Hummingbird Mind is a beautiful, retro, interactive story - Time-Waster

Hummingbird Mind is an interactive story that's done up in 8-bit graphics. It's rather slow-paced, but I like it. It has several elements from my own life: working from home, procrastination, and cats. Well, it has one cat. And of course, there's a hummingbird. There's also mention of doing the dishes and a hat, but I don't want to give the story away, so that's enough hints.

The controls are just like in the quests of yore. Your mouse pointer becomes a tiny "cross" pointer, and the dialog slowly appears on the screen. (The dialog appears in a "typing" effect, but you can click if you want it to all show up at once.) Once a scene is described, you get to select one of several possible choices. You don't always see them all; I think that some choices are only revealed when you come back to a scene after you've already done something in the game.

The text is well-written and engaging. I think it would have been cooler with vector graphics rather than the 8-bit raster style, but I guess the 8-bit style is easier to make. It's quite a lovely little game!

Tags: old-school, quest, story, text, time-waster, timewasters