From music teacher to game developer - documenting the creation of "Your Big Year"
"I thought about a game that I wanted to play but didn't exist. I had always likened going on bird trips and trying to see as many different birds as possible to Pokemon."
This is the first entry in a series documenting the development of "Your Big Year," a game that combines bird watching, photography, and strategic planning. I'll be sharing both technical implementations and design decisions, including current refactoring efforts.
Finding My Path
I'm not really sure how the idea got started. I'd been into birds in college. I'd never really studied them or anything, but the act of ID'ing them was so exciting to me that the experience would set the knowledge in my head and now I'll remember the bird's name for the rest of my life, willing or not.
I finished my music degree, went into teaching, then retail management– I didn't realize it at the time but I was still figuring out what I wanted to do. I liked parts of each of those jobs: cultivating experiences for people, the systematic nature of both music and retail procedures.
The Tech Transition
Switching to tech felt like finding a glove that fit. I picked it up quickly, and enjoyed it a lot. But it didn't take long being in the private sector before I realized I wasn't really into it. Not only was the culture vastly different compared to my experience with teaching and retail management, but it was hard work and took a lot of energy.
The thing is, I liked doing the work for the work's sake. It's fun and I felt good at it. I'd joke about capitalism winning because I would often work on nights or weekends simply because I thought what I was doing was interesting.
Finding My Project
Later when I found myself deep in the weeds of what people refer to as "a passion project," I realized I didn't really want to use my skills for corporate America anymore.
I wanted to work on Your Big Year, a bird ID and photography game. Was it silly, and the premise kind of absurd? Sure, but it was also the most technically complex thing I had ever built from scratch. Nothing at work could compare.
The Spark
So where did the idea come from?
Some friends and I had seen some tiktoks about game development, and ended up discussing them at a get together. Someone pitched the idea of a spider game platformer, and we ended up spitballing about different design ideas. This was the first time I had really entertained designing a game experience, and it is also fortunate that this happened after I had acquired all of this industry tech experience.
"It meant that I realized right away that I could do it. All of it. The animating, the music, the sound design, and the coding. I knew it would be a lot of work. But I could certainly do it."
The Game Design
I thought about a game that I wanted to play but didn't exist. I had always likened going on bird trips and trying to see as many different birds as possible to pokemon, which is obviously very popular. Filling up your life list feels just like filling out a Pokedex.
There's detective work in IDing birds too. I've only ever seen Black Skimmers at sunset as nothing but a silhouette, but I know for a fact that it was that bird because I was on a beach, in their range, at sunset, and I saw those silhouettes skimming along the shoreline in the distance without seeing or hearing anything else about them.
Looking through different shore birds in my book, this behavior for the Black Skimmer was specifically called out, "Likes to feed along the shoreline at dawn and dusk." Bam, we have our bird!
Core Mechanics
Different weather, seasons, time of day– all of those, theoretically, would affect the type of birds that would spawn. Here, my head immediately went to The Big Year, which is a charming movie about a real annual competition where you try to see as many species of bird in one calendar year as possible. A wonderful game concept, we've seen mechanics like this implemented and be successful in Stardew Valley.
I also think the special thing about different birds and their species is they all have such distinctive personalities. I'd be able to have a silly storybook art style that conveyed this, while also keeping it realistic enough to where it would be obvious which bird is which. AI would be important: each bird species would need to feel distinct. The core design here is that they need to be interesting to watch for extended periods of time. We're rewarding patience, observation, and knowledge.
Camera System & Game Flow
Realistic bird movement also provides a very natural challenge of trying to keep the bird in frame and get a good picture of it. This idea ends up becoming the now obvious Camera/Photo Album mechanic, which we'll get into, but starts out as binoculars.
The game flow emerged naturally:
- Strategize how to see the maximum number of different bird species in a calendar year
- Choose routes based on weather and timing
- Revisit locations in different seasons
- Use your camera and field guide to document and identify birds
- Match behavior and clues to identify species
Each trip through a route is by a "hike" mechanic that'll plop you off at a trail nice and early, maybe something like 4:30 AM. Throughout the hike, the game is keeping track of what birds enter the player's viewport. At the end of the day, you're presented with the pictures you took that day and your life list of birds, and you can check off the ones you think you saw, using your photos and the field guide to help narrow it down.
Player Experience Options
If what you check off matches what is in your viewport, then that bird gets added to your life list! You've correctly IDd a bird. If you incorrectly check off a bird, different things could happen. Potentially nothing if a player is just there to hang out and look at birds, and potentially maybe none of the birds on that hike's submission get counted for the in-game "The Big Year" competition. (I had some friends point out that they might not personally be all that into the strategy part of it, but taking pictures of birds sounded fun to them. I have some ideas about how to include this as something a player can opt into if they want we'll go over later).
Looking Forward
And that's the start of it really! I'm making something I wanted to play about an experience I think breaks down well into basic mechanical parts. There are some other bird watching games out there similar to what I have here. One I've seen really lays into the realisticness as much as possible, and another has sort of a sillier take on things with hats and giant/chromatic birds and the like.
I am hoping to find a happy middle ground with:
- A stylized storybook look for cute but accurate bird representation
- Realistic AIs that are charming because birds are charming
- Interesting maps that are fun to explore in different seasons
- Dynamic spawn chances and AI behavior trees
"It's going to be a lot of work, but all it is is brick by brick, and I can see the bricks."
Next in the series: A deep dive into the camera system implementation and current refactoring efforts. Follow along to see how we bring bird photography to life in the game!
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