Stoomvogels

Oorspronkelijke naam:
Steam Birds
Publicatiedatum:
september 2010
Datum gewijzigd:
mei 2026
Technologie:
Flash (Emulated)
Platforms:
Browser (Desktop)
Steam Birds

Storyboard: "The Border Crossing"


PANEL 1 [Wide establishing shot: Rolling hills and scrubland of the Douro Valley, Portugal/Spain border region. Dawn light. A weathered stone marker stands at the edge of frame.]

CAPTION: The Raia Seca — the dry border between Portugal and Spain. For centuries, a line that meant everything. Today, officially, nothing.


PANEL 2 [MIGUEL, 70s, lean and sun-weathered, walks a dirt path with a wooden staff. Behind him, his farmhouse. Ahead, the invisible border.]

CAPTION: Miguel Ferreira has crossed this line ten thousand times.

MIGUEL (thought bubble): Hoje parece diferente. [Today feels different.]


PANEL 3 [Close on Miguel's boots. On one side of a crumbling stone wall: scrubby Portuguese grass. On the other: the same scrubby Spanish grass.]

CAPTION: The Schengen Agreement made the border disappear — on paper.


PANEL 4 [Miguel stops. Ahead, a YOUNG WOMAN, 20s, sits on the stone wall. She wears a backpack, hiking clothes. She looks at her phone, frustrated. This is SARA, a graduate student.]

SARA: (looking up, surprised) Oh! Bom dia. Perdão — buenos días?

MIGUEL: (smiling) Either works here.


PANEL 5 [Two-shot. Miguel leans on his staff. Sara hops off the wall.]

SARA: My GPS keeps arguing with itself. It can't decide which country I'm in.

MIGUEL: Welcome to the Raia. The land that confused cartographers for eight hundred years.


PANEL 6 [Sara pulls out a paper map — old, folded many times.]

SARA: I'm researching the border villages. The ones that are half in Portugal, half in Spain. For my thesis.

MIGUEL: Ah. (beat) You want to understand the line.

SARA: I want to understand why it's here and not somewhere else.


PANEL 7 [Miguel gestures at the landscape. In the background, a village is visible — terracotta roofs, a church tower.]

MIGUEL: That village. Tourém. The church is in Portugal. The cemetery is in Spain.

SARA: How did that happen?

MIGUEL: (dry) Badly drawn maps. A river that moved. A treaty negotiated by men who had never been here.


PANEL 8 [They begin walking together toward the village. The stone wall meanders alongside them.]

SARA: Did it matter? Before Schengen?

MIGUEL: (long pause) My grandfather was arrested in 1952 for carrying cheese across this wall.


PANEL 9 [Close on Miguel's face. Something old and complicated there.]

MIGUEL: His cheese. From his own goats. The Spanish side of his pasture.

SARA: (quietly) I'm sorry.

MIGUEL: He spent three days in a cell in Bragança. The cheese was confiscated. (beat) The goats didn't care about the border.


PANEL 10 [They reach the edge of the village. A café with plastic chairs outside. An OLD MAN waves at Miguel from a chair — this is DOMINGO, Spanish side, 80s.]

DOMINGO: (calling out in Spanish) Miguel! You're late!

MIGUEL: (calling back in Portuguese) You're always early, Domingo!


PANEL 11 [At the café table. Three coffee cups. Miguel, Sara, and Domingo. A map spread between them.]

DOMINGO: (to Sara, in accented English) You study the border? (taps the map) Here. This line. You see it?

SARA: The 1864 Treaty of Lisbon demarcation?

DOMINGO: (laughs) No, no. This line. (draws finger across tablecloth) Where Señora Carvalho's garden ends and my cousin's field begins. That is the real border here.


PANEL 12 [Sara writes in her notebook. Miguel sips coffee.]

SARA: But the national border—

DOMINGO: The national border moved three times in my grandfather's memory. Señora Carvalho's garden has never moved.

MIGUEL: (nodding) The small borders are older than the big ones.


PANEL 13 [Sara looks out at the village. Children playing. A woman hanging laundry. The church tower visible.]

SARA: Do people here think of themselves as Portuguese or Spanish?

[Silence. Miguel and Domingo exchange a look.]


PANEL 14 [Domingo shrugs elaborately.]

DOMINGO: On Sundays I watch Spanish football. (beat) My wife watches Portuguese television. (beat) We have been married fifty-one years.

