False Heir

Inspiration

The direction of this game was largely inspired by the Song Dynasty in terms of both aesthetics and story. The imperial hierarchies and political schemes from this period were perfect for creating the false heir narrative.

Elements of the gameplay were inspired by a physical card game known as Love Letter. We took ideas from how the cards could be used to interact with each other and "win" you a relationship with the Princess. The item cards were inspired by the ones from Slay the Spire, as we wanted to add another layer of depth both in terms of gameplay and story.

What it does

The game follows a spy from a foreign nation attempting to infiltrate the current ruling empire by posing as the long lost child of the royal family. The gameplay involves building relationships with characters to obtain their favor and in return using their status to make your way to the Emperor.

How we built it

The game was developed in Godot by two of our developers. The dialogue engine for this game was built completely from scratch by one of our developers and enabled the game to have branching events that affect the relationships you form with characters.

All of the art in this game was drawn by hand using Procreate. The pixel art style was chosen to reduce the complexity of the artworks due to the limited time we had.

Challenges we ran into

The fully custom-developed dialogue system was the most technically advanced part of the video game. It involved branching texts, dynamically updating background variables, triggers across game mechanics, and more.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are particularly proud of the artwork and the custom dialogue system.

What we learned

This game taught us a lot of new things, as this was the first 24 hour game jam for three of our developers. Determining and managing the scope of the game early on was a hard lesson to learn.