Blackbird Pie

[Radiant]

Blackbird Pie
You control a flock of blackbirds that deliver pie. But first you have to deliver milk and flour to the bakery (to make a crust) and get the crust and topping to the confectionery (to make your choice of various kinds of pie). It's pretty straightforward mouse controls to click on a bird and set its route. This was written for the May MAGS, and is probably a concept that should be expanded further outside MAGS, but I've managed to downscope it enough to be playable within the month. Enjoy!

https://crystalshard.net/zip/BLACKBIRD.ZIP
Art and Music courtesy of opengameart.org

[heltenjon]

With the update, I can make the other pies, too. Fun!

Some issues still: When I start the game, it asks me for another app to run this ms-gamingoverlay. I ignore it and click the thumbnail and the game runs. But when I alt-x to exit (the only way?), the game screen stays on top of the quit box, so I need to use the windows key to get out properly.

Fail condition:

Spoiler

When I have messed it up and placed five identical ingredients at the bakery. Without a free spot, the birds cannot drop flour/milk and bake a crust. I don't know if that's intentional or not.

[close]

Is there an ending? Win condition? (Doubt it, but it would be nice to know.)

Smaller issue: the pie type needed at the confectionary will always be consumed at once, which means that no other building can get deliveries of that kind of pie.

[Darth Mandarb]

Is this a single-screen game?

If so; please include some cutscene or splash screen screenshots.

If not; please include an additional screenshot as required by the rules.

Thanks!

[Radiant]

Some issues still: When I start the game, it asks me for another app to run this ms-gamingoverlay.

That's odd... that would be an issue with the AGS engine, I think? Maybe we can ask CW.

When I have messed it up and placed five identical ingredients at the bakery. Without a free spot, the birds cannot drop flour/milk and bake a crust. I don't know if that's intentional or not.

That's on my fix list, thanks.

Smaller issue: the pie type needed at the confectionary will always be consumed at once, which means that no other building can get deliveries of that kind of pie.

That too. Actually the "needed" symbol is supposed to disappear after you've made one delivery.

The game is intended to have a win condition but the current build doesn't have it yet.

Is this a single-screen game?

No, it's meant to be multi-screen. I've added a screenshot of the second level WIP, HTH!

[Radiant]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_iysm3Xrao

Impressive!

I played around with this, but only managed to make money from lemon pie, and only at the confectionary and the trash. Am I doing something wrong with the other two pies? I thought I was to deliver them at the sites showing the corresponding graphic, but I don't seem to be able to. I played until my money count was more than 24, just to see if that was a win condition, but I guess there aren't any?

Very creative and nice concept! Even as a prototype, this was fun. And juggling three birds was difficult - I frequently ended up filling a site with only one type of item by accident.

Blackbird Pie is clearly the most impressive when considering the programming. It's a sort of strategy game like others that have you pick up resources and build/make stuff in order to advance, and i think it's very cool to have that made in AGS. The problem is that the MAGS version isn't really a finished game, but rather more of a prototype. Still, I've spent the most time with this game and had fun with it.

I never got the hang of Blackbird Pie. In fact I took enough swings at it that it became frustrating and left a lot of dead birds on the playing field. Radiant gives a number of in-game clues about the mechanics, but I just never figured them out. Almost seems that I came up a bird short? Then again, based on the last several MAGS entries, I suck at solving puzzles.

It's a cute idea, but I'm confused by the controls. I have various routes between points, the birds have their own "inventories" with various resources, but they don't seem to unload them on any of the nodes. I sometimes had a triangular route, but again, the bird wasn't unloading anything. They mostly travel back and forth between their points but not changing anything in the resources. However, I managed to make a few pies and earn 7$

A fun game idea, but I couldn't finish it due to some bugs and lacking direction. I hope there will be a polished version of it, with proper tutorial.

Congrats to Radiant for coming up with such a original idea. I currently have a slight concussion with a killer headache but as soon as that passes I like to play Blackbird Pie.

Quoting this here to have all the posts in one place.

[Crimson Wizard]

Some issues still: When I start the game, it asks me for another app to run this ms-gamingoverlay.

That's odd... that would be an issue with the AGS engine, I think? Maybe we can ask CW.

I doubt that this is related to AGS. I've never heard about this, but a quick search indicate this is related to some service in Windows 10/11:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1497050/ms-gamingoverlay-link-popup
https://www.minitool.com/news/ms-gaming-overlay-popup.html