MIGUEL: (smiling) His daughter married a man from Chaves. Portuguese.

DOMINGO: (proudly) Three grandchildren. They speak both. They think in neither. (taps temple) They think in Raia.


PANEL 15 [Wide shot of the village. The invisible border line superimposed as a dotted line — running through gardens, between houses, across the road.]

CAPTION: The Treaty of Lisbon, 1864: 5,000 boundary markers. 1,214 kilometers. Negotiated over seven years.

CAPTION: Average time for a Raia family to cross it: 30 seconds.


PANEL 16 [Sara at the church. A small plaque on the wall. She photographs it.]

PLAQUE TEXT: Esta igreja serve duas nações / Esta iglesia sirve dos naciones [This church serves two nations]

SARA (thought bubble): Or one community that was never really divided.


PANEL 17 [Evening. Sara and Miguel walk back toward his farmhouse. The border marker is visible again.]

SARA: Do you think Schengen changed things? Really changed them?

MIGUEL: (considers) It changed what the line does. (beat) It didn't change what it is.


PANEL 18 [Miguel stops at the marker. Puts his hand on it.]

MIGUEL: My grandfather cursed this stone. My father ignored it. I walk past it every morning. (beat) My grandchildren take photographs of it for their phones.

SARA: What does that mean?

MIGUEL: (shrugs, smiling) It means the stone is still here. We are still here. (beat) The meaning changes. The stone doesn't.


PANEL 19 [Sara looks at her phone. The GPS has settled: it shows her standing exactly on the border line.]

SARA: (laughing softly) It finally made up its mind.

MIGUEL: (looking over her shoulder) Hm. (beat) It's wrong, you know.

SARA: What?

MIGUEL: The real line is four meters that way. Has been since 1906. (beat) The GPS doesn't know about the 1906 adjustment.


PANEL 20 [Final wide panel. Twilight. The valley stretching out. Miguel's farmhouse with warm light in the windows. Sara walking toward the road, notebook in hand. The stone marker in the foreground, unmoved.]

CAPTION: Sara's thesis, submitted 14 months later, was titled: "The Raia Seca: Sovereignty, Community, and the Persistence of the Unofficial Border in the Post-Schengen Era."

CAPTION: Miguel read the abstract. He said it was mostly right.

CAPTION: He said the part about the cheese was exactly right.


[END]


Suggested visual style: Muted earth tones, warm ochres and dusty greens. Realistic linework with soft watercolor washes. Panel borders occasionally broken by the landscape, suggesting the permeability of lines.

Hoe speel je Steam Birds?

Besturing: muis

Wat voor genre heeft Steam Birds en wat moet je erin doen?

Steam Birds is een beurt-gebaseerd tactisch spel over luchtgevechten met een bovenaanzicht, waarbij je per beurt de vliegroutes van vliegtuigen plant en probeert vijandelijke toestellen neer te schieten zonder dat je eigen vliegtuigen worden vernietigd.

Is het moeilijk om vliegtuigen te besturen in Steam Birds?

De besturing is opgebouwd rond de muis: je selecteert een vliegtuig, versleept het waypoint en rondt de beurt af, waarna het spel zelf de vlucht en het schieten afspeelt. Hierdoor is de besturing relatief eenvoudig te leren, zelfs voor beginners.

Is reactiesnelheid of strategie belangrijker in Steam Birds?

Anders dan bij klassieke shooters bepaalt hier bijna alles de strategie: je hebt de tijd om over je beurt na te denken, en de uitkomst van een gevecht hangt af van hoe nauwkeurig je de vliegroutes en posities berekent, niet van hoe snel je klikt.

Heeft Steam Birds een verhaal of campagne, of alleen losse gevechten?

Het spel is opgebouwd als een reeks missies in een alternatieve geschiedenis van de luchtoorlog. Elke missie is een afzonderlijk episode, en naarmate je verder komt worden de scenario's moeilijker, wat het gevoel van een militaire campagne geeft.

Wat is het verschil tussen Steam Birds, Steambirds: Survival en Steambirds Alliance?

De originele Steam Birds is een singleplayer beurt-gebaseerde tactiekgame met routeplanning, terwijl Steambirds: Survival overlevingselementen en het verzamelen van upgrades toevoegt, en Steambirds Alliance het universum omzet in een coöperatieve realtime MMO-shooter.