Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD39 → My Kingdom for a Rabbit!
By incobalt
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 235 | 3.47 | 38 | |
| Fun | 482 | 2.83 | 38 | |
| Innovation | 153 | 3.50 | 38 | |
| Theme | 213 | 3.72 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 349 | 3.16 | 38 | |
| Audio | 324 | 2.81 | 35 | |
| Humor | 116 | 3.20 | 37 | |
| Mood | 144 | 3.41 | 36 |
Hah, you're literally running out of Power. :) Liked this interpretation of the theme! Music was a bit too quiet as you've mentioned but nicely composed. Cute rabbit-graphics and a funny story. The gameplay is a bit too simplistic and I couldn't really understand the criteria for the bunnies. I selected a couple that were mostly good at every task but got bad results at the end so I'm not sure how that works. Nice effort overall.
@h-attila Thanks! The game of information is a bit too random and not deterministic enough, but it's what I have. The music thing is a bit that I accidentally had my volume up a bunch when I composed and put it in the game (and I've always overzealous about making sure it's not too loud) that when I built it and noticed my volume it turned out being really soft.
A really cool game! Pretty long gameplay time too for a game made in such a short time. I unfortunately chose the wrong heir so my rabbitdom is dead :(
@furkanfs Oh no! Well, the hares will probably be good rulers. It's artificially long, since it's just a loop that repeats the same gameplay 15 times, but you're kind to say that!
Interesting! I thought of the "political power" thing too. The game is well written in every respect. I picked Cabbage on the 5th day because he did the best on every test I did. Random events or the like would have kept me playing longer and contributed a stronger fun factor (e.g. maybe a test could add or remove a bunny involved?). I indeed could not hear the music at all.
@seurimas There were plans for events like that and for special things to happen during the tests (like one rabbit sabotaging the other), but those got scrapped for time. Technically, the message about the week being too quick is an event, but there's just only one event to show.
This interpretation of the theme is excellent and I like the narrative. I think this game could flourish with some of the additions that you mentioned. Also the visuals could be cleaner (But this is Ludum Dare.)
A nice little game, I like how it is written and presented. Granted, I could not hear any music and having some events like you mentioned would really spruce things up further, but for 48 hours I'd call this a job well done!
My carefully selected heir, the cream of the crop, resulted in a kingdom totally ruined. That offends me, and proves that choosing heirs by their name is not a good strategy.
@Devastus A lot of people really seem to like Cabbage and stick with her, I've noticed. The music is definitely there, though! At least, I can hear it in the browser version on my non-dev machine.
the arte in this is great! i like this style of games a lot, nice job!
@krish8l Don't tell anyone my secret, the art is just a smudge tool and an oil-painting effect from Paint.Net. The backdrops were made in about an hour on Sunday :P
Yei! I have chosen the right heir! :) In only 7 weeks of testing them.
When you have figured out how to have a good eye it seems a bit easy, but it can be tricky.
Good job, I like your interpretation of the theme, rabbits should never lose their power! never!
Nice! The vibe of the music suited the game well, I felt calm and concentrated while playing. I enjoyed the concept, and definitely "got the hang of it" so to say. Maybe it's just me, but it would've been nice if there was just a bit more visual stimulation. Whether it be still images to represent each activity during the text saying how they did, or even animations of some sort, but of course I understand that all would've been quite difficult in the short amount of time we had. All in all, pleasant game, thanks. :)
I really like the angle you took with this. I chose the wrong heir in the end and since it took a pretty long time to get through, I'll comment on this one playthrough
The graphics were good and the music is nice as well. Not much else to say here.
The gameplay is really interesting. It feels like an interactive fairy tale and puzzle game in one. I'm not sure if there's an optimal way to play, but it has been fun trying to figure out what's going on.
Overall I really liked it. Good work.
Thanks @mspawa, @ModalModule, and @Zelos! There's a lot more I want to do with this concept (see the postmortem), and hearing how you all enjoyed it really helps!
I liked this game, reminded me of the old guess the combination number puzzles. I didn't get right on my first play through, but got it on my second when I had a better plan for testing them. I had a little trouble reading the font at first, not sure if it had to do with the way some of the letters touched, might have just been me though.
