Start of as a peasant and trade your way up to royalty. 'A NICKEL FOR A KINGDOM' is a 2D/3D trading & memory game in which you try to trade your nickel with villagers. The things you get from them can be traded again! What will your destiny be.
The game has 14 different endings and was created for the Ludum Dare #45.
CONTROLS:
KEYBOARD or CONTROLLER
W, A, S , D or LEFT STICK - Walking/Menu navigation E or A - Confirm
Very cute and I liked it despite not liking cute things. The best moment was the lonely lady whom i first considered to be of the transvestite sort, because the building next to her cropped away the "y" in lady.
I love the amount of polish and little details! :heart: (walking animation, location transitions, building fade,...)
I'd be curious to hear about your process for designing and keeping track of all the trades and location, seems like it would be easy to underestimate.
Overall, your game came together as a really wonderful package for me, glad I got to play it! :mouse:
I wouldn't really change anything, but just as food for thought, you could consider speeding up the animations slightly (e.g. text, gates) and shrinking the game world a tiny bit in order to make the core game loop of trading items a bit quicker to explore. I only got to three endings in ~20mins, would have liked to discover more since the game appears to have tons of content.
Hey this was a great game! We also did a story-based game, so I'm especially impressed by the amount of content. And world is so much bigger than I expected! I really love how everything comes together--the characters are super cute, the simple but consistent world, and overall aesthetic went really well together. I also really appreciated some of those more time-consuming bits of polish, like separate music scores for different areas, pacing (I thought it was great that you could very easily find the free bread ending, which made the goal of the game super straight-forward), and making sure objects become transparent rather than occlude the character :smiley:
The only things I noticed were small... 1. The character to the left of the King (inner castle) gets part of his dialog occluded, so I wasn't sure what I could trade with him. 2. I also think the world could use a bit more geometry...I think the simplicity really helps interactive objects stand out, but there are smaller tweaks (like adding thickness to the floors, beveling edges, and maybe some normal maps to add texture), that could make the game just that much more cohesive. 3. The typing transition was slower than my reading speed...perhaps the words could just appear automatically?
Thanks for making such a great game! I was already convinced by your cute title image, and the game exceeded my already high expectations. I only completed 3 of the endings since it's late here and I need to go to bed...but I'd totally to play more of this game!
Cool game! The visual style was cute and inviting, which made the world fun to explore. I liked that the different endings gave meaning to your choices and by trading items around, there was a sense of helping out the villagers in need.
We used 4 DIN A4 sheets taped together to draw all the trading tree in it and then carefully put that into the game and checking to not do any mistakes when adding all the item trades in. It was a really fun experience and we learned a lot.
The game world was initially far bigger before becoming this size in the final version (and the player walking speed slower) which was counterintuitive for a game where you need to trade.
Thank you again and have a great day/night (depending on timezone ^^)!
So much to do , and a huge map, i've spend a lot of time inde this game, nice dialogues btw. A think the musics was a little too loud. And the art would be a little bit more polished, just a tiny litle bit. :v:
Best trading game I have played on this game jam. I don't think they will get any better than this one. Good job! I loved your game! Thank you for making it!
A fun trading game with a charming graphical style. Also lots of fun dialogue. I did notice that the guy next to the king had his trade partially covered by the level.
@nisovin thank you so much :) We were in quite a hurry towards the end and missed that one, but we will pay more attention to those details next time :)
This was so good! I love how each item has a purpose and the game progressed naturally without feeling like a bottleneck, and the little animals are so cute! Amazing job with what you did in 72 hours!
I laughed when I gave the princess's hand to the king and he executed me.
Sometimes the icons get covered by walls and pillars especially with the Paladin, which was a bit frustrating.
@mateusboga thank you so much for the kind words. Unfortunately we did not notice that bug in time and that's why it is still in the game. A post-jam version will fix the problem :)
Most advanced trading game for this jam. Amazing job ! Loved the game art music is nice and there is a bunch of trades to do. I was catched for way longer than I thought. GG !
