A bullet hell game with platformer RPG elements in between challenging mini-bullet-hell-encounters.
Featuring:
- 20 unique bullet-hell boss fights
- A pretty alright story
- A lever with an attitude
I can beat this in under 30 minutes, but every later fight needs to be puzzled out, I reckon there's more than an hour of gameplay here. There's no save feature unfortunately, so be aware!
X / M
Interact with NPCs and reveal the lore behind this broken kingdom you apparently rule.
Z / N
Jump & start combat encounters
In combat touch the red wall of the arena to damage the opponent
If a particular encounter is giving you trouble, you can enable 'drain mode' from the options menu. This will slowly drain the opponent's HP rather damaging them with attacks, think of it like an 'easy mode'
I made this game over about a month and a half; I wanted to make something kinda Undertaley, I don't know how much I succeeded, but I like this! I hit the cart size limit, which surprised me, but luckily I had most of what I wanted in the game.
@hahhah42 set up a speedrunning leaderboard!? That's pretty cool! Here it is for anyone interested
https://www.speedrun.com/kingabullethellrpg
This is too good! A fleshed out RPG with interesting level design everywhere.
I had to switch to drain mode for
This guy
is telling me that I won all those battles by luck. :D
I haven't won yet about retry makes the
This could have used a save feature if there are any tokens left.
@livirt Thanks, I'm glad you like it! I realized when I was close to done that this could really use a save system, but I didn't have the know-how or space, which sucks but the game is still beatable in a single sitting.
Can you tell me more about the game freezing in between pattern switches during the secret boss? That's a nasty bug, but I can't seem to recreate it.
Edit: I believe the problem was it was adding the function to 'draw a new attack pattern' directly to the attack patterns, so every time you drew the same pattern the delay got bigger. Not to mention healing the boss more. I reworked the thing and it should be fixed
Thanks for the quick fix! Ah, so the extra healing was why I was making less progress.
Also noticed a typo.
i guess scepter hasn't
hasn't gotten around to
me yet!
There's two hasn't here.
And I managed to get crownstuff twice somehow.
I was running through starting battled without talking this time so that might be why or it could be something else.
Incredible game, it really made me feel like a [[[big shot]]]. I was even humming some Deltarune songs while playing the game. Thanks for making it!
Where do I go after beating King Slayer? It's so confusion
@Ancient_Babawe I'm late, but you go back to the laboratory with the tubes, there's a door in the floor you can open with the key King Slayer drops
found a glitch after defeating the royal advisor janitor
was still there and I could battle him
I rage restarted on accident on I think the final fight, quick the tricky game but man good job.
Also yes the advisor sticks around after you beat him :p
(need to come back to this later to beat it..)
well it has happend for me with the advisor underneath the ladder twice. wonder what causes it
I'm not sure how that would happen actually; those two fights are only placed during startup I believe, and if you win a fight it's automatically removed from the table of encounters. Either I accidentally replace the fight in a later event, or the encounters are removed inconsistently. Weird!
Managed to make it to the end of the game (or is it?). Went to play back through without resetting the cart and the game crashed when I tried to pick up the old key.
@hahhah42 Oh man, sorry about that. Good catch! I think I fixed it, that was one of the first 'events' I implemented, and I was planning the event system differently at the time. Now, rather than actually getting a key, when you pick up the key it sets the door to act as if you have a key. But I was still telling that event to give you a key
I've set up a speedrun leaderboard for this game, in case anyone else is interested:
https://www.speedrun.com/kingabullethellrpg
Think I'll just stick to the any% category for now.
@hahhah42 Yooo! That's way cool! I'll add that to the description of the game so people can see it easier, that'll make my day :D
Very charming game, and honestly it's plain fun. It's quite hard though, especially the first fight. I love the artwork.
@Thunder1000 A secret boss holds the key:
The chest has a key item required to reach a final secret boss:
I did it :0
really well made although I had to turn on drain mode for most of it, really frustrating moving with Mac arrow keys
This is great! Such a cool mechanics idea, to add platforming with bullet hell. Great story concept too. I'd love to see Pico-8 with more carts like this one.
Also, I appreciate how it has a way to attack your opponent during their attacks, instead of having to make it turn-based.
