FLYWAY

Every autumn, millions of small birds cross the sea at night. Most nights they fly straight over your headland.

When the wind comes off the sea and it rains at dawn, they come down in every bush: a fall. You run the observatory. Set mist nets beside cover, walk the net rounds, ring every bird and let it go. Now and then a ring is found again, far down the coast or across the sea, and a line appears on your flyway map.

The rule that matters: no bird waits. A bird left 40 minutes in a net, or 70 in a bag at the hut, is let go unringed, and your members hear about it. The strip under the map prints the oldest bird's real wait and the limit that applies to it. On a big fall, opening every net loses birds. Closing nets until your ringers keep up rings more. The weather forecast tells you when a fall is coming, if you have bought the instruments to read it.

A first game starts paused with a three step guide: a net beside a bush, the waiting bar under the map, and closing a net when the bar turns amber. The first morning opens with one net, and the first fall is a gentle one.

What is in it

• 44 bird species, every one drawn by the game from its own plumage row, from robins and goldcrests to the rare ones a fall sometimes brings.
• 12 moths for the night list, once the moth trap is lit by the hut.
• 9 unlocks on a ladder: more net rides, a Heligoland trap whose birds can wait longer than a net allows, a seawatch hide, a second ringer, garden planting, weather instruments and more.
• Weather that matters: wind direction, rain and cloud decide each dawn, and a 40 day autumn holds only a handful of falls.
• Recoveries: rings found again draw lines from your headland to wherever the bird was found.
• An ending: the annual report, with its cover, the year list drawn bird by bird and every recovery on the map. Once printed, you can read it again from the ladder or the season card.
• No game over: each autumn ends with a summary sheet, and the next autumn keeps everything you built.

Plays in the browser with mouse, touch or keyboard. On an upright phone the board has its own tab, and the table, ladder, list, map and log open as full height sheets, with type and buttons sized for the phone. It saves at the end of every day.

Controls

Click or tap a cell to use the selected tool; everything else is a button. Keyboard: arrows move a cursor and Enter uses the tool there · 1, 2, 3 pick nets, planting or take down · Space pauses · + and - change the speed · M sound · H how it works (also on the title) · Esc closes.

The species, places and ringing are real; the numbers are simplified for play. Bird ringing is licensed work done by trained ringers under a ringing scheme.

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Paid, from the same studio

• PILOTAGE ($5.99): bring a fishing fleet home at dusk, every boat on a mooring of her own.
• ROOTWORK ($5.99): grow a seed's roots down to every pool of water; every cell costs sugar.
• THE TURNING YEAR ($9.99): one world drawn four times over; turn the season and hold it while the year pulls back.

Credits and disclosure. Made by Core Systems Asset Factory. Code, graphics and text were made with AI assistance; the music was composed as note data and synthesised in code, with no AI audio. The store cover was made with an image model; the sound effects are synthesised live in the browser, so no generative audio model was used. Typeface: Alegreya Sans, under the SIL Open Font License, which ships beside it.

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