Princess: Unwed by saintchristopher777
So, this was supposed to be a Compo entry, but real life (TM) clobbered me last weekend, and so I missed it. But hey, now the Extra category is a thing, so yay! Basically I did it this weekend (4/9-10) instead, albeit having had more time to think things through.
In Princess: Unwed, you play a medieval princess desperate to get out of marrying before she's ready. Her mother, however, has other plans. You must conduct investigations to dig up dirt on the eligible bachelors the Queen betroths you to, in order to convince her to call off the arranged marriage!
So, did I basically end up making "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego," but where you're dodging skeevy suitors? Try, and find out!
Web build and PC available on itch.io.
Tools: Engine: Unity Art: Krita and Gimp Audio: BeepBox, Audacity
Update: The game now has some better tools to help with taking notes and keeping track of tools. You now have a journal (access by pressing TAB), which has a set of checkboxes for various clue types for each kingdom, for the suitor trait types, as well as an area to manually type notes in-game. TAB also closes the journal, so it can be quickly used from any area of the game, including the clue archive, the map, the throne room, etc.
There are also a few minor bugfixes, but nothing drastic. I also added a couple of clarifying instructional notes.
As it turns out, one weekend isn't much time for extensive playtesting, so the game CAN be pretty tough to figure out with just the in-game help screen information. Here's a bit more guidance:
Full geographical info on all Kingdoms is on the map by the door to the Queen's chamber.
Full information on the possible suitor character traits is in the book on the table.
Partial kingdom crest information is available on the loose pages on the table. The rest must be deduced through clues.
NO kingdom alliance information is available, but it too can be deduced through clues.
Only sending out Miss Pidgie takes any time, and time resets when you dodge a suitor by successfully accusing him of bad traits to the queen. So it's best to use all turns (weeks) gathering information before making your accusations.
Clues you've gained can be reviewed via the single page in the middle of the table (appears after getting your 1st clue).
You can only send Miss Pidgie to each recipient of a kingdom once (until you are investigating a new suitor).
The Ambassador is weighted to give political (crest/alliance) clues. The Surveyor is weighted towards geographical. The Merchant is in the middle. The Duchess has a higher chance of including a clue about the suitor's traits. (truthfully, probably just "visit" all of them though).
Traits are good, kinda bad, or terrible. Good traits can't be accused. It takes correctly accusing 2 kinda bad traits or 1 terrible trait to disqualify suitor.
I've put in a semi-spoilery chart below explaining the trait arrangement.
I've included a definitely spoilery chart below will ALL the kingdom data.
You get less time and the suitors are less guaranteed to have bad traits the more you disqualify. Some RNG involved.
I should have included a "suitors dodged" counter in the UI. If you dodge 10 suitors, you win! I guess some things aren't entirely inevitable :-)
Ratings
| Given | 31🗳️ | 42🗨️ |
Even when I did manage to find the suitor's next location, I found that the only clues I received were along the lines of where he was going next, and so when I ran out of weeks and talked to dear old mother, I guessed and managed to avoid that arrangement.
I tried a new game and tried to pay more attention, and this time I did get clues about my suitor being a penny-pincher and arguer. So I guess part of the challenge is finding the next area, which is hard when the description seems to take you to a land that doesn't have a known banner.
I love the pigeon, by the way.
Would have been nice to get a bit of extra variation after a few discarded suitors.
Maybe even 'unlocking' hints through information so that people don't have to keep their own notes.
Fun concept tho, well done!
Once I realized that I should basically just be writing a letter to every person every time, the game started making a lot more sense, and I started writing down notes about each region. This was fun, as I was building up some documentation about every region, and so there was sort of an implicit goal of just finding all the information about each region.
I did note that this started to become less interesting once I already had most of the information on a region--at this point I was still writing down every clue, but then I just had to find which of my existing clues that already matched. This started to become more tedious. In particular, I kept tabbing out of the game to a notepad and tabbing back in, and at some point this starts getting more annoying.
I think one way to make this work better could be to just have the map be the only source of info. Then, as we get clues throughout the game, we could, say, draw the crest for each country on the map, and write down which alliances it had. That way we could figure out which country was next just by looking at the map, instead of having to write down multiple pieces of information that are difficult to visually scan quickly, and without having to keep context switching to notes written outside of the game.
I do have one specific complaint about the gameplay, which is that, once you hit zero weeks, if you send another letter, you just lose. I think there should definitely be a UI warning for this, saying "if you send this letter you will be lose and be married" or something, because I wasn't sure what would happen, meaning I lost my first game and had to redo the entire first suitor.
Overall, though, I do think the information collection process in this game is pretty fun at its core. It just needs to be streamlined a bit to really shine. Good job!
If you were to keep working on this, I'd suggest adding an in-game notepad, almost like the game Clue/Cluedo, where the player can keep track of traits and location info. Just a simple series of checkboxes would do for a lot of it, and maybe some way to note down crest and alliance info. So you can figure out oh, he must be going to X kingdom next, and a letter said that he was going somewhere with Y on the crest and in Z alliance, so I can mark down X - crest has Y, part of Z. It'd also be really nice to be able to group letters by location, so you're not accidentally looking at old clues to find out the next destination. In general, I'm of the opinion that players shouldn't need to take notes outside of the game, although that's more of a personal preference.
As for glitches, I found I could still move around freely while clues were open. Also, the whole time I was playing there was a weird repetitive noise almost like flapping? It was loudest at the start and when the menu was open, but was still audible for the entire game and also seemed to change in speed/frequency with different screens and actions as well. It made it hard for me to hear the music.
I did enjoy the art, and it's a really good concept! Jams are so time-constrained it's hard to reach perfection, but I'd certainly check out an updated version with clearer controls!
The sound glitch is interesting. It's probably the walking audio (supposed to be the swooshing of the dress). It _should_ only play while walking, but the way I coded it _seemed_ backwards, like it logically ought to play when _not_ moving. But it worked that way, so I shrugged it off as a "late-night" code mystery. I'll have to check and see if I can figure out if there's something in there to explain the bug.
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback!
A quick note that the graphics, music, and sound while rather simple fit extremely well with the "princess" theme. It'd be easy to see this with polish going from charming to a beautiful homage (or parody given the premise) of the cultural juggernaut that is Disney.
This game has a lot of possibility in terms of further world building and affixing more mechanics onto a solid framework of a game.
the biggest issue I had was that the music felt a bit repetitive.
As I was playing, though, it started to feel a bit repetitive. Getting good dirt got a bit harder, but the overall gameplay didn't seem to change. Some sort of story evolution might help? Like, who is giving the queen the names of these terrible people, for example. (Seriously, tho, that royal advisor sucks.)
the documents around the courtroom add to the charm, though perhaps some kind of optional and "portable" docs for reducing some of the walking might be handy in the future after sacking a few suitors and getting a lot more familiar with the mechanics, like a quality-of-life enhancement of sorts
definitely liked the sleuthing/geo-locating of suitors :map:
overall it was a fun game!
I had no need to "dig dirt" at all.
@gdesecrate lol, congrats! Blessed by the RNG gods, I guess!
@psytron Thanks so much, I'm glad you liked it!