All Games > Simulation Games > Bird by Example
Community Hub
Bird by Example
Just add water! The Kafkaesque bird-based artificial intelligence sandbox driven by real-time neural networks and your own sick perversions! Acquire love! It is time to throw fear to the birds!
All Reviews:
No user reviews
Release Date:
Coming soon
Developer:
Publisher:
Noah Burkholder

Sign in to add this item to your wishlist, follow it, or mark it as ignored

Features
Single-player
Profile Features Limited 
Languages:
Interface Full Audio Subtitles
English ✔
Awards
It will not win any awards.

Coming Soon To Early Access

The developers of this game intend to release as a work in progress, developing with the feedback of players.

Note: Games in Early Access are not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“Listen, this whole game was a total accident! Some friends were over for a Halloween party and asked what I was working on, and when I showed them they totally freaked out! I'm just letting people play it for free while I work to finish it!

I'm doing Early Access for a very specific reason: This is a tech demo and the 'game' part is almost non-existent yet. As I develop the game features (and create the story / world) I will be looking to the community for gameplay ideas, features and places to focus to maximize fun and interest. I want to watch people play it while I develop it so I can decide what the finished game will look like. This means your access to the product at this early stage is crucial to development.

I have no business reason (it's free), and I don't have a terribly firm idea of what it'll look like when it is complete currently (that's what you're helping with). But I do want to share this weird game I'm making with you so that you can shape how it develops. Please do not try to steer development by emailing me. Just play the game, review it, discuss it on the forums. I will see.

The 1.0 version will not just be a tech demo, and will include a game loop (decided by me, informed by your play and your discussion of the game), a tutorial about how to teach other birds, as well as some performance optimizations. Right now the game runs pretty slow and a lot of players are confused by the neural network part of it.

I will almost certainly not halt development when those features are in the game, but I think those things are expected in a 'complete' title so it makes a good milestone.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“Fellas, bellas, nonbinary umbrellas... it's ready when it's ready.

Really I only have time and energy to work on this game on Sunday evenings. The rest of my time goes to my full time job / to friends / my sisters / rest / cooking / music / depression / exercise / pooping / peeing / crying / eat hot chip / lie.

Steam wants me to give a time frame for version 1.0 even if it's super rough, so for their sake I'll say between 3 and 13 years. But as mentioned above, that's a super arbitrary milestone and it won't really affect the trajectory of my development.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“I have a lot of ideas but it's all in the air. I'm guessing the full version will cross some sort of magical monumental milestone where people start self-imposing challenges or goals, and playing for a long time instead of just laughing for 3 minutes and hitting exit.

I cannot stress enough that this is just a tech demo that got out of hand. It'll include whatever I'm able to eventually squeeze out of this idea. If / when I'm able to reach 1.0 there will be a tutorial, and some neural net optimizations to be easier on your CPU, but that's all I'm going to say definitively.

After 1.0 I hope to have a bit of a sub-game which both you and the other birds play and compete against each other in. Probably some extremely light wealth accumulation, combat mechanics, and survival mechanics, just to orientate the player toward some kind of self-imposed goal depending on what they find fun.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“It's bad!

It's also free though. This is currently just a tech demo with basic neural network support and movement mechanics (jump, walk, crawl, punch). Just have fun with it while I work on more features. See the About This section for more information.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“I will probably decide to eventually make it a paid experience, but for the foreseeable duration of development it is free. If you download it during the free period you can keep it for life! Get in on the ground floor!

As a backup plan I may keep the base game free but create some paid expansions. That way everyone can experience something, but I can still make money to make it all worth it.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“I love my community but please don't expect any direct address to give feedback on the game. I keep a keen eye on discussion and playthroughs of the game, but I cannot give you my personal email. Why?