For some reason the web version didn't have any music when i played it. Cool game though. I enjoyed playing it. Good Job!
That was a very unusual and unique game. I loved it! Mops Scamper was my heir as he was the only rabbit I select who successfully passed all of the tests. I also loved the font that you use, it reminded me of reading a child's book and it was such a touching, if not just a little sad, story too. I really don't know what else to say. You did and awesome job!
@KunoNoOni The font was ["Titania"](http://www.dafont.com/titania.font), and I really liked that it had a medieval storybook feel to it. @joe-miller Unity font sharpness is my bane and I spent at least two hours trying to tweak it for readability. The f in the font looks a lot like an i (I had trouble telling sometimes). @milano23 Thanks! The music is there, just really quiet. Unless there's a browser issue with WebGL that I don't know about (which is entirely possible!).
That was a cool little concept! :) I like the idea, although I do agree with a couple others, it does feel a little long. Perhaps let the queen die in like 8 weeks? I do like the concept of having to keep track of different attributes of different rabbits throughout the trials. Well done! :)
I really like your interpretation of the theme. It's very unique (as far as I've seen). I took your advice and took notes, and at first picked a bad rabbit but was determined to do better the second time around and modified by note taking system. The names of the rabbits were great. All very believable yet humorous names. Music is fitting, and dialogue is awesome. Really makes me feel like royalty in a palace deciding on an heir. The whole thing feels very sound and sturdy, like it isn't going to crash on me, which is not always the case with these 48 hour games. Keep up the good work!
Okay, so I was going to really like this game when I thought it would be a logical mastermind sort of game where you have to find the best rabbit using logic and clever choices, however, I discovered soon enough that it seemed to be fairly random, and you couldn't really trust the test results. I get that that is how life is, but it kind of dampens the fun.
I did successfully choose the right rabbit, and the rabbitdom did very well, but it was still disappointing that the rabbits' performance wasn't steady. For a test, I took four rabbits, and had them take the same test five times. Jaja failed all of them, Trin passed all but one, Dalsop failed all but one, and Kalsedon failed three and passed two.
It is really great that you don't have to finish all fifteen tests before you choose an heir. And I do like that there seem to be three levels of proficiency, which helps with the realism. Also, it isn't necessary for the best rabbit to be perfect in all aspects to be a good ruler.
Overall, I think this has great potential, but I think that you took it in a bit of the wrong direction with the unpredictability. There are just not enough weeks, and too many candidates to have the rabbits go through enough tests to have statistical proof of the right heir. It should be assumed that the tests are accurate measures of the rabbit's ability in that area.
When I saw the picture it was not the game that I would play, but I am shocked it is good, the best suprise ever.
@jay-valencia Can you explain? All the pictures were taken from in-game. @good-enough Yeah, this is my one sticking point with myself. The game isn't deterministic enough at all. Could have made it a straight comparison, fairly easily, but decided to do a die roll check instead. Much more is planned, and it's going to be logical, rather than guesswork. @michael-feldman Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it! @cnoble I agree, except that you need to test rabbits multiple times to really get a good feel for them. I did give you the ability to stop early, though!
I was honestly surprised I enjoyed this so much. I don't normally go in for this kind of game, but the art/mood/writing really sold it for me. Also this take on the theme is one of my favorites. Probably the most charming game I've played this LD.
@varelsegames Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
The interpretation of the theme is this game is one of the most original I have seen. The art, the audio and the general mood of the game was really good and I think I smiled the whole time I played it. It was like reading a book for kids and interacting with the story. On the downside, each week is pretty repetitive, and at some point makes the game feel a little bit long, which is understandable in the short amount of time there was. Still, even if I "lost" the game, I still felt I had quite a bit of fun!
@simonlary Thanks! That's the kind of feel I was going for with this game. I wanted it to be a kind of fun, storybook kind of game that you enjoy even though the ending is uncertain. In a future version of this game, I would like it to feel like you're along for the ride and, even if you want the rabbits to succeed, whatever outcome happens feels enjoyable and worth your time.
