Clockwork Acorn is super excited to share Upupa Bird Ninja with the wider world today! We’ve been working on this game for a little while, mostly behind closed doors, but today we’re excited to share the prototype with everyone. We hope you enjoy playing and we’re excited about the future of the game!

What is Upupa Bird Ninja?

You play as Upupa the hoopoe ninja warrior, in your quest to reach the top of the tower. It’s a game about that moment where two warriors move past each other in a blink of an eye, only for the aftermath to unfold in slow motion. It has an interesting new type of combat system that blends real-time action with turn-based decision making — your main action is both an attack and a movement.

As you play, you’ll be taking Upupa through a maze-like structure of rooms. Most rooms are quick to beat (if you play well enough), but you’ll find yourself coming back to replay rooms many times and eke out the best scores. It’s a game about seeking perfection through repetition and making you feel amazing while you do it.

How it started

We started working on the game in January 2024, at a team game jam. The first version was just a single room where you could jump around and kill some basic shooting enemies. We shared it with the team and the magic happened when we started competing to try to get the fastest time. We were inspired by the meta progression of Disc Room and the speed running aspect of Neon White, and quickly leaned into that. The idea of an anthropomorphic hoopoe character emerged, and it just felt right to bring in such a beautiful bird that also feels quite African.

We struggled to come up with a good name, but drawing inspiration from the hoopoe’s latin name, while still making the core idea easy to infer, we came up with: Upupa Bird Ninja.

Since the first jam, we worked on the game on the side, showing the game at some local and international events, while looking closely at how players reacted and making changes along the way. All in all we have only been working on it for a few months, but we already think there’s something special there and we want to share it more widely.

The future?

Honestly we’re not sure. A lot depends on how well this release is received. We have a ton of ideas for if it goes well and players like it. We’d love to flesh out the game with more levels, enemies, powers and other mechanics. We also want to properly develop and expand on the story, and we’d love to bring in things like leaderboards. But importantly: we’d love to know what you think we should add!

Join our Discord for more discussions about this (and our other games). We’d love to see the scores you can get!