Feed the Crown (Roops' Submission)

Gain Jam Gain Jam 8/2020
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Logo

Hear ye hear ye!

Choose your loyalty: the ravenous Cat Queen, the reluctant Bird Queen, or the determined Mouse “Queen”.

Your Queen needs you—her humble knight—to sneak into the Pig Kingdom for her royal sustenance. Watch out for the Pig Queen’s guards, and use your special animal abilities to navigate the castle!

If you return successful, you will be rewarded with the pleasure of dining with the queen herself! Fulfill her desires and fill her belly!

CONTROLS:
Arrow keys and spacebar during platforming sections.
Use the mouse during the feeding sections.
Press F11 for fullscreen
Press CTRL + R to restart the game

Version 0.9 Game Link: Feed the Crown (Game Jam) by SofterCode

SofterCode is Roops (coding, character art) & Neko.Bijoux (background & title art)

Note from Roops: There’s just never enough time in these jams, is there? While I am thrilled with the progress I made, I set out to make what is, for me, a very ambitious game in a 2-week period! As a result, there are probably plenty of bugs, and I did not get to finish or implement the music I was writing.

I hope you can enjoy this game as a proof of concept for something bigger! I plan to update it after I get feedback from the judges and the community–so let me know what you think. Thanks for playing!

Regarding Bug Fixes/Future Patches.
A million thanks for reporting the bugs. I’ve actually fixed all of the reported ones on my LOCAL version of the game, but alas, I won’t be able to upload it until the judging is over. That said, here’s a list of what WILL BE fixed, so please keep reporting if you find others!

  • Fixed typos during dialogue for Mouse Queen
  • Fixed an issue where the player had a low chance of getting temporarily stuck in a wall when turning right before falling off a platform.
  • Fixed glitch where pressing up twice on a level exit would skip levels/feeding scenes
  • Fixed collision on Mouse Maze where player could fall off of the map
  • Fixed issue where “up arrow” on the staircase was rendered in front of player

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Happy to see Roops on the docket after their sterling effort last time round with The Breakfast Chub. Excited to try this~!

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I do really like this but I have a desperate plea, please add a restart level button, there are so many times where I lose my lives due to stupid mistakes that I immediately want to redo it, but with the way the game works that’s not possible, just hitting r to reset your progress in a level will be enough for me.

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Great feedback! I just updated the file and added a restart function right now via CTRL+R.

However, given the progression of the game, there won’t be a way to just restart a particular level. The restart will take you back to the start of the entire game. Down the road I could definitely add some sort of checkpoint system to allow for easier retries though.

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PLEASE DO. Add a checkpoint system, for the love of god. It’s so frustrating to have a perfect run, and then have it be completely ruined because of one mistake which forces you to restart the entire game. Aside from that, it’s really good! I love the artstyle, and how the Feline Queen acts, especially.

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Aw this looks cute! I was expecting the queens to look more furry.

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Really enjoyed it. For what it’s worth to anyone trying, a no-hit run still results in you gaining weight so don’t worry about taking some knocks. A few more thoughts:

Definitely would appreciate a checkpoint for each day, although I do like the push-your-luck style with the current format - maybe a new gameplay mode?

Would I be right in thinking that six feasting items is the maximum? There looks to be space on the table for a seventh - and it threw me when the Cat Queen was saying she could still eat more, making me think I had missed out!

I liked the dinner dialogue to break up the repetition of feeding, though it seemed a bit sparse at times. One of the Mouse Queen’s lines made me chuckle when she said she couldn’t remember the last time she ate like this (“It was only yesterday, Ma’am” <.<)

Speaking of mice, the Mouse challenge stage, whilst a cool maze, seemed a bit easy compared to the others. For a challenge, why not considered timed gates to race through or one-way gates so you have to carefully plan your route? Although, hey, if you wanted to grace the player with a reprieve then I’m not complaining! :slightly_smiling_face:

Lots of potential here to springboard from: challenge modes for finding tastier treasures; an endless mode to see how long you can maintain the Queen’s increased appetite; maybe even an encounter with the Pig Princess herself…?

All in all, I’m glad I played this! :relaxed:

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Loved it, probably my favorite this year. The artstyle does a lot for me, and although there are several plataformers around here, this one controls smoothest in my pinion.

I would love to see more dialogue with the queenss during dinner, which right now seems to appear randomly (sometimes they talk a lot, sometimes they don’t at all.) Maybe you could trigger dialogue by clicking on them? Also, if it changed according to their weights, it would be awesome.

