Code: Eli Delventhal & Willem Delventhal, Art: Brendan Milos, Music & SFX: Mario Godoy, Game Design: All of us
Story
Ragnar the viking's relationship with Princess Prune is on the rocks. He's gone on one too many raids, gone for months, leaving his lovely bride alone in their icy homeland. Ragnar returns to find his wife missing and a note telling him he must do a trial to bring her back, and bring his faithful squire. He knows what that means: she has gone to the end of the _Iskalddøddødenshule_, the Icy Death Cave of Death, to wait for him to prove himself.
The only way he'll ever see her again is he braves the cave and brings fresh flowers to her. It's the only way to keep the love alive!
Game
Good Squire is a game about leading Ragnar (who has taken one too many blows to the head and so is a complete idiot) through dangerous icy caverns so he can find his true love, Princess Prune! As his Squire, it's your duty to do your absolute best to keep Ragnar alive and guide him through the _Iskalddøddødenshule_. If you do so across 20 levels, then you're rewarded with a surprise ending!
Controls
There is a how to play in the game, have a look! It also should tutorialize reasonably well as you play.
You control Ragnar's Squire by moving with the arrow keys. You cannot be harmed.
Ragnar will move entirely on his own, running forward unless a wall or something else gets his attention.
The Squire can hold the space bar to pick up sacred runes, and release the bar to drop them. The runes can attract, repel, or stop Ragnar, depending on which type they are. This is the Squire's only means of controlling the viking.
Goal
Reach Princess Prune at the end of each level.
If you can find the REAL Princess Prune at the end of all 20 levels, get ready for a surprise!
There are also 3 stars in every level if you want to go for a 100% completion rate.
Downloads
The WebGL version should work fine, but older computers have seen some performance issues and there are some sound artifacts. If you experience those, you should grab a download.
simple but effective, the kind of game that does not aim too high. but exactly fulfill its purpose, it's perfect !! I put it in favorites I will play it often. I'm going to go try some of your congratulation games now!
Really well done. Fun and engaging with a unique game mechanic.The sound is delightful and comical. Poor Ragnar he really does seem to have a difficult time of things. Great level design - looking forward to playing this game further, and would love to see what comes out of this post-comp. -- Zen
Really polished game, definitely the most polished game I've seen so far, but the core mechanics are really frustrating. Beat the game after like 30 minutes (avoiding all stars) and while its a cool idea for a puzzle game, I feel like there were a couple things that could be fixed to make it less frustrating.
-Ragnar should be slower and less random when not effected by a rune
-Picking/dropping controls should be smoother and less demanding on the player. I found myself constantly spamming space and it took a toll on my thumb.
-The first half of the game felt lacking in puzzle. I found myself just spamming pickup/drop to have Ragnar go straight to the princess. After like round ~13 it started to get more interesting though.
Btw, I liked the sound design, but it got really repetitive.
All in all though, great job! Was a good experience.
Super polished product, I really like it. I'm not a huge fan of mobile-style games (3 stars level progression, too short sessions), but I have fun playing this game! But voice of main character is creeps me out, lol!
The game is very polished and quite pretty to look at, and the audio is all around good except for the somewhat repetitive voice lines. The levels kind of feel samey to me so it wasnt enough to keep me interested through the harder levels. I think if it was shorter (10 levels?) I probably would've played it to the end. Good job!
Interesting game, I liked the idea and the humor is not bad. The implementation is also very high-quality. It was interesting to play. The game does not match the theme, but it does not matter, the main thing is that the game is good.
Thanks for the great feedback and comments everyone!
@dummydojo great constructive criticism, thanks so much! I agree that Ragnar's movement and controls are ripe for improvement. We kept iterating all the way through the jam on this, more than anything else in the game. Sorry for your thumb! We might experiment with tap space to pick up, tap to drop, instead of needing to hold it. Good feedback on the level design! Similarly to Ragnar's controls, we iterated all the way through on these. The previous incarnation was *way* too hard so we may have gone a bit too far in the other direction.
@brzyrt thanks for the feedback! Yeah, we wanted to pack a lot of content in... it definitely takes 30-60 minutes to get all the stars and beat all the levels. Perhaps that's a bit too long for a jam entry!
