Built Windflower Cove as a movement playground
Windflower Cove gave Aurelie a compact meadow, palms, shoreline, and thermal where every part of movement could be learned in one view.
The first open world was too large for the questions I was asking. Windflower Cove became a compact movement playground: a sixty-four-meter island with a clear meadow, six palms, turquoise shallows, and one thermal route.
Keeping the whole island readable made iteration faster. I could sprint from one edge to another, launch into the thermal, circle above the shore, test a landing, and return to the same patch of ground without losing the problem inside a large landscape.
“The smaller world made it easier to see what the creature was actually learning.”
A lightweight start screen arrived with it. The game now waits behind a deliberate Play button before loading the creature, environment, audio, and renderer. That made opening Feathers feel like entering a game rather than watching a test harness assemble itself.
Aurelie also received a focused art pass: denser plumage coverage, clearer eyes and paws, cleaner back and ear transitions, and grass thick enough to give the little creature a believable scale.