My grandmother was born in 苏州 (Suzhou), China in 1915. She was so poor that her biggest treat in childhood was, once a week, to dip a single chopstick into a sugar bowl for a taste. That was before the Great Depression.

Here in the United States in 2024, I am living my grandmother’s dream. Every day I have food to eat, water to drink, and a safe place to sleep. In my world of abundance, sugar is so ubiquitous as to be poison.

My cup overfloweth, as my trash bins testify.

Which is why, as I ideated my entry to the “Say Hi to a Bird” lyric game jam, I thought about how to reuse something many people already have. I wanted to make a game about gratitude – gratitude being the opposite of mindless consumerism, of “retail therapy,” of FOMO. Conveniently, one of the most popular board games today features birds: Wingspan. Borrow some cards from that game and - voilà - the solitaire aspect of the game was born.

Field Guide to the Birds of Your Heart was also always intended as a journaling game, but on first blush I imagined the player starting trapped in a dungeon of resentment. “It’s been X days since you last saw the sky” was what I jotted down, and birds were lifelines to the world of sunlit well-being.

As I built on this premise, I found it unnecessary. You don’t need to start in a dark dungeon to (re)connect with the sky. You can just -- do it.

Neither do you need to believe that gratitude is the opposite of consumerism, or adopt any other rationale - polemical, psychological, or spiritual - to begin a gratitude practice. You can just -- do it.

So please consider just doing gratitude. I hope this game can help. I hope it offers you as much pleasure as a tiny dip in a sugar bowl.