Serious Royal Business

jibberwocky 2022-04-04 06:53

Really great game, feels like there is heaps of depth and ways things can play out for something made in 48 hours, the amount of feedback is nice and vague to keep you guessing but the randomness sometimes makes that frustrating (It's hard to work out what the AIs like or dislike before they kill you).

I wish there was something more active you could do to placate pissed off members of the court, I feel like one will just be fuming off in the corner as I talk to everyone but them until I die.

tiny-pig 2022-04-04 13:27

Nice idea that's well implemented with lots of options. I kept playing it so it must be fun and I think that all the features worked well. Aside from not being able to pick who to talk to, I also didn't love the music during the game but I did like the title screen music.

jcg 2022-04-04 23:04

I guess you can't kill your problems away. Well done!

d00kl1 2022-04-05 04:06

Well, I tried a few scenarios: * Raging psycho who kills anyone who approaches the king * Docile floormat who says YES to everything

Both scenarios played out badly for the king. That must prove something?

Good submission, piqued my interest and made me replay the game to try different personalities for the king.

rolly 2022-04-05 16:40

Very nice concept, and I love your interpretation of the theme :) It feels a bit too random to actually try to figure out a proper strategy to survive longer, but I guess that's the idea :D

The music is cool!

Nice entry!

drentsoft 2022-04-05 18:52

Interesting game. Got to day 26 when someone with a very long name murdered me. I feel like it might be better if the options didn't appear until after the dialogue has rendered on screen but otherwise an intriguing entry. I liked the murdering.

lesinvisible 2022-04-06 13:16

It was very interesting messing with the different options each time I played it. I liked the randomly generated characters and different kinds of events and options for reacting to them. My only complaint is that some of the responses from your servants are not intuitive(like the reactions on warm welcoming). In moments randomness spoils the experience a bit.

ubershmekel 2022-04-07 03:57

Lots of "Reigns" vibes here. I love the detailed "kill" animation. I made it to day 22 by killing whoever was fuming. The "rude" vs "welcome" choice always seemed random, I didn't know what to do to make them happy. I guess that was the case for a lot of these choices. I wish I had some sort of signals that I could learn from. Maybe they were there and I didn't figure it out. It was interesting to try and find them. The music was pretty ominous which fit the vibe. Thank you for the game.

pitxardo 2022-04-07 15:10

Hi everyone!

Thank you for your reviews and feedback! Very appreciated and useful.

This idea was hard to develop because the scope was getting bigger and bigger so I needed to make many cuts at some point or I couldn't deliver the game on time :-)

But, as @jibberwocky and @tiny-pig pointed, there is a big gameplay design error: you cannot choose who to kill. So, sometimes gets very fustrating to see characters with bad vibe fume getting close to kill you and you can't do anything.

Another mistake is not to mention that each character has a different personality or make it clear with some icons or stats in screen. As I noticed, this confused most of you (@rolly, @lesinvisible and @ubershmekel), so this is clearly a faulty design >_< I added the warm/rude welcome event, which is always the same for every character on their first time, with the intention to let you know what type of personality you were facing with the new character. But, it didn't work :-D

About the game always playing out in the king dying, as @d00kl1 mentioned, well... that's the inevitable but delayable destiny of the king ;-D

Now, I'm wondering if this could be a nice full game if I fix all the design issues, add much more events, more prodecural stuff, and more kingdom management, and of course, much more polishing! Or maybe I'm getting too attached to this idea...

vidarn 2022-04-08 18:15

This was a fun game to play! As others have said, I really liked playing it several times to try and figure out a working strategy. I do think that the welcome question worked quite well for figuring out the personality of the characters, and I quite liked how opaque the mechanics were. It made the guessing game of which option to pick more exiting.

A minor note, but I found the animation when choosing to kill a character a bit graphic. I realise that its a humorous addition, but perhaps an option to disable it would be nice if you chose to work further on the game. I do agree the game has potential, by the way! :)

jovialknoll 2022-04-09 02:44

Pretty funny that some people respond well to rude greetings. I like the idea a lot, unfortunately it seems the sort of gameplay loop that would live or die on quantity of content, which is more difficult for a short jam. Interface was good.

diego-escalante 2022-04-09 03:47

I don't think I am a good king. I felt like I didn't know what I was doing. I liked how unique the game was though! I haven't seen another game like this in LD50.

daniel-username 2022-04-09 22:31

Haha, interesting idea. I really wanted to kill that first guy after he didn't appreciate me welcoming him warmly. What a rude dude.

island-jam-2-group-3 2022-04-10 18:28

Nice and entertaining entry! I am not sure about something: are the responses (good, bad, neutral) something random or can they be guessed? I had a streak of being rude to someone and they not liking it and being nice to other and they not liking it xD

Godot FTW!

helen 2022-04-11 17:18

I had fun playing your game. Let the first one welcome warm, he was pissed Oo - so I was harsh to the next one, which he liked :laughing: I played it several times to try different things. Sometimes it was a bit frustrating to get the correct answer. But maybe it's exactly what it feels like to be a king. Nice entry!

ryupold 2022-04-11 17:54

why do they want to give steaks to the pigs? that's madness! Great entry so far :)

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