@many I hear many you on the audio getting annoying. I'm planning on doing a post-compo (which I will provide soon) that gives you the option to mute Ragnar.
@has I'm surprised you didn't think the game matched the theme! It goes deep, dude. We were aiming at it from multiple angles: 1) You're the squire keeping Ragnar alive, 2) Ragnar is trying to keep the love alive in his relationship, and 3) If you finish the game (scroll up in the comments and you can see the victory screen) you'll see that the squire is actually the wife (spoiler), and so was doing all this work to keep love alive on her end as well. That's like the inception of theme fulfillment! :-P
Very polished, well done! Great art, animation, audio and mood. Gameplay is interesting and you introduced new mechanics very clearly. I wasn't super motivated to grab stars after a while, so I ended up trying to rush for the princess. I found I did a lot of run-drop, run-drop with the totems, perhaps the mechanic for this could be tweaked somehow to feel better. Some intersting stuff here though, could be fleshed out into something great!
Really cool game, the art caught me first and the animations, characters, sound and level design really sells it as a finished product. The mechanics are great and work pretty well, btw i really liked how simple it's to pick up the game
The art looks great and sounds/music are nice and fun. But the cues indeed felt repetitive after some time. Interesting take on a puzzle game! The controls felt a bit chunky as mentioned by others. Love how well-paced the tutorial is. Good job!
Love the artwork and music. It did feel a bit difficult to guide Ragnar, but love what y'all have done with the theme and incorporated it in multiple ways!
It's Basically perfect. I can't say nothing bad about it. Maybe if I look deep enough just to see if there is any flaws, I would say... a little bit too long for a mini game? or maybe some more element on the gameplay... but thats nos necesarily the true. Great game, music, graphic, very funny dialogs, story telling, even the TUTORIAL was there! man, just perfect.
Adored the graphics in this, and the characters were amusing. Poor squire, doing all the work. Implementing different rune functions to herd around your idiot master is definitely a different take on things, and it was very enjoyable over all. If I have any complaints it's that it would be nice if it were a little more challenging. Well done!
Simply the best game I've played so far during this LD46 ! Well done ! Indeed, I loved the graphics, the sound design, the concept, and the execution which is excellent !
I'm really blown away by the quality production, you can almost sell it as commercial game !
@ramonsimarro No estoy seguro por qué la música no funciona. Es possible que es un bug. Estás jugando en Windows, Mac, o web? Podrías escuchar los otros sonidos?
There's a heck of a lot of polish on this one! The controls, the presentation right at the start, and the puzzles all feel very well thought out. And the music is top notch, it really captures this kind of wonder/fantasy vibe. Plus, I have a soft spot for vikings. The only suggestion I can come up with is the voice of Ragnar, it felt like it didn't belong with the visuals and other audio. I'm just picking nits, though. This was really fun and a great premise, too. Thank you for sharing this game!
Such a polished game made in 72 hours, I am very impressed by this game. Everything was well done and loved the music. My only concern was that I had to use the mouse only to continue for next trail or replay the last one, I feel it would be much better if only the keyboard was used. Overall Very Nice Game and very Polished!
Really well polished game! Great concept and execution.
I mostly picked up and dropped off the runes in very short bursts, which was sometimes a bit too easy. I'd maybe halve the number of levels as well, to have the difficulty pick up a bit sooner from the beginning, but it's very impressive you made such a full game.
One of my favourite entries, simply amazing actually! The mood and graphics were perfect I loved this whole viking thing in this adoreable look, the sound and idea hilarious, the gameplay was awesome (reminded me a bit of Lemmings, but like not totally) Incredible that you managed to do 20 Levels! Truly, a remarkable achievement for a gamejam! Controls were easy and not complicated (thank god!) The atmosphere was great, the tutorial helpful. Didn't expirience any bugs, the art style is fantastic, I love it!
