Copoka
http://store.steampowered.com/app/582620/Copoka/
Copoka is a game where you fly around as a magpie collecting small objects for your nest in a city falling apart under a dictatorship.
Initial impressions - first 15 - 20 minutes
I had a rough time with this game starting off. Flight took some time to get used too. There are three main buttons involved in flight with the analog sticks used for steering and looking around. There is a button for landing and taking off, accelerating, and braking. I found that it took some time to figure out how best to steer and navigate the city, normally avoiding sharp turns or flying close to walls.
Another problem I had initially was listening to conversations. I would hear idle bits of conversation and try to find where it was happening with no luck. There are special conversations in the game that the subtitles will pop up for and are much louder and more clear than other conversations in the game. These turned out to be one of the collectibles in the game.
This leads to my biggest issue early on which was finding collectibles. You need to find so many collectibles to move to the next chapter of the game. This was much harder than I expected. I actually found my first one while landing to listen to a conversation between two people. I picked up a small twig automatically that I had not seen on the ground. I flew it back to the nest confused and tried watching carefully for more. I then observed while finding my second object that a white light shines around them when close. This seemed like a poor choice until what I found later.
Later impressions
The game became much better after I adjusted to the controls and found a easier way to find the collectibles in the game. I noticed at one point while flying some feathers floating up in a column. I flew there and found that this effect showed where important conversations to the story were. I flew higher up and found it easier to spot these pillars and made quick work of finding all the relevant story pieces from then on. I also observed that the objects that needed to be collected to move further shined brightly while high up. This was a great improvement over the small white light I was looking for earlier.
The visual flairs used in these cases are what saved the game for me. The world is simple but very large in this game and having to find these collectibles would have been too time consuming if not for the use of these flairs. I also found that flying became much more fun and relaxing as I stopped feeling the need to fly low and scour every corner but instead could fly higher up and watch for the visual cues that a collectible was nearby. I particularly enjoyed the feeling of diving down and gliding at fast speeds through streets. The only downside of speeding through streets is accidentally triggering a conversation and flying away from it.
As for the story of the game, it is fairly simple but interesting. The conversations between citizens throughout the days illustrate their struggles and the current state of the city. There are a few reoccurring characters that you can find and have stories of their own such as two rebels plotting the overthrow of the government and an artist who acts detached from all of the other problems and speaks about the beauty in nature. The voice acting in the game was entertaining and well done.
Notes on what can be learned as a game developer
Having some form of visual effects around objectives is a must in a game with a large world. Those effects also should be clear to the player immediately to avoid frustration/confusion.
Controls can be simple but the act of controlling the character can still be difficult. This is especially true in the case of flight.
Not having control over the events of the story can be freeing. There is no way to die or change the course of the story for a different end. The player chooses what they want to see and is able see as much or as little story as they wish.
Final thoughts
Copoka is a simple and fun game. The feeling of flying around itself is fun once the controls sink in and watching the events of this city play out also proves to be interesting. I think the lessons I learned from this game are simple but important. If not for the objective and collectible marking I would have dropped this game before reaching the one hour mark.
