As promised, we are excited to share the footage (and early gameplay) from our show at the Nordic Game conference in Malmo, Sweden!
As you probably remember, we had the insane chance to play the music from our game on stage with the actual artists from the project (full list below). It is also the first time (as far as we know) that a story driven game (maybe even any game?) was played while being synced to a live music performance.
This was actually also the first time we ever showed actual game-play from the game. It's not a final version, far from it and we are working hard to improve a LOT of things, but, it does give a glimpse to the game and how it feels. We are very happy to share it with you guys and hope you like it. We hope to be able to make more shows like this in the future (and already got some super cool proposals) so... happy to hear from you as always and hoping to see you at one of those shows one day! ;)
\m/............\m/
https://youtu.be/Agt4t6EUn7s?t=551
Show was performed by:
Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal (ex-Guns N' Roses, Sons of Apollo, Asia) - Guitars
Ruud Jolie (Within Temptation) - Guitars
Rob van der Loo (Epica) - Bass
Kobra Paige (Kobra and the Lotus) - Vocals as Gitta
Davidavi 'Vidi' Dolev (Gunned Down Horses, Subterranean Masquerade)
Yuval Tamir (Gunned Down Horses) - Drums
Eden Rabin (ex-Orphaned Land) - Keyboards
Arnold Nesis (Capricia Productions) - Composer
Ben Shmuelof (Capricia Productions) - Guitars
Sam 'Chaotic' - Playing the game
Dor Ferdman & Octavian Cristea - On-site programmers.
“Caged birds sing of freedom, free birds fly”.
"Of Bird and Cage" Team.
Behind the Scenes
https://youtu.be/4fZBpyaBSm4
Caw, flock!
The (quite) awesome Ruud Jolie (Within Temptation) made this great behind the scenes video after our Malmo show at the Nordic Game Conference, and we are happy to share it with you. We hope you'll like it and will get to share some of this great experience with us (plus.. it's pretty funny ;) ).
We will also upload a video from the show, showing the concert itself and some gameplay in a few days so.. stay tuned!
Kobra and Vidi... working hard...
“Caged birds sing of freedom, free birds fly”. "Of Bird and Cage" Team.
Making Small History!
Caw, flock!
As some of you might know.. not long ago we had the chance to do something pretty amazing. Truth be told, the title of this post (as far as we know) is actually not misleading.. we made small history.
So what happened? Well.. about half a year ago, Jacob Riis, head of the Nordic Game Conference (the biggest game development conference in Europe) came up with this crazy idea for our project - making a live show of our music while the game is being played live as well and.. is being synced to the live music on stage.
Davidavi "Vidi" Dolev... You'll get to know him as "Bres"!
Not only this idea sounds crazy.. quickly we found out we have a problem.. when looking for people to consult with about how to do such a thing we couldn't find any for one simple reason.. this seems to never have been done before!
And crazy (and maybe also stupid.. looking back) as this sounds - instead of saying "ok... it's probably not doable.." and giving up on this idea.. we decided to go for it. Lucky for us, both Nordic Game and All-In Games, our publisher were both crazy to actually support this crazy idea and go with it.
Now.. it's hard to explain how many technical problems this things brings with it but.. syncing interactive things to music is always hard.. truth be told, even syncing video to live shows is not the simplest thing - it's doable, but comes with many problems. A game? Being played live? Synced to live music? And also streamed live by a well known streamer? Well... that's a whole new word of pain we were facing. Where do you even begin?
Arnold (CEO/Composer) and Kobra who was performing Gitta
We begun big. Not only we decided that we are going to do it.. we also decided we are going to do it with the actual artists from the game. So.. we brought to Sweden:
Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal (ex-Guns N' Roses, Sons of Apollo, Asia) - Guitars
Ruud Jolie (Within Temptation) - Guitars
Rob van der Loo (Epica) - Bass
Kobra Paige (Kobra and the Lotus) - Vocals as Gitta
Davidavi 'Vidi' Dolev (Gunned Down Horses, Subterranean Masquerade)
Yuval Tamir (Gunned Down Horses) - Drums
Eden Rabin (ex-Orphaned Land) - Keyboards
Arnold Nesis (Capricia Productions) - Composer
Ben Shmuelof (Capricia Productions) - Guitars
Sam 'Chaotic' - Playing the game
Dor Ferdman & Octavian Cristea - On-site programmers.
Moments before the show
Now we were left just with the technical problems and the fear of doing this. Truth be told.. this really is an insane thing to do. We are not an AAA company with endless budget - we are a small indie team and we were going to perform this thing in front of over 1,000 game industry leaders... because.. you know... it's a game development conference...
Speaking even more honestly - making this thing live is suicide. Live demos is NEVER a good idea, specially in this scenario. At some point we realized we are in over our heads. We would honestly be very impressed if a big company would manage to pull something like this off. We didn't realize just how hard it's going to be going into this. Even after figuring out how to sync a game to live music (bear in mind.. it's a story driven music based game.. not "just" a rhythm game) - we kept running into one from after the other. Builds freezing, music going out of sync - click tracks problems... flight problems.. budget problems.. pretty much any problem you can (or can't) think of.. we had it!
Ben Shmuelof, our producer
To make matters even worse.. our build kept crashing. Even in Sweden, during rehearsals - it was crashing. Now.. game builds crashing is not new to anyone - it's ok. BUT... in this case it's also a live show. So... if the build crashes - show over. Music stops. Everything restarts. The sky falls down. Sauron attacks.