I hope you continue to work on this, I feel like this is a really great game a lot of people would enjoy :) If you decide to do that, a bit of feedback: Balance the whole physics/gameplay a bit better, at times I felt it was a bit unfair; the knight is like this unpredictable AI who you have to babysit and it's always kind of dependend on luck where he runs to (for example if you have to work with a repel rune only) which I liked, but then the enemies we're too "exact" and unforgiving which made it sometimes feel a bit frustrating and at times it felt impossible to take countermeasures to save the situation, why not make it so that either the hitbox of the enemies is smaller, or the knight has to be inside of their trigger for a bit to actually get hit (maybe add a little countdown) or give him HP and some enemies are draining that instead of making every enemy and instakill, at times it felt like the game was moving too fast for me to have enough time to react, again, I liked the unpredictable element to Ragnar's movement, but at times I felt like out of control because there simply wasn't enough time to react which gave the whole thing a sort of "luck" vibe (instead of skill), maybe if everything moved a bit slower (and maybe was a bit smaller, so you have a better feeling of the whole map) that would have felt better. This is just feedback for further development, considering you did this in 3 days it's really perfect and you can be proud of yourselfes :) Also lol @ the squire dubbing the "lady", made me laugh ^^ Good job!
Thanks again everyone for all the feedback! We really really appreciate it.
@rustim You're totally right that the totems are bit pick-up-and-drop repeatedly. If we continue with this game, we'll definitely iterate on that core mechanic, because we noticed this issue too.
@aj-jones Yeah good point, didn't even think of using the keyboard for navigation but might as well have.
@vesper@marcusnystrand I hear you on it being too easy! If only you had tried the build before which was absurdly difficult! For the sake of the jam, we decided easier is better, but the balance could still be tuned. If you go for all the stars that can really up the difficulty.
@fatpenguin Huge thanks for the detailed feedback and the kind words! Really good point on him being a bit too random – if it helps, he essentially stays his course unless he's very close to a wall, in which case he will turn away from left or right, whichever has "more" wall. It purposefully feels "organic" but that means it doesn't really follow easy to predict rules. I hear you that this could really use some adjustment. Also slowing him down or zooming the map out is a good idea too.
This is a neat take on the theme! Not only that but the amount of work that was able to get accomplished is outstanding and looks great! I did think it was interesting on how you earn starts for the level too. Different that how most games handle it! Great job!!
@eli-delventhal No worries, glad I could help :) Again, for a gamejam this is really solid work! But finetuning always takes 80% of the time right haha.. or like my college professors used to say, 20% of the final outcome take 80% of the time.. ^^ I feel ya, I think this mostly just needs a bit more tweaking with values\* so I hope you didn't hardcode everything but made scripts that allow for easy value tweaking if you don't wanna kill yourself, haha ;P \*... tweaking AND abusing family members' and friends' love by urging them to playtest a lot, teehee. Happy developing
Comments47
-Ragnar should be slower and less random when not effected by a rune
-Picking/dropping controls should be smoother and less demanding on the player. I found myself constantly spamming space and it took a toll on my thumb.
-The first half of the game felt lacking in puzzle. I found myself just spamming pickup/drop to have Ragnar go straight to the princess. After like round ~13 it started to get more interesting though.
Btw, I liked the sound design, but it got really repetitive.
All in all though, great job! Was a good experience.
Audio cues while fun in the beginning, got quite repetitive :(
Intro was a great touch!
I agree with @dummydojo that picking/dropping totems could be done in another way, because I too spammed spacebar a lot.
excellent work guys !
@dummydojo great constructive criticism, thanks so much! I agree that Ragnar's movement and controls are ripe for improvement. We kept iterating all the way through the jam on this, more than anything else in the game. Sorry for your thumb! We might experiment with tap space to pick up, tap to drop, instead of needing to hold it. Good feedback on the level design! Similarly to Ragnar's controls, we iterated all the way through on these. The previous incarnation was *way* too hard so we may have gone a bit too far in the other direction.
@brzyrt thanks for the feedback! Yeah, we wanted to pack a lot of content in... it definitely takes 30-60 minutes to get all the stars and beat all the levels. Perhaps that's a bit too long for a jam entry!
@many I hear many you on the audio getting annoying. I'm planning on doing a post-compo (which I will provide soon) that gives you the option to mute Ragnar.