  • I'm just one guy (I don't have a community outreach team)
  • I live a private life and have boundaries (please respect them)
  • The only reason I work on this game at all is for my own entertainment (not yours)
  • You're not getting paid to QA my game / I'm not getting paid to listen to your QA
  • American libertarian / conservative culture-war nuts have tried to dox and threaten me in the past because they feel betrayed when they find out funny bird game is made by a Canadian socialist and they have no monetary leverage over me since they don't pay my bills (so sad :c)
  • If the game build is broken I am probably already aware
  • Most ideas are bad (The rest are out of scope)
  • If I had listened to people from the start, there wouldn't be any birds in the game (and it would cost $5)
”
Read more
This game is not yet available on Steam

Coming soon

Interested?
Add to your wishlist and get notified when it becomes available.
Add to your wishlist
 
See all discussions

Report bugs and leave feedback for this game on the discussion boards

Reviews

“There's very little I can say about it which accurately captures the game's absurdity.”
"... Birds with arms..." – Kat Brewster, Rock Paper Shotgun

About This Game

What is Bird by Example?


Bird by Example is — and I say this with great passion — an RPG sandbox where all the occupying NPCs are grotesque birds who mimic your behavior with deep learning algorithms. Nothing is scripted! Everything is emergent! Be the bird you want to see in the world!

Steam has asked me to be more explicit with the game's features:
  • world
  • objects
  • jump
  • crawl
  • punch
  • squawk
  • bite
  • physics objects
  • other*
  • stories??**

It's an artificial intelligence sandbox acted out by birds with concerning musculature! Help them see, help them love, help them eat a big fat bug! Right now at this very second, the metaphysical bounds of this game hold a throng of hungry birds who wish nothing more than to be like you! Like Mama!

*: Imprint pseudo-neurologically upon independent bird agents, using recurrent neural networks, gradient descent, and a custom-built system of semiotic metadata evocation (to afford transferrable behavior between distinct objects and agents which share characteristics along an n-dimensional space).

**: Isn't life a story? Aren't we all little stories, flying on this crazy rock?

You said this was a game? Who's Mama? I'm Mama? Who are you again?


Please pay attention. These birds are equipped with artificial neural networks that optimize themselves against your own actions! Using trendy deep learning algorithms found in a black box at the bottom of the sea, and something called 'gradient descent', they will try to become mathematically perfect distillations of you! It's very computationally expensive and very math!

But what do you actually do?


Explore, follow self-imposed rules, and cultivate your flock! Tutor a bird to act just like you! By simply doing things, they will learn from you by witnessing your play! Bite an orange and you may start to see other birds doing similarly! Squawk at a another bird and watch your flock erupt into squawkage!

Oh! That's interesting. So they have brains!?


Woah, strong word! Let's avoid that word!

Have you ever played a game, and thought: "This is fun, but I live in such fear that I cannot enjoy it..."

Yes, I do live a life of fear! And thank you for blowing off my silly and ethically challenging question!


Yes, you do live in fear! You're like any brain-wielding creature! But in Bird by Example there will be nothing to be afraid of! In bird world there is nothing to be afraid of! Nothing to be afraid of! Turn that brain off!

Okay. And the game is fun? It's a game?


You must teach the rest of the birds basic life skills! If not, they will all starve to death!

Wait, you coded these birds to feel hungry but didn't teach them how to eat?


That feature was out of scope! Please!!! Hungry!!!

Hold on... What's a bird?


A bird is a fictional creature which came to me in a dream on a particularly cold night in February. I woke up in a sweat the next morning and quickly tried to recreate the apparition from memory. The results? Remarkable.


Earliest known footage of a "Bird" from that morning.

They were perfect. All they needed was a name.

The word 'Bird' is a mix of the word 'word' and the letter 'b' This is because I needed a word — or "wird" — to describe the birds. Sadly, a word using 'a' was already taken. It's like gamertags!


I experimented for many weeks with flight, but no matter how much I stretched out their arms they would not.


Whatever. Doesn't matter.

System Requirements

    Minimum:
    • OS: Windows 10
    • Processor: Intel Core i5-7640X @ 4.00GHz, 4 Cores
    • Memory: 8 GB RAM
    • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
    • Storage: 2 GB available space
    • Additional Notes: Wrap your computer in a tarp.
    Recommended:
    • Memory: 16 GB RAM
    • Storage: 4 GB available space
View all

What Curators Say

1 Curator has reviewed this product. Click here to see them.
There are no reviews for this product

You can write your own review for this product to share your experience with the community. Use the area above the purchase buttons on this page to write your review.