Over the weekend, I made a small game called My Kingdom for a Rabbit. It is a game of information that has the player figuring out the best heir to rule a rabbit kingdom when the current queen passes. The game works, currently, by selecting four rabbits to go on a test and seeing how well those rabbits did. The rabbits have five stats and each test checks two of the rabbits’ stats. A slight bit of randomness happens and a different result happens if the rabbit succeeds at both, neither, just one, or couldn’t possibly have won at all. At the end of fifteen rounds, the player must decide on a good rabbit, and then the game tells the player how well that rabbit did. That’s how it works now. Obviously, there are many things I wanted to include but couldn’t, and the game doesn’t work quite how I’d like it, but I’m overall happy with what I produced. Go play the game over here.

The Idea

The note card that I have written down for the original idea reads thus:
Premise- An old ruler looks out over the kingdom and tries to prepare the kingdom for the transition of power and selecting the successor. A bit like ‘Long Live the Queen’ and estate management.
Originally, I had been intending to make a game where you select an heir from a small amount of people and groom the kingdom to ease the transition. So, you send your heirs out on quests, and based on how they do, you build up the kingdom to suit one of their needs. Thus the idea was to have a kingdom building phase to the game, where you managed and built up resources. There was also supposed to be random events that happened as time went on, which might cost kingdom resources. Absolutely this is an ambitious concept, and I recognized it early in development.
The rabbits happened on Friday, just before the Dare started. I got wind that the start of Ludum Dare coincided with the birthday of Beatrix Potter. For those who don’t know, Beatrix Potter was an English illustrator and storyteller who wrote and drew children’s books about animals. Her most famous work was a series of books about Peter Rabbit. While I don’t think I ever had any of her books as a child, I do remember watching some of the animation based on the books, made many years later. Thus, on Friday, I decided that if a proper theme was picked, I would make a game about rabbits as a nod to Beatrix Potter. The queen in my game is also named Beatrix.

The Challenge

When the theme was announced, I was really excited. “Running Out of Power” was a good theme that I thought people would really play with (and I wasn’t wrong). After the initial excitement wore off, though, I realized something. This game was going to require a lot of art, specifically storybook-style art. I’m... not the best artist, and in a time crunch, I’m even worse. Still, I really liked the idea and wanted to do this game, so I decided to go forward anyway.

(Here’s some of my early quick art, for example)

Some Hurdles

The game itself was fairly easy to make, but the original idea required more than that. I started out making notes of resources to track and an internal game state that expected events and kingdom growth to happen. Those are still in the game, but after the first night of work I realized that I needed to cut those features out. Otherwise I would end up with nothing to show. I spent about three hours writing out the plan for the game, which is probably more than most people do right at the start. Identifying what was needed by the game really helped me isolate the potential problems and discover the parts that could be cut. At the end of the first day, I knew that I wanted most to make a game about rabbits in a succession crisis, and so I scaled down to just that. Looking back, I’m glad I removed the kingdom management. The more I made the game, the less excited I got for that part of the original idea. Going forward won’t even consider it.

Some Good Things

I made myself a checklist of tasks for this game. My checklist is in the form of “Required”, “Optional”, and “Nice to Have”. The first was what the game absolutely needed. This included things like a text box and a game cycle. The optional list was anything I could work on if I had time after the required stuff was added in. Nice to have meant I knew I wasn’t going to get to it. A bunch of required things got moved to nice to have after I decided on the new focus. One thing, rabbit traits, got moved to optional. Rabbit traits were supposed to be things that affected the game in a way similar to Werewolf or Mafia roles. I decided I didn’t have time to design and implement them, but they were still more important than things I had cut entirely or things like “more music”. A single music track was on my required list. Backdrop art for scenes was actually on the optional list, so I forced myself to make music on Sunday before I allowed myself to do any backdrop art. This checklist really helped me scope my project, and I encourage others to make them.
Another helpful thing was actually connecting with the community. I joined the Discord server for this event, and just having people who were also jamming to talk to was helpful. On Sunday, though, I had to close it entirely. I found it a bit distracting and seeing people have troubles was frustrating and not helping. So, joining the community was great, but I needed to take breaks.

The Future

I like this little game. Other people seem to find the game ok as well. There’s a bunch of stuff I’d like to do differently. There’s a ton of stuff I’d like to add. I want to rotoscope some rabbits. I want rabbits to commit sabotage. I want rabbits to be put at risk. The ultimate goal would be to get the kind of interaction that you might get in a Shahrazad story or a Brother’s Grimm fairy tale. I can’t find it, but I remember one about three princes being sent out to find a gift for the king, to determine who was most suitable to rule, and one of them kills the other two and becomes outcast, gaining nothing for his treachery.
I would like to take more inspiration from games like Werewolf, and have the rabbits interact with one another based on their traits. A friend brought up the idea of having some pre-information to base your initial choices on, and I thought it might be nice to have a family reputation and a profession (things that would be very publicly known), to give the player an idea of who they might consider. Traits and stats would still be hidden information and might contradict the public information. Random events also something I’d like to have. These break up the round to round action and can throw wrenches into the works. I would also not mind allowing the player to assign Advisor Bobbits to a task during the week, getting more targeted information to fill in gaps of knowledge.
The thing that the game needs much more of is a bit of variety. At the moment, the rabbits go on the same test and have the same response. The week passes the same way. The ending is the same for all rabbits with a particular stat pool total. The ending, particularly, should play out a bit more like a storybook where we get to see specific events that come up, related to their stats, trait, former profession, and family. I would love it if, sometimes, a rabbit discovers a way to free the rabbitdom from the fickle nature of the crown, letting the enlightened rabbits govern themselves without the figurehead. I hope this sounds exciting to you because I’m excited for the idea. It will take a bunch of careful design balancing, but I have the foundation in place.

Overall

It was a good Dare. I enjoyed my game, and enjoyed seeing people make theirs as well. I’m really happy to go and play some games and see what others made from the theme. Thanks for making something alongside me. I hope you all had fun! Here's another link to the game in case you missed it.