game within three days. This was my first Jam game in a while, so given that and my overloaded schedule I wanted to keep the scope fairly reasonable. The objective for Bird Up was to combine the themes of casual games like Flappy Bird with the intense Bullet Hell and Graze mechanics of Touhou!  

For those unfamiliar, Touhou is a long running series of bullet hell shoot 'em up games with many, many characters you've probably seen around. While I am a fan of Touhou through it's many incarnations, my experience of playing the games has been somewhat limited. I played the excellent platformer Touhou Luna Nights to completion and I dabbled with Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, but I listen to the soundtracks more often than playing the games themselves. So with this game I wanted to make a game based on the zeitgeist of Touhou, building it into something that was easy to pick up but hard to master. 

With the graphics I had considered full colour pixel art, however it was a three day jam and with my schedule it might as well have been two days. In the end I went for a 1-bit black and white aesthetic. This not only kept the scope down but had the bonus of making it easier to spot bullets on screen. I also noticed the rules allowed for use of previously made material so long as it only made up a small percentage of the game itself, so I took a Reimu animation I'd made last year and added it as the title screen to make it stand out.

Grazing is a key element of Touhou games. The closer you get to the bullets, the more graze points you gain. I designed the game around close calls, so you'll be jumping up and over enemies just barely surviving, but you'll be rewarded for your troubles. I felt elements like this helped elevate the game from a simple mobile experience to one with a bit more nuance. 

Speaking of mobile, the game was designed around a portable experience. For a while I've had the ability to export browser games which helped push the boundaries of play. I previously worked on games where the screen crops depending on the format you play on. That system was implemented here and I think it helped in the game's overall accessibility. The screen boarder was also designed with curved, animated edges to make things feel like a portal to another realm. 

The 1-bit style was a fun challenge. I often gravitate to limitations with my pixel art as I feel it's in the spirit of the medium to work within the boundaries given. There aren't any "big" animations in-game, so I added the P-block powerup to not only defend yourself, but to showcase how many bullets can appear on screen! 

Often when starting game development, I add in simple shapes to get the basic idea down. When I got to the point where I said "Ok, this is a fun foundation!", that's when I started working on the graphics. In the picture below, you can see elements like the hitbox, graze radius and debug numbers on show. This is common to do to ensure everything works and where the exact point of collision occurs. 

The player has a pixel-sized hitbox and the bird enemies have much bigger ones to make them easier to hit. The P-block powerup has a much wider hitbox to make it easier to grab, so even when it's about to go off screen you'll still be able to obtain it! You won't notice that at first but you will the more intense things get.

I had considered parallax backgrounds, though the 1-bit restriction made it difficult to identify what was an obstacle or not. Some scrapped sprites include bird feathers that would appear on the top and bottom, an early bird sprite and a Ying and Yang sprite. The last of which was intended to spin in the background off to the right, but it made it look like a perpetual boss as a result. 

The mechanics of the game evolved over the short course of development. Having the player shoot when jumping was something I was uncertain about implementing, but it felt like it was missing without it. I also considered more enemy types like realistic birds emerging from the screen as well as more Touhou characters, but I kept it to the one enemy type for the sake of focus. 

With the sound design I decided to use a lot of sounds I previously made or had around in my library. When making sounds I try to give them a good punch, mixing them into something beyond their initial form.  The music beat adapts to what emerges from the right side of the screen, so the faster you go the more intense it gets. This mechanic was used in a previous project of mine and I felt it would work well here! I was in the midst of composing a simplified rendition of Bad Apple to use in the game, but decided against it as I felt the gradually intensifying beats worked better.

All in all, I'm very happy with the results of Bird Up! Making short and sweet projects like these is a great morale boost for my main projects. Thanks to all who've played so far, as of writing I'm hoping to check out the other Jam entries soon! 

Bird up!