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There’s something about Roops’ characters that I find so charming. I think it’s the extra attention spent on character expression - I note that there’s a bit of subtle movement in the facial details that makes the characters more expressive and natural rather than having a single image convey an emotion, as typical of a VN.
Joining this with both good writing and simple, pleasing art and you have a bunch of charming characters!

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Is there any way to change the controls from using the left and right arrow keys to a and d ? my right arrow key is broken

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Truth to be told, I would love a fuller VN experience in this style, although I understand it would be a huge undertaking. Still, the expressions are great, an I love a gradual gain with many steps. I’ve only had the cat queen for a few hours, but if anyone were to take her food, I would kill them and then myself.

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All three queens are great with their varied personalities, but the Cat Queen is an unabashed glutton and I love her for it! :heart_eyes:

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Good morning everyone! Thanks for the feedback. I’m going to try to address everyone’s comments below!

@TZed WASD should be alternate controls automatically. Let me know if they aren’t working though!

@furulu Thank you so much! I slaved over the art, so I’m SO happy to hear it works so well for you. The dialogue during the meals is randomly triggered, and I plan to make it more consistent as well as add MORE dialogue in the future. As for a fuller VN experience, I actually prefer making VN (see last year’s game), and would love to flesh one out! I kind of divided my attention this year with a mini-VN/platformer so that I could try to fit the theme better. It took it’s toll in some areas, but it was a fun experiment!

@AlexKay Sorry for the length of this, you wrote a lot (thank you!) and I want to thoroughly respond to it! Thank you so much for your comment on my characters. They are HANDS DOWN my favorite part of making games. It’s so fun to imagine them and try and bring them to life. You are correct that there are only six food items–but with more time I would like to increase the variety! Also it’s hilarious to see all your ideas because they are all things I wanted to do! I actually have a Pig Queen already designed, but she didn’t make the cut for time reasons. I definitely want to look into better and more consistent level design. Detailed feedback like what you provided helps steer the direction for the future of the game, so thank you so much!

@SelectFilly Checkpoint system definitely is high on the list now haha. I wanted to make a game that made you really feel the “weight” of your platforming mistakes, but clearly I went overboard! I’m glad to hear you enjoyed the game overall (and the Cat Queen is my favorite too!)

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WASD are working I just didnt test them. Dumb me xD

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Wow, this submission really blew me away - the platforming is solid, the art is phenomenal, all in all it feels super polished and complete. I’m glad to hear you’re thinking of more things to add after the jam, but honestly other than a few nice-to-have quality-of-life features I wouldn’t feel like anything is missing the way it is now.

In addition to a checkpoint or easy restart feature, I can’t believe I’m saying this but a means to skip or at least quicken the feeding portions would be appreciated. It took me 10+ tries to get a perfect run to give the cat queen everything she deserves, and by the end the feeding felt more like a chore than a reward.

Also, I’m curious - have you ever played a board game called Root? It’s a strategy game where you take on different factions in a forest - chiefly, Cats, Birds, and Mice. The Cats are greedy industrialists, the Birds are a stodgy aristocracy, and the mice are freedom fighters who are trying to get the other forest creatures to rise up. That last one is a crazy coincidence if you’ve never heard of the game!

Anyway I had a great time with this game; I’m not the kind of person who usually grinds out platformers, but that’s just what I felt compelled to do here. Great job, and I look forward to seeing what you do with it post-jam!

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Oh my god, you’re totally right! If it wasn’t intentional then it’s downright uncanny. Now it makes me think there could be a Vagabond rival to complicate your plans by stealing food and setting off traps for you. Something to thwart if you wanted to add a bit of combat (it’s not a Pig Guard so they’re fair game to draw steel on).

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@Circlesquarer This comment made my morning–thank you thank you thank you! I have a lot of polish and quality of life features I want to implement for sure, and your encouraging words really help with that.

It’s funny you mention the feeding scenes, because when playtesting I was going crazy trying to get the values to a point where it didn’t take too long, but wasn’t too rushed? It was hard to find the sweetspot after playtesting it so much. In the test build I had a keybind where you could hold down a button to speed it up. I should look at adding that option back for the platforming perfectionists!

And I love Root–that’s so cool that you’ve played it! As you guessed, this game was heavily inspired by it!

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Hi, I just finished playing with all three characters… I can only say that this game is very cool and has great potential. Ijust suggest adding one or two extra characters

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Heck, given the way you already gain weight between stages, why not play as the Vagabond herself? A wily raccoon-girl who can defeat the pig guards in combat to gain access to heavily-guarded areas no one can, then gets to enjoy the spoils of her daring conquest back in her hideout…

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@Circlesquarer THIS IS A NEXT-LEVEL IDEA! Oh my god! I can’t believe I didn’t think of something like this!

This is why I love community feedback so much.

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