We were actually so sure the build is going to crash during the show that we made a bet on stage - if the build crashes, Ben (our producer) has to go on stage and drink a really disgusting shot. If it doesn't.. Arnold (the CEO/Composer) will drink 5 of them in a row at the end of the show.
So... how did it go!?
Well... a picture is worth a thousand words, right?
Yes. That's Arnold drinking 5 shots. We made it. And... it was amazing. Best bet he ever lost.
Looking back, we honestly can't believe we did this. Even now that some time has passed. Apart from the fact that this was a very special thing to do which has never been done before - an approach which is a huge part of this whole project - we proved to ourselves as a team that dreams do come true. NOTHING is impossible. It's cheesy.. but it's also true.
Over the next days/weeks we will share more and show more from this experience and it will be more game related - we'll show the actual show and the shots from the game as well as some "behind the scenes" shootings but we wanted to share this experience with you and thank you. Every game here on Steam, no matter how good or bad is at the end of the day a community of people and we couldn't have done that without the help of our community.
Thank you for being here, dear flock - you (literally) ROCK!
Game Graphics
Caw, flock!
We wanted to take a moment and show a bit of how the game currently looks and talk about it. Below, you can find a few screenshots - all taken from the game itself - completely in-game (some are from cut-scenes and some are game-play).
In case you were following the game for the past years or so on Patreon, you can see we pretty much re-did the whole graphics for the game and now it looks much better! At least we hope so! But... we want to hear your thoughts! As you can see, this is taking it pretty far from the original prototype we posted.
While we are aiming for a realistic game and feel, we are still an indie studio, so we need to find that line between what we want and what is possible to make with our budgets and small team, and solve the difference artistically. We would say that we are pretty proud of how this is shaping to look. We feel (as far as references go) that the graphics feel a bit like a darker and less stylized version of "Life is Strange", and we must say we like it. Hope you will as well!
We would be happy to hear what you guys think. Walking on the line between "artistic" and yet "realistic" is not an easy task and we'd love you hear from you where you feel the graphics is good/cool and where is can still use some improvement and tips on how to improve it (without going AAA quality).
Are there any screenshots here you like in particular? Any screenshots you don't like? What do you think about the art direction? Basically.. would love to hear any thoughts you guys might have!
- Of Bird and Cage
Name Change to "Of Bird and Cage" (Yes, this IS the former "The Birdcage")
Hello, dear flock!
So.. a lot of people asked us about the name change and if this is "The Birdcage" (previous name) or a new game. So.. first of all, we want to clarify:
Yes, this is "The Birdcage" and yes, we changed the name
So... we are happy to present the new logo and the new name! :)
There were a few reasons for the name change and we'll be happy to explain them and how the new name was chosen.
Firstly - we'll be honest and admit that while "The Birdcage" is a name we loved, it had a big problem with it because of the movie... we were aware of the movie when we first came up with it, but more people got confused by it than we were expecting. People kept asking about the connection between our game and the movie and as you all probably know.. there is really no connection what-so-ever. To add to the confusion, a few months ago a mobile game with the same name was released and while we (think) we were working on our game for longer and you can't really trademark a "Birdcage" because it's just a word, we wanted to avoid confusion.
Second reason which is connected to the first is... well.. SEO. When people were searching for the game they heard about somewhere, they found themselves with a lot of info about the movie or the other game and that's obviously not an ideal situation. We would much rather you guys actually finding the game you are looking for for obvious reasons and we believe it's better for everyone.
We wanted to do this for a while now, but were waiting for the right moment and we felt that right before opening the Steam page would probably be it.
Now.. for the new name and how it came to be:
Fanart by Yarden Weissbrot
So, we think it's pretty clear we do like the mental image of a birdcage and it makes perfect sense with our story and the game. So, we did want to keep that image and not to go too far away from the original name so people would still recognize it.
The SEO came as a big consideration again - being more experiences with game development now than when we begun, we knew we wanted something that will stand out when searching for it and it seems that "Of Bird and Cage" is something that does that.
But it wasn't all technical of course. Most of the considerations were "artistic". It's been more than 3 years that we've been working on the game and while the difference between "The Birdcage" and "Of Bird and Cage" might not seem huge - it just better works for the story as it was shaped during that time. It's not a story about a birdcage (although Gitta IS in a mental birdcage of a sort).. it's a tale of a bird and a cage, at least this feels more accurate to us.
There was actually another huge reason for why we feel this name is perfect, but we can't share it without spoilers - you will have to guess it for now. We did hint already though that Metallica fans would have a pretty big clue there ;).
We hope you guys like it and would love to hear you thoughts on the matter (and all matters).
Thanks, drear flock!
"Of Bird and Cage" Team
Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal (ex-Guns N' Roses, SoA, Asia) and 6 Other Major Rock/Metal Artists to Perform 'Of Bird and Cage' Music at Nordic Game in Sweden!
Great news! You can view the announcement in this video:
We are super proud to announce that we are bringing "Of Bird and Cage" to the Nordic Game conference and... we are not alone! Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal ((ex)Guns N' Roses, Sons of Apollo, Asia) will be joining us on stage, alongside 6 other major names in Rock/Metal (soon to be announced), performing the music from the game at this insane event.
But if that's not enough... we won't be just playing the music! At the same time the music is being played live, we will play the game and show parts of it for the first time ever AND have it sync to the live music while also live streaming it over the internet! Crazy? Yes! Will it work? Maybe!