@has I'm surprised you didn't think the game matched the theme! It goes deep, dude. We were aiming at it from multiple angles: 1) You're the squire keeping Ragnar alive, 2) Ragnar is trying to keep the love alive in his relationship, and 3) If you finish the game (scroll up in the comments and you can see the victory screen) you'll see that the squire is actually the wife (spoiler), and so was doing all this work to keep love alive on her end as well. That's like the inception of theme fulfillment! :-P
Felt really solid, and had a clear explanation of how to play!
Couple little audio hiccups, but to be expected on webgl.
Only reccomendation would be to allow UI navigation with the keyboard, since your player is using it for all other controls.
This is a really great game and I'm amazed you managed to get it in such a polished state in such a short amount of time!
Indeed, I loved the graphics, the sound design, the concept, and the execution which is excellent !
I'm really blown away by the quality production, you can almost sell it as commercial game !
Overall very excellent work !
Overall, well done!
I mostly picked up and dropped off the runes in very short bursts, which was sometimes a bit too easy. I'd maybe halve the number of levels as well, to have the difficulty pick up a bit sooner from the beginning, but it's very impressive you made such a full game.
The mood and graphics were perfect I loved this whole viking thing in this adoreable look, the sound and idea hilarious, the gameplay was awesome (reminded me a bit of Lemmings, but like not totally)
Incredible that you managed to do 20 Levels! Truly, a remarkable achievement for a gamejam!
Controls were easy and not complicated (thank god!) The atmosphere was great, the tutorial helpful.
Didn't expirience any bugs, the art style is fantastic, I love it!
I hope you continue to work on this, I feel like this is a really great game a lot of people would enjoy :)
If you decide to do that, a bit of feedback:
Balance the whole physics/gameplay a bit better, at times I felt it was a bit unfair; the knight is like this unpredictable AI who you have to babysit and it's always kind of dependend on luck where he runs to (for example if you have to work with a repel rune only) which I liked, but then the enemies we're too "exact" and unforgiving which made it sometimes feel a bit frustrating and at times it felt impossible to take countermeasures to save the situation, why not make it so that either the hitbox of the enemies is smaller, or the knight has to be inside of their trigger for a bit to actually get hit (maybe add a little countdown) or give him HP and some enemies are draining that instead of making every enemy and instakill, at times it felt like the game was moving too fast for me to have enough time to react, again, I liked the unpredictable element to Ragnar's movement, but at times I felt like out of control because there simply wasn't enough time to react which gave the whole thing a sort of "luck" vibe (instead of skill), maybe if everything moved a bit slower (and maybe was a bit smaller, so you have a better feeling of the whole map) that would have felt better.
This is just feedback for further development, considering you did this in 3 days it's really perfect and you can be proud of yourselfes :)
Also lol @ the squire dubbing the "lady", made me laugh ^^
Good job!
@rustim You're totally right that the totems are bit pick-up-and-drop repeatedly. If we continue with this game, we'll definitely iterate on that core mechanic, because we noticed this issue too.
@aj-jones Yeah good point, didn't even think of using the keyboard for navigation but might as well have.
@vesper @marcusnystrand I hear you on it being too easy! If only you had tried the build before which was absurdly difficult! For the sake of the jam, we decided easier is better, but the balance could still be tuned. If you go for all the stars that can really up the difficulty.
@fatpenguin Huge thanks for the detailed feedback and the kind words! Really good point on him being a bit too random – if it helps, he essentially stays his course unless he's very close to a wall, in which case he will turn away from left or right, whichever has "more" wall. It purposefully feels "organic" but that means it doesn't really follow easy to predict rules. I hear you that this could really use some adjustment. Also slowing him down or zooming the map out is a good idea too.
But finetuning always takes 80% of the time right haha.. or like my college professors used to say, 20% of the final outcome take 80% of the time.. ^^
I feel ya, I think this mostly just needs a bit more tweaking with values\* so I hope you didn't hardcode everything but made scripts that allow for easy value tweaking if you don't wanna kill yourself, haha ;P
\*... tweaking AND abusing family members' and friends' love by urging them to playtest a lot, teehee.
Happy developing