Birds are jerks. That's the ultimate lesson behind No, Birdie, No!, a quick QWOP-ish skill game by Carnefrisca and w4nderlust that will test your reflexes and dexterity... not that you'll be moving around a lot. After all, all you're doing is hanging from the edge of a cliff by your fingertips. The only place you can go is down. That stupid bird wants to expediate your departure by pecking your fingers off the edge one by one. See? Birds are jerks.
To keep a grip on the edge of the cliff, hold down the [ASDF] keys, and hold on for dear life! However, the bird will start to peck at your fingers one at a time. When the bird appears over a finger, lift up the key associated with that finger ([A] for the index finger, [S] for middle, [D] for ring, and [F] for pinky), and ONLY that finger, in order to lift it and dodge the blow. If the bird hits your finger, that finger gets bruised and is out of play. If too many fingers get bruised, or if you lift too many fingers off the cliff, you rapidly accelerate down the side of the cliff at an estimated 9.81 meters per second squared and the game is over.
It's safe to say you won't last long before you plummet, especially when the bird increases the speed of its pecking order. The game defaults the controls to simulate a right hand on the controls, but things can get a bit confusing when you're asked to use the same keys to lift up the corresponding finger on the left hand (note that the default hand can be switched in the options menu, reversing the controls). It'd probably be a bit too easy if you were given the full home row of ASDFJKL; to play, and that bird wants your torment to be as excruciating as possible (I repeat, birds are jerks). If you're up for a quick nerve-racker, grab hold of this game and see how long you can last.
That is a really fun idea, and the game works very well. However, it is easily beatable with a little trick. Don't read it unless you are a highscore-hunter - it spoils the fun.
You only need one finger with each hand to grab on to the ground. So if you alternate between holding with your indexfinger and then the rest, you will be fine. You can do that without thinking. I got about 9.000 points this way, before I got bored.
I'm not sure you can prevent this without destroying the concept - which is still a lot of fun!
Why can't the left hand be ASDF & the right be JKL;? I keep falling because of how confusing it is to have the same keys in different orders controlling both hands.
I'm the same as Rygar, this is would be a lot easier and more fun if we had both hands on the keyboard. I kept getting confused as to which button controlled what finger, and that lessens the fun of it.
The purpose of sharing the same set of keys for both hands is to prevent the player from surviving easily with one finger on each hand. It's still fairly trivial to survive as it is (see above) but it'd be even easier with the one hand.
I loved the art and the little sound effects, and the premise of being on the verge of death thanks to an adorable little bird is really out there. The game mechanics just aren't very fun and it's trivial to master. You could 'fix' the game by making the loss condition a certain number of pecks, rather than failing to lose all your fingers. That would prevent players from just giving up easy fingers at the start to make the rest of the game easy. It'd also give you opportunities to make the bird peck multiple fingers (or both hands) or let the player recharge health with powerups by grabbing them with fingers when they pass.
It's a good effort technically that needs some improvements in the design department. An improved sequel could address this easily!
This game could be really fun with the asdfjkl; mechanic, and you could avoid the trivializing trick Stephen pointed out by adding some sort of a strength meter that goes down faster if you have more fingers up.
just tried to play this game, its giving me a 'bad file length' error. I've only recently installed unity so no clue whats going on.
asdf jkl; will not work with most computers, hardly any can recognize more than 6 keys down at the same time. Just try it in a text editor window.
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