First Light: Goura

Every morning before the light, the flock booms across the forest floor. One goura answers the next, and the answers carry the dawn down from the ridge into the trees.

Tawpy has never once answered in time.

Tonight she is a long way from the roost, alone on the floor, and something is hunting the ground. One run. About two and a half minutes. Get home.

What you do

• Walk and flurry up the lane. Tawpy is a heavy ground bird who flies badly. Walking is safe. The flurry is fast, loud, and veers — it is how you cross open floor, and it is not how you cross it quietly.
• Boom back. The flock calls six times a night. Each call opens a short window and a goura steps to the lane's edge to wait for you. Booming roots Tawpy where she stands, in cover or in the open, so when you answer matters as much as whether you do. An answer not given is a failance. The third one ends the night.
• Stay in the dark. The light rises on its own clock. As it does, the pools of cover on the floor shrink, and the eagle's gaze sweeps the ground ahead of you. Caught in the gaze, out of cover, above the light — she is seen, and she freezes. Still standing there a moment later, she is gone.

Win by reaching the roost tree before the light fills the floor. Lose to the third failance, to the eagle, or to a dawn that arrives with you still out on the ground.

Controls

Mouse and keyboard, touch, and a controller all play the whole game.

	Keyboard	Touch	Controller
Move	WASD / arrows	left stick zone	left stick
Flurry	Space / left mouse	Flurry	south button
Boom	E / right mouse	Boom	west button
Pause	Esc	Pause	Start
Menus	arrows + Enter	tap a row	d-pad + south

Worth seeing

• The moment the light turns. The floor goes from indigo to low gold in about twenty seconds, and everything you were hiding behind stops working.
• The caller who steps out of the trees on the side the call came from, and waits.
• Getting greedy near the roost. The last stretch is the widest open ground in the game, and the sixth call almost always lands on it.

Turn the sound on. The boom is the whole point.