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How come flight sims always feature aeroplanes? Why not give the whole genre a kick in the jacksie and do something incredibly original - Flight Sim - With Birds! (Winged variety).
You could start off with just one type of bird, say...a sparrow. Your sparrow is a chick to start with, and you've got to learn how to attract your parents' attention when they bring those worms back to the nest, to make sure you're growing faster than your other siblings. If you're playing on easy mode, then you've got no siblings to worry about, nor do you worry about nasty vermin attacking your nest to see if you'd make a good meal, these types of events occur on normal and hard settings.
After building up your feathers a little, you get to learn how to fly. This could be something along the lines of the balance-type meter that you get on skateboarding games, you'd use a shoulder button or trigger to try to always keep the bar in the centre of the meter. After a while this meter would become more tolerant, allowing you to concentrate more on gliding, swooping and climbing and such.
Your swallow would have an environment to fly about in, your tree, a couple of fields and hedgerows to explore, and the aim would be to grow, survive, catch worms (mini-game maybe) and eventually find a partner and get a nest of your own.
Along the way you'd have to watch out for farmers, hawks, windows, jet engines, cats; in fact all the usual hazards are there just to give things an edge. You'd also have to make sure that rivals don't encroach on your territory and keep a beady eye out for those magpies nicking your nest.
As you succeed in each little task that is set by the game, you gradually unlock extras, like free-flight mode, more minigames (hunt the ants, destroy a scarecrow, worms), extra species (seagull - complete with oil rig platform out of MGS2, you could even chase trawlers; eagle - complete with mountain range, poachers, eeries; lark - get to practice singing and hovering; robin - Christmas themed environment complete with snow, Santa et. al.; dove - choose from innercity squatter or free range), and you could even unlock different seasons of the year to start in, different types of material to build nests with, different wind velocities and weather variables to challenge you and so on.
If you stick with just the one type of bird, say the original swallow, once you've built your nest, got your partner and hatched some eggs, you can then choose to take over the control of one of your chicks, and start afresh. But here's the nice surprise! If you successfully raise one generation, they get a bigger area to explore. The next generation after that has an even BIGGER area to explore. And finally, if you manage to produce sufficient generations, you discover that you've unlocked the entire global area in the game, so your nth generation sparrow could go fly and visit the robin, stop by for a sing song with the lark, nip off to the coast to get directions from the seagulls and even migrate across the ocean to visit the eagle.
As with all flight sims, the crux of the gameplay would have to be in the flying, so it would be vital to get the control mechanism just right to make it second nature after a while. But considering all the extra neat stuff you can do as a bird as opposed to a Cessna, this idea has got to have a lot going for it, particularly with the power that the next-generations of consoles are going to have in 4 or 5 years from now.
Flight of fancy? Watch this space...
You could start off with just one type of bird, say...a sparrow. Your sparrow is a chick to start with, and you've got to learn how to attract your parents' attention when they bring those worms back to the nest, to make sure you're growing faster than your other siblings. If you're playing on easy mode, then you've got no siblings to worry about, nor do you worry about nasty vermin attacking your nest to see if you'd make a good meal, these types of events occur on normal and hard settings.
After building up your feathers a little, you get to learn how to fly. This could be something along the lines of the balance-type meter that you get on skateboarding games, you'd use a shoulder button or trigger to try to always keep the bar in the centre of the meter. After a while this meter would become more tolerant, allowing you to concentrate more on gliding, swooping and climbing and such.
Your swallow would have an environment to fly about in, your tree, a couple of fields and hedgerows to explore, and the aim would be to grow, survive, catch worms (mini-game maybe) and eventually find a partner and get a nest of your own.
Along the way you'd have to watch out for farmers, hawks, windows, jet engines, cats; in fact all the usual hazards are there just to give things an edge. You'd also have to make sure that rivals don't encroach on your territory and keep a beady eye out for those magpies nicking your nest.
As you succeed in each little task that is set by the game, you gradually unlock extras, like free-flight mode, more minigames (hunt the ants, destroy a scarecrow, worms), extra species (seagull - complete with oil rig platform out of MGS2, you could even chase trawlers; eagle - complete with mountain range, poachers, eeries; lark - get to practice singing and hovering; robin - Christmas themed environment complete with snow, Santa et. al.; dove - choose from innercity squatter or free range), and you could even unlock different seasons of the year to start in, different types of material to build nests with, different wind velocities and weather variables to challenge you and so on.
If you stick with just the one type of bird, say the original swallow, once you've built your nest, got your partner and hatched some eggs, you can then choose to take over the control of one of your chicks, and start afresh. But here's the nice surprise! If you successfully raise one generation, they get a bigger area to explore. The next generation after that has an even BIGGER area to explore. And finally, if you manage to produce sufficient generations, you discover that you've unlocked the entire global area in the game, so your nth generation sparrow could go fly and visit the robin, stop by for a sing song with the lark, nip off to the coast to get directions from the seagulls and even migrate across the ocean to visit the eagle.
As with all flight sims, the crux of the gameplay would have to be in the flying, so it would be vital to get the control mechanism just right to make it second nature after a while. But considering all the extra neat stuff you can do as a bird as opposed to a Cessna, this idea has got to have a lot going for it, particularly with the power that the next-generations of consoles are going to have in 4 or 5 years from now.
Flight of fancy? Watch this space...
