Devlog 1 - Those who crow!

We would like to take 10 minutes to tell you everything we have been working on in the last 3 months since the launch of the Steam page, the current state of the game, and the next steps in the weeks and months to come.

First of all, we want to thank all of you for the support you have shown for this project and for the incredibly important feedback you have given. Everything started as a project to work on in our free time, and now it has almost 40,000 wishlists on Steam and tons of followers on various social platforms after only 4 months since the page launch on the store.

This has truly changed our lives and our perspective on what we need to do. We are just two developers working on Migration in our free time, and despite the limited hours, we are giving our best to make a solid and worthwhile game in a reasonable timeframe.

So thank you from the bottom of our hearts; it means a lot to us.

That said, here’s what we’ve been working on in the last three months:

Other animals, AI system:

We have completely reworked the AI system, moving from a complex and fundamentally fragile system to one that will allow us to develop the various AI states and behaviors more efficiently and easily.

This required a significant amount of work because it meant discarding everything we had done for the NPCs previously in the game and starting from scratch.

To date, we have managed to get all the existing AIs working again and have begun working on new animals that will populate the world of Migration. First among them: the eagle, and more generally, sky predators.

Staying on the topic of AI, we also added a “Friendship” system that allows the player to form bonds with other animals.

For example: spotting prey for a wolf will allow the wolf to hunt that prey, strengthening its bond with the player. Once a bond is established, the wolf will be less reluctant to attack and will allow the player to approach and interact with it.

However, the friendship system, besides increasing the relationship between the player and other animals, can also generate enmity in response to the player’s wrong actions: this will cause a different reaction from the animal when it sees the player.

The friendship system has currently been implemented for all animals present in the game: foxes, rabbits, wolves, and other crows (we will talk about the other crows in a separate section).

We also added a stealth system that allows the player to approach animals without being noticed, enabling actions like stealing fur, taking food, and escaping without consequences.

Growth and stats system:

Regarding the crow, we added a system that deeply enriches the gameplay: growth over time and stats related to that growth.

At the start of the adventure, the crow will begin at the fledgling stage. During the game, it can grow, progressing from fledgling to adult, and eventually to old age. This growth will affect both the crow’s appearance and its gameplay stats.

From an aesthetic point of view, as the crow grows, it will have denser feathers, a larger beak, stronger legs, and a bigger overall body.

From a gameplay perspective, growth affects three main stats: Bioefficiency, Constitution, and Knowledge.

Bioefficiency affects how much food and water satisfy the crow and how much