I did it! I picked the best heir to the throne! All it took was me realizing how the game is done, taking out an index card and starting to draw boxes with names, deciding that would take too long, pulling up notepad to achieve the same idea, deciding that was non-intuitive, and finally pulling up a spreadsheet and arranging the names and tests into a grid to allow me to pick the best heir! Seriously, you are the first person to make me pull up a spreadsheet to play a game.
I really liked this game, it's just like a big riddle. The graphics were nice, but I couldn't hear the audio. I read a few comments and found out that the audio is definitely there, I'm just too afraid to pull up my volume that high. It would've been nice to see a graphic of the rabbits working on their tests, as well. I also didn't see how the theme fit into the game until I read the theme again in the credits. Yup, the queen is definitely running out of power.
Overall, it's a lovely game!
Gameplay Experience: I'm pretty sure I got lucky. I chose the best heir on the 4th week. I just picked the first four and tested for one thing, of which only one passed. Then that rabbit and three new ones. The one that passed the first time passed all the next tests. Then that one and 3 new ones, lo and behold first round rabbit is perfect.
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Possible Suggestion: Art was good, music was okay but very soft (simple fix for that one). I think the easiest way to make it a more interesting game would be to make sure that there is no 'perfect' rabbit, and then have a different ending for each combination. Some rabbits would be more successful than others at different things, but there is no such thing as a perfect ruler. That would give you 10 different ending segments (1 good and 1 bad for each category) and any extra ones that you would want to be special. 31 different endings if you wanted each to be unique, but a small paragraph for each would give this game a metric ton of replayability.
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Suggestions aside, solid product. Writing was good, and you definitely could get the fairy tale vibe of it which is what I think you were going for. I'm also a sucker for logic puzzles which this seems to be.
@BeamKirby Hopefully, in a future version there will be less need of an external spreadsheet (though there might be an internal one!).I'm glad you liked it :D @philip45 Your suggestions are absolutely something I wanted to incorporate, but I had to cut for time. Technically, there is no perfect ruler in this one, either (no rabbit can have max stats, and a rabbit with a low stat can still be a good ruler), but I'd like to make it where we see the highlights of the heir's rule based on their stats, similar to what you're saying.
Interesting take on the theme. It feels a bit flat puzzle-wise and feels more of a memorization/sorting algorithm. The writing was pretty good though, nice naming of characters and the back story made the world seem more fleshed out. Could do with more court intrigue and nasty scheming and backstabbing but that's too much game of thrones for me and wouldn't fit in this fantasy world of rabbits.
This was a very interesting game!
It is very impressive, how you have made such an atmospheric and interesting game, from a relatively simple set of components working really well together. It seems that you are quite skilled at time management! :-)
As have been mentioned previously, the music fits the game well, although the volume is a bit too low. Also, I agree with previous commenters, that the random elements could probably have been better in some kind of "between round" events, rather than to obfuscate the results of the trials. The random outcome of the trials feels a bit unintuitive.
The art fits the mood well, and the small touches (like the individual names of the would-be heirs, and the storytelling-feel of the results of the trials) really makes the game come alive. I like the take on the theme as well, interpreting power as political power (I had the same interpretation of the word in my game).
All in all, this was a very nice game! Nice work!
>To Rule the Rabbits, >You must pass the five trials! >Choose the heir wisely...
@randomphantom There will be more intrigue in the future, but I'm hoping to keep the fairy tale feel. @somnium Thanks! I don't think I quite accomplished this, but I did what I could in the time I had. As for the random elements, that was a split-second decision that I should have done the other way. Oh well. The next version will be different.
When I remembered the rabbits that had done well in the first round of tests and began to select the winners for the second round I felt interested! When I selected an heir with 10 weeks remaining and read that the kingdom prospered, I felt successful. If you continue to develop this, I'd be curious to read and see a qualification of the success and also of the efficiency of my selection method. It challenged me to design an efficient experiment. How efficient was I?
@ethan-kennerly The best I've heard was 4 weeks, and I've done it after one week (but I wasn't trying to get a good ending). Your methods are probably sound, but they are operating on flawed data. I intend to have a breakdown of rabbits that you can optionally check at the end, so you can tell how well you did in a more statistical way.
Cute story! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMCKWv94MN0