I like it! Like Shenmue, but with birds...
How come flight sims always feature aeroplanes? Why not give the whole genre a kick in the jacksie and do something incredibly original - Flight Sim - With Birds! (Winged variety).
You could start off with just one type of bird, say...a sparrow. Your sparrow is a chick to start with, and you've got to learn how to attract your parents' attention when they bring those worms back to the nest, to make sure you're growing faster than your other siblings. If you're playing on easy mode, then you've got no siblings to worry about, nor do you worry about nasty vermin attacking your nest to see if you'd make a good meal, these types of events occur on normal and hard settings.
After building up your feathers a little, you get to learn how to fly. This could be something along the lines of the balance-type meter that you get on skateboarding games, you'd use a shoulder button or trigger to try to always keep the bar in the centre of the meter. After a while this meter would become more tolerant, allowing you to concentrate more on gliding, swooping and climbing and such.
Your swallow would have an environment to fly about in, your tree, a couple of fields and hedgerows to explore, and the aim would be to grow, survive, catch worms (mini-game maybe) and eventually find a partner and get a nest of your own.
Along the way you'd have to watch out for farmers, hawks, windows, jet engines, cats; in fact all the usual hazards are there just to give things an edge. You'd also have to make sure that rivals don't encroach on your territory and keep a beady eye out for those magpies nicking your nest.
As you succeed in each little task that is set by the game, you gradually unlock extras, like free-flight mode, more minigames (hunt the ants, destroy a scarecrow, worms), extra species (seagull - complete with oil rig platform out of MGS2, you could even chase trawlers; eagle - complete with mountain range, poachers, eeries; lark - get to practice singing and hovering; robin - Christmas themed environment complete with snow, Santa et. al.; dove - choose from innercity squatter or free range), and you could even unlock different seasons of the year to start in, different types of material to build nests with, different wind velocities and weather variables to challenge you and so on.
If you stick with just the one type of bird, say the original swallow, once you've built your nest, got your partner and hatched some eggs, you can then choose to take over the control of one of your chicks, and start afresh. But here's the nice surprise! If you successfully raise one generation, they get a bigger area to explore. The next generation after that has an even BIGGER area to explore. And finally, if you manage to produce sufficient generations, you discover that you've unlocked the entire global area in the game, so your nth generation sparrow could go fly and visit the robin, stop by for a sing song with the lark, nip off to the coast to get directions from the seagulls and even migrate across the ocean to visit the eagle.
As with all flight sims, the crux of the gameplay would have to be in the flying, so it would be vital to get the control mechanism just right to make it second nature after a while. But considering all the extra neat stuff you can do as a bird as opposed to a Cessna, this idea has got to have a lot going for it, particularly with the power that the next-generations of consoles are going to have in 4 or 5 years from now.
Flight of fancy? Watch this space...
You could start off with just one type of bird, say...a sparrow. Your sparrow is a chick to start with, and you've got to learn how to attract your parents' attention when they bring those worms back to the nest, to make sure you're growing faster than your other siblings. If you're playing on easy mode, then you've got no siblings to worry about, nor do you worry about nasty vermin attacking your nest to see if you'd make a good meal, these types of events occur on normal and hard settings.
After building up your feathers a little, you get to learn how to fly. This could be something along the lines of the balance-type meter that you get on skateboarding games, you'd use a shoulder button or trigger to try to always keep the bar in the centre of the meter. After a while this meter would become more tolerant, allowing you to concentrate more on gliding, swooping and climbing and such.
Your swallow would have an environment to fly about in, your tree, a couple of fields and hedgerows to explore, and the aim would be to grow, survive, catch worms (mini-game maybe) and eventually find a partner and get a nest of your own.
Along the way you'd have to watch out for farmers, hawks, windows, jet engines, cats; in fact all the usual hazards are there just to give things an edge. You'd also have to make sure that rivals don't encroach on your territory and keep a beady eye out for those magpies nicking your nest.
As you succeed in each little task that is set by the game, you gradually unlock extras, like free-flight mode, more minigames (hunt the ants, destroy a scarecrow, worms), extra species (seagull - complete with oil rig platform out of MGS2, you could even chase trawlers; eagle - complete with mountain range, poachers, eeries; lark - get to practice singing and hovering; robin - Christmas themed environment complete with snow, Santa et. al.; dove - choose from innercity squatter or free range), and you could even unlock different seasons of the year to start in, different types of material to build nests with, different wind velocities and weather variables to challenge you and so on.
If you stick with just the one type of bird, say the original swallow, once you've built your nest, got your partner and hatched some eggs, you can then choose to take over the control of one of your chicks, and start afresh. But here's the nice surprise! If you successfully raise one generation, they get a bigger area to explore. The next generation after that has an even BIGGER area to explore. And finally, if you manage to produce sufficient generations, you discover that you've unlocked the entire global area in the game, so your nth generation sparrow could go fly and visit the robin, stop by for a sing song with the lark, nip off to the coast to get directions from the seagulls and even migrate across the ocean to visit the eagle.
As with all flight sims, the crux of the gameplay would have to be in the flying, so it would be vital to get the control mechanism just right to make it second nature after a while. But considering all the extra neat stuff you can do as a bird as opposed to a Cessna, this idea has got to have a lot going for it, particularly with the power that the next-generations of consoles are going to have in 4 or 5 years from now.
Flight of fancy? Watch this space...