Tactical Explosive Kiwi Simulator 2004

4 out of the 5 species of kiwi are currently listed as vulnerable, the last as near threatened, partly due to deforestation. Fortunately, there is an infinite supply in this game so go and blow some up already!

Update 1.1

• Added the star system (credit to PotaJoe for ‘star’ animation)
• New levels
• New game mechanics
• Settings and level selector
• Improvements to exploding system and tutorial
• Bug fixes and more!

Give a listen to the soundtrack on SoundCloud!

If you are interested in playtesting in closed betas, feel free to reach out via Discord (usernames pixelparrot_14326 and potajoe1). You can also track our progress by reading the game's devlogs and with this Google Doc.

How it was made

Brainstorming

Tactical Explosive Kiwi Simulator 2004 was made by UAvian and PotaJoe as a submission to PirateSoftware's 16th game jam. We were already leaning towards making a side-scroller where the player explodes to fulfil the game jam theme 'I am the weapon' when UAvian spontaneously came up with the character idea of a bird with bombs strapped to its back. PotaJoe thought the proof of concept sprite looked like a kiwi so it stuck. We hoped to implement a star system similar to Bad Piggies (more info in GDD) and levels with alternative routes to improve speedrunning experience like Neon White but time constraints and unexpected bugs don't mix  :(

Game Jam-ing

During the final half of the game jam's two-week deadline, every time UAvian was about to start improving the level-making software, new often-critical bugs popped up that took priority. On the 30th of January 2025, the day we were submitting the game we just had to find another one of those that prevented us from allowing the player to respawn more than once and another that obligated us to use a backup of the project that only had the levels you can currently play. By that time it had been quite late and we had become too burnt out to continue working.

Scheduling

After the game jam concluded and a break from development to heal from burnout, work on the game restarted to attempt to implement all the cut content, despite the busier schedules. Version 1.1, the first public update since releasing, was originally going to be uploaded a month after but was postponed by UAvian since he believed he could greatly improve it in a short amount of time, due to the rate of development at the time. Unfortunately, March saw almost no progress due to unforeseen circumstances and April was just as busy. Version 1.1 was released in May instead.