Hello again everyone, developers of Migration here.
We want to start this post with a big thanks to all of you for supporting Migration and giving us so much crucial feedback for the game. Thanks to your help, Migration has now passed 60k wishlists, a major milestone for our small team of 2 indie devs.
We are really grateful for such an amazing community behind our project, and you are our biggest motivation to keep working on our crow game.
It’s been a while since our last dev log, so we just want to spend a few minutes giving everyone an update on what happened over the last few months. If you’ve followed us on our socials, you might notice there are a few new features we’ve introduced to the game, and here’s the summary of everything in one post:
We’ve added the first version of insect hunting to the game. Crows can now find and hunt different types of insects, starting with crickets, beetles, and spiders.
Each insect spawns in specific environments: crickets can be found in open plains and grassy areas, while spiders and beetles are more likely to appear in forests, damp places, or near humid terrain.
To catch them, the player can use a new ambush-like attack: a short forward leap aimed in the right direction. If timed and aimed correctly, the crow will strike the insect, kill it, and be able to eat it.
Insects are a valuable food source, offering strong nutritional benefits and contributing to the crow’s body fat, making them especially useful when preparing for harsher weather conditions.
We’ve introduced a new body fat system for the crow, ranging from 0 to 100.
Body fat acts as an important survival resource: the higher the value, the more protection the crow gains against the cold. A lower body fat value means reduced cold resistance, making harsh weather and freezing temperatures more dangerous.
Body fat can be increased by eating fatty foods, such as meat and insects. Different foods provide different amounts of fat depending on their type, size, and rarity. For example, some insects may be more nutritious than others, making hunting them especially rewarding.
Over time, if the crow stops eating fatty foods, its body fat will slowly decrease. This makes fat management an ongoing part of survival rather than a permanent upgrade.
The system is visible both in the UI and on the crow’s body: as body fat increases or decreases, the crow’s appearance will change accordingly, becoming visibly plumper or leaner depending on its current fat level.
We’ve started building a broader health and status system for the crow.
This system allows the player to gain both positive and negative effects depending on how they play, how they take care of the crow, and what kind of situations they survive.
Positive statuses can come from healthy behaviors, such as keeping the feathers clean, finding natural disinfecting resources, or interacting with specific objects in the environment.
One example is the anthill: the crow can stand on it and perform what is known as an “ant bath,” using the ants to help clean and disinfect its feathers, skin, and wings.
Negative statuses, on the other hand, can appear as a consequence of poor survival choices or dangerous encounters. Bad nutrition, eating unsafe food, taking hits from other animals, or suffering physical trauma can all lead to different kinds of debuffs, illnesses, or temporary conditions.
The goal of this system is to make survival feel more organic: the crow’s condition is not only defined by hunger, thirst, or cold, but also by how well the player manages its overall health over time.
We’ve added several new resources and food items to support the upcoming survival systems and the rework of the map’s verticality.
Some of these new items are tied to health and prevention. Plants such as burdock and nettle can be used as natural remedies, helping the crow prevent or deal with specific illnesses and negative status effects.
Other resources are connected to food, crafting, nest building, and future in-game recipes. Moss, for example, can be used as an insulating material for the different structures the crow will be able to build.
We’ve also added new interactive food sources, such as honey. Honey can be found on trees, pecked down to the ground, and then collected as a valuable food source, providing a useful stamina-related bonus.
These new items are part of a broader effort to make exploration more rewarding, giving the player more reasons to search specific places, climb trees, investigate natural resources, and prepare for different survival situations.
We’re also working on a major rework of the animal AI system, with the goal of supporting more complex behaviors, including packs and group-based logic. This will allow us to create more dynamic events around the map, where animals interact with the world, with each other, and with the player in more interesting ways.
For example, the player might come across a carcass recently hunted by wolves. Depending on the situation, the crow may have different choices: wait for the right moment, try to steal scraps, take advantage of the chaos, or risk getting too close to dangerous animals.
These events are designed to create opportunities, threats, and tactical decisions. Some situations may benefit the player, while others may become dangerous depending on the animals involved and how the crow approaches them.
The goal is to make the world feel more alive, with animal behaviors that can create unexpected survival scenarios instead of simply existing as static encounters.
We’ve started working on the first real map of the game.
A major focus of this work is verticality.
Since the player is a crow, the map cannot be designed only from the ground up: trees, branches, height differences, landing spots, and elevated paths are all becoming important parts of exploration and survival.
One of the biggest areas of improvement is the tree system.
We’re replacing and redesigning our trees, starting with the first oak trees, with the goal of creating more complex and playable natural structures.
For inspiration, we’re looking at real-world forests such as Sherwood Forest in England, especially for the shape, scale, and complexity of its ancient oaks.
These trees are not just visual elements: they are meant to create real gameplay spaces, with branches at different heights, mid-level traversal opportunities, high perches, nesting possibilities, and new ways to move through the environment vertically.
In the next few months, we'll continue to flesh out the game with all the elements we've mentioned above and more. If you want to catch us showcasing the latest content we're working on, follow us on our social media: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Bluesky, with regular news on features, fixes, improvements and funny moments behind the scenes. And don't forget to join our Discord with over 3,000 crows (that's a lot of crows -- perhaps you can call it a mass murder) to share any thoughts and feedback you have on our game.
Once again, a big thank you to everyone for showing our little crow survival sim so much support. Please look forward to the next dev log for the latest development progress!