I finished the game three times: 1. Gave bread to a poor boy and came to a happy life. 2. Joined the cultists and destroyed the Kingdom. 3. Became the right-hand of the king.
It was interesting! Also, I liked the art style. The very cool combination of 2d and 3d. You have a clear level design. I never got lost.
I would like to see all the endings, but going through the first half of the game more then 3 times isn't interesting. Checkpoints would help me. For example in the form of the mindmap. When I get a new item, a new leaf appears.
@uchiro That's some good endings you got there! Thank you a lot for the feedback. After one ending all doors could be open all the time and the player could start with an item already :) Good ideas, thanks
What a fun little game, it gets more and more fun for every run you do, I was a bit confused first when I won the game with the orphan ending, but the more I played the more I liked it. The art, music and story is great, it's very clear that you spent a lot of time on the writing. I love the fact that it "makes" sense, like when I got an orange I figured that one of the sailors probably wanted it because of scurvy. Great job!
@simon-rahnasto sounds like you got the best ending :D! Thanks so much! We are glad that you liked our writing, it really was a big part of the process :)
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Thanks! We are glad you enjoyed the game :smile:
I'd be curious to hear about your process for designing and keeping track of all the trades and location, seems like it would be easy to underestimate.
Overall, your game came together as a really wonderful package for me, glad I got to play it! :mouse:
I wouldn't really change anything, but just as food for thought, you could consider speeding up the animations slightly (e.g. text, gates) and shrinking the game world a tiny bit in order to make the core game loop of trading items a bit quicker to explore. I only got to three endings in ~20mins, would have liked to discover more since the game appears to have tons of content.
The only things I noticed were small...
1. The character to the left of the King (inner castle) gets part of his dialog occluded, so I wasn't sure what I could trade with him.
2. I also think the world could use a bit more geometry...I think the simplicity really helps interactive objects stand out, but there are smaller tweaks (like adding thickness to the floors, beveling edges, and maybe some normal maps to add texture), that could make the game just that much more cohesive.
3. The typing transition was slower than my reading speed...perhaps the words could just appear automatically?
Thanks for making such a great game! I was already convinced by your cute title image, and the game exceeded my already high expectations. I only completed 3 of the endings since it's late here and I need to go to bed...but I'd totally to play more of this game!
I had fun, thanks for making it!
We used 4 DIN A4 sheets taped together to draw all the trading tree in it and then carefully put that into the game and checking to not do any mistakes when adding all the item trades in. It was a really fun experience and we learned a lot.
The game world was initially far bigger before becoming this size in the final version (and the player walking speed slower) which was counterintuitive for a game where you need to trade.
Thank you again and have a great day/night (depending on timezone ^^)!
I agree we should have playtested a bit more :sweat_smile:, but we kinda ran out of time.
Thank you though for your feedback and we will take it in consideration for the next game ^^.
thank you so much, this means a lot to us:)
I loved your game! Thank you for making it!
I laughed when I gave the princess's hand to the king and he executed me.
Sometimes the icons get covered by walls and pillars especially with the Paladin, which was a bit frustrating.
Glad you liked the ending :)!
Good job :slight_smile:
Thank you for playing!
I finished the game three times:
1. Gave bread to a poor boy and came to a happy life.
2. Joined the cultists and destroyed the Kingdom.
3. Became the right-hand of the king.
It was interesting! Also, I liked the art style. The very cool combination of 2d and 3d.
You have a clear level design. I never got lost.
I would like to see all the endings, but going through the first half of the game more then 3 times isn't interesting.
Checkpoints would help me. For example in the form of the mindmap. When I get a new item, a new leaf appears.
What a fun little game, it gets more and more fun for every run you do, I was a bit confused first when I won the game with the orphan ending, but the more I played the more I liked it. The art, music and story is great, it's very clear that you spent a lot of time on the writing. I love the fact that it "makes" sense, like when I got an orange I figured that one of the sailors probably wanted it because of scurvy. Great job!