#projectbirdcage

[milonogiannis]

Since late August of 2022, Barry Topping and I have been working on a shoot ‘em up game called BIRDCAGE.

Now 2024 is wrapping up and – surprisingly – so is the production phase of BIRDCAGE. There’s still plenty of work to be done, but the game itself is all there, playable and asset complete.

Now we’re left with an ever-growing lernaean hydra list of other tasks to handle – emails, wider testing, stability, updating store presences, promotional stuff and in general, just trying to maximize the reach and polish of what we’ve made.

The final stretch of production (roughly the last 5 months?) was really fun. The game had matured enough that we just instinctively knew what would work and what wouldn’t.

We’d become comfortable enough with the tools we built and our process where we’d just be constantly in hyper mode. The game really came together in this final leg of development.

POLYGON BIRD, our studio name, and EXCEL Framework, the name given to the "shmup tools" we made for the game.

I was expecting ending full-on production on BC to be frustrating and depressing, but some switch flipped in my head and now all I want to do is email people about the game, optimize our Steam tags and figure out how to get this in people’s hands – and I’m finding that fun, at least for now. The game isn’t this ideal brainchild piece of art to me, suddenly. We did the work to make the thing, now it’s time the thing worked for us.

It surprises me how often I find myself thinking ridiculous things like “we need to activate our discord members” – but I’ll take this over the usual pit of despair I fall into after finishing a big project.

I guess this is what motivated me to write down these thoughts in the first place – I was bracing to be fully depressed and lost right about now, resenting the game and the time we spent on it. Maybe this will serve as a reminder that finishing a thing doesn’t have to feel so bad?

So now we’re kind of going back into uncharted waters – promoting, releasing, dealing with feedback, hotfixes and support. There’s going to be a lot of “learning on the job”, I guess, but I’m excited to see that aspect of game dev.

I’m really glad we were able to hit our goal of wrapping up this phase of BIRDCAGE as the year comes to a close – it makes it easy to look back on the past 2 years as a whole and see how much we’ve learned. I can’t wait for us to make another game, knowing what we know now.

There is still nothing to announce regarding the release of the game, but it still felt important to make note of this milestone.

For now, just know we’ve made a game and are working on getting it out there! We should have a lot more to say soon.

In the meantime, you can help us out by adding BIRDCAGE to your Steam wishlist.

Thanks for sticking around all these years.

Happy holidays!

-G

[milonogiannis]

Excel, from our game BIRDCAGE.

Planning on doing some comics related to BC, so been trying to find a suit that would be fun to draw over and over. On the original there was a silver marker element that of course didn't scan right.

[milonogiannis]

[milonogiannis]

just BIRDCAGE things

Wishlist our arcade-style shoot 'em up game BIRDCAGE on Steam!

[milonogiannis]

There's a lot of stuff that I'm unable to get into BIRDCAGE that will find its way into other related media. I'm trying not to stress too much about showing and talking about things that won't be in the game and think of it more as different elements that all build up the image of the thing in your head -- like how a painterly cover for a SNES game gave you a starting point to imagine what the game was going for.

Anyway that's a long way of saying mechs exist in BC extended lore bye

[milonogiannis]

Excel, from our game BIRDCAGE.

[milonogiannis]

[milonogiannis]

Some logos for the game

[milonogiannis]

"I don't think I ever caught your name..."

Meet Excel and Seed, pilots of the HALCYON and CEYX, and the protagonists of BIRDCAGE.

In defiance of their rival factions, RADON and SELENE, they are united by their shared objective:

Destroy the EGG.

[milonogiannis]

[milonogiannis]

BIRDCAGE Wallpaper / 2024

[milonogiannis]

BIRDCAGE ~ Stage 2 Gameplay Capture

Wishlist on Steam if you would like to help us out:

[milonogiannis]

More BIRDCAGE things

[milonogiannis]

been working on the arcade mode for the game -- basically a different arrange of the game with some of the slower/more gimmicky stuff removed

[milonogiannis]

[milonogiannis]