Long Live The King! by Player 2
Long Live The King
In this unique little game, you control 8 individual grunts in 8 individual windows, who have but one goal - reach the basket that will raise their king to freedom.
If but one of the grunts is not sacrificed towards the cause, the king cannot be set free to begin his path to the safety of the castle.
Each grunt can leave their own window and traverse the dangerous land between and enter another grunt's window - Adding an entirely new aspect to the term Puzzle Game.
In this game the Grunt's individual characteristics are as follows:
- Builder (Builds a horizontal bridge used to traverse across gaps.)
- Axe (Digs a diagonal path downwards.)
- Climber (Once he collides with a wall he auto climbs until he reaches the top of the wall.)
- Rocky (Punches a horizontal path through brown walls)
- Digger (Digs a vertical hole into the ground to allow you to go from high to low levels quickly.)
And the king just sits on his lift and waits for the grunts to winch him to freedom.
This game also plays directly onto your desktop - So whatever your background image is your background for the game.
Controls: 'R' to restart, 'Esc' to quit, 'Mouse' Everything else
System Requirements: Minimum Screen Resolution of 1080p (1080 pixels height, 1920 pixels width).
Developer credits: Brandon Roberts, Charlotte Roberts, Paul Roberts,
Music credits: "Obliteration" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
| Source code | https://player-two.itch.io/long-live-the-king |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/long-live-the-king |
Ratings
| Overall | 264th | 3.714⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 382th | 3.425⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 8th | 4.357⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 471th | 3.536⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 562th | 3.44⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 467th | 3.108⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 339th | 3.205⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 487th | 3.346⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 47🗨️ |
I find the idea very original, but for some reason, the windows were a bit hard to move sometimes, and it seem that holding down the left button of the mouse pause the game. I don't know if it's a bug or not.
Graphism and sounds are good. So it's a cool innovative little game !
The game should pass when you move the windows. It was a little unplayable when we kept it playing.
The issue described with clicking the mouse not doing anything is concerning. Obviously clicking a grunt should activate their ability. I'll take a look and see what's going on.
@speakertone Do the grunts fall through the window or are they spawning outside of a window? I've never had this issue so could do with some repro steps.
If any of the window down are spawned overlapping they will not be able to move. The intent was that you can't move windows over each other, but never considered that they could potentially be spawned already colliding.
So lots of lessons learned there for the next jam, but for this game I think we need to add a minimum screen resolution to the description.
Thanks again for the feedback.
I love the little animations of the small people, and the concept as a whole is really innovative. Good job!
:eyes::eyes::eyes:
This was a really interesting puzzle! I really enjoyed figuring out in what order things needed to happen. Though, alot of that came from behind and over the shoulder of my little sister, as she heard me ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the coolness and quickly took over my computer. I mean, I still technically beat it... Right? Either way, here's my win screen. (I re-did it after she finished up)
It was honestly really fun, but I did come across an issue or two. Like every other playthrough, I'd have a guy in a box against the left side of my screen, and have it just... Walk into the left wall and die? And he didn't leave his box, either. There was a white barrier there. Those were a bit frustrating :sweat_smile:
Another small issue would be that sometimes when I clicked on a guy, it'd act like I clicked on hit a few more times. Like, swapping from skill to walk again and again till I left him alone.
Amazing game format. Loved it! :D
The death's should definitely not happen. I'll take a look at that. And the mouse click issue. I've seen that too. Couldn't see an issue in our code for it, but now someone else has spotted that issue I'll take another look.
Thanks a lot.
animations and game flow are quite slow though, we need few minutes to make one grunt to dig hiw way out on another window, a little bit frustrating in my opinion, errors are not allowed ^^'
Good job !
Maybe a speed up option like someone suggested earlier is the way to go.
Thanks for giving it a go.
And funny game
We hadn't considered doing anything else with it, but considering all the positive feedback we have received it might be worth putting a few different levels in.
Thanks for taking the time to play.
The learning curve for the game was steep because all of your grunts look the same. Maybe if they were bigger and looked a little different it would be easier for the user to know which is which.
One of the things that really frustrated me (and led to me quitting, after I missed getting the last grunt in the basket) was the size of the basket. It was too small! Make it bigger so that there is more room for error. Or at least make some sort of visual cue so that it is easier for the user to screw up.
Cool take on the theme and I hope you keep developing this! Looking forward to seeing this go places. Perhaps the most solid entry I've seen so far.
I like the idea of making the grunts bigger. It'll really help the player see which grunt it is. Obviously that's when we have made the grunts look more like their skill type when walking.
I agree on the point about the basket. For a 1 level game jam game I think how it currently is is ok, but for a game you want people to play more than once it's a little harsh.
We do plan on continuing development of the game, so we will be incorporating your suggestions.
Thanks again for playing.
The destructible landscape is done by reading in a bitmap image. Anywhere a particular colour becomes the area to walk, anywhere white is indestructible and everywhere else is destructible. Internally you keep track of the current state of each pixel. When an explosion happens, you update the internal structure and manipulate the bitmap to incorporate this new data. You then refresh the background so that it redraws a modified background. As you are using the internal state for collision checks, the character will fall into any gaps.
I worked on Worms Revolution a couple of years back, but I didn't do any landscape coding. I was responsible for all the weapons code :) This game was written from scratch in C++, but we used SDL for the basics.
We did implement all the Lemmings, but then changed the functionality slightly to fit our game and removed the abilities we didn't need.
In our post-jam version we will be adding some different. Haracger abilities to switch things up a bit. We will also changing a few other things to make it less like Lemmings, even though the influence will still be obvious.
Thanks again for playing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnTCOdtDt_o
There are time-stamps(or should be in the description)
Thank you for playing and reviewing our game, i am not too sure why it crashed your pc.
I am unsure if you mean the game crashed the pc down to rebooting, or if you were just unable to open any other programs. The game does use a technique which covers your desktop, making you unable to open any other icons on your desktop, if this was the problem.
If the game fully crashed your pc then i don't know what the issue could be.
Thank you for including our game in the video, and for reviewing.
My pc is pretty terrible I think, though. It will crash if it's trying to process too much and I often need to save after every single action I take when video editing from fear of the program suddenly crashing.
You can see us attempting to play the game here:
https://youtu.be/4bmEUhG37uY?t=3613
I'll take another look at the recommendation for screen size. Thanks for the detailed feedback.
Anyhow, a pretty creative idea! I think what I mentioned about having some easier levels would be my main wishlist item, along with the other things already on your bucketlist like lower resolution support, bugfixes, etc.
This is perfectly fine, but **as stated in [the official Ludum Dare rules](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/rules), you need to OPT-OUT of the Audio category due to this usage:**
> "You’re free to use 3rd party Artwork/Music/Audio assets, or assets you previously created, but we ask that you OPT-OUT of the respected voting categories (Graphics, Audio). You can opt-out of a voting category when you submit your game."
You can still modify this setting post-submission, so go ahead and do it now. I will be downvoting you in audio as an enforcement of this rule. If I'm mistaken, please reply to me so I can change my vote!