@CrownDeluxe Thanks! I like the fundamentals of this project a lot, I'm working on a larger scale project in the same vein, using the love2d framework.
I think the most similar cart to this I've seen was in the 2021 advent calendar, the RPG with a marble encounter system. An RPG with an abstracted encounter system is really cool to me, it can be so flexible and it can be anything! You could resolve conflicts with a game of brick breaker, or tetris, or a Space Invaders style shooter! RPGs don't need to have menus and moves, you can design a flexible minigame that reinforces the theme and brings out character in unique encounters. That's pretty cool :3
@Pidgey
The first crown is the one that gave you the ability to block attacks
The second crown is inside the chest in the town area
The third crown is gotten when you defeat the Blueprint. If you walk of the right side of the screen it will roll the credits and end the game, and you'll miss the secret boss
what an amazing game! I just got the true ending with the fight against
@ShaneTheSloth I'm glad you liked it! Sounds like you 100 percented it, there's nothing up there. Once you walk off the screen it just rolls the credits, the same thing that happens when you beat the secret boss. King walks off into the distance of whatever the world is. The rusted door is the castle gate, that hasn't been opened in many years
This game is the best Pico 8 game I've found so far. @Droodle are you planning on expanding this game on a different platform so you don't have to deal with the Pico memory limit? If this was listed on Steam as a fully fleshed-out game I would pay a large amount of money for it lol
@LazerLazer22 Thanks! :D I'm not going to expand on this, but I'm using what I learned from this to work on a fundamentally similar larger project in the love2d framework though.
@joealarson The door opens when you beat the guard in front of the door, if what you mean is you can't beat the guard then; whoops! Sorry about that, I'm told that first fight is harder than it needs to be
@/Jack Faust (Your tag has a space in it and I can't figure out how to @ you) That tool only works on the sewer grate in the middle of town, the one under the throne is opened later
Then I have another question, how do I get to town, if I need to get into the nursery how do I do that? thanks a bunch for the game and for your help
You can't get into the nursery right now, the grate is riiight here
I'm somewhat new to programming so this might be a dumb question, but what is the love2d framework? And is it something that a new programmer could pick up somewhat easily? I know how to use some JavaScript and Java, but other than that I'm pretty much clueless at the moment. But I would like to pick up a new language soon
@LazerLazer22 I picked it up super easily because it uses the same language (Lua) as Pico-8, which I picked up pretty easily from next to no programming experience.
Love2D isn't a game engine, my understanding is that it just runs and renders Lua code, and it's got a Lua code library useful for drawing stuff. You make all the assets and code in separate programs, put it in a folder, and open it with Love2D to run it.
I'd recommend it to beginners, if they're similar to me at least. It's free! VScode is the text editor I use, it's free too. The downside is a lack of tutorials, I had a rocky start figuring out how to structure and run everything. The Love2D discord community is helpful and answered a lot of my beginner questions though, and now I'm established I really like using it!
Oh wow that sounds awesome. I'll look into Love2D, it sounds perfect for what I want to do. Hopefully I can make some games of my own.
Also I've beaten KING at least ten times by now. It is extremely addictive.
Ok so I have 100% the game... I think.
Beat all the bosses, even the secret one.
got all (3?) of the crowns
killed the blueprint (N O M O R E !)
and that is all.
I really liked the game and the attack patterns you need to memorize, even with kingslayer.
I hope a sequel is made. It would be pretty cool.
@Knack Using an item you pick up later;
If you're having trouble with a particular undodgable pink ring attack, you're fighting an optional hidden boss that you are supposed to come back to later.
whats the patter to defeat the black smith i cant seem to dodge the attacks from the left and right
@/Jack Faust you can block the pink bullets by pressing X or O (I can't remember which.) The blacksmith gives you the item that lets you do that just before the encounter
Really good game!
I ended up ragequitting after beating the destroyed ‘cause my PC kicked me out
I really enjoyed the game. Found the story very intriguing and it kept pulling me back in for more, even though it was underdeveloped. The controls feel nice and responsive. The music was nice and fit well with the theme even if it was also underdeveloped. Are you considering making this into a fully-fledged game? The makings of a great game are already there they just need to be expanded on. I honestly believe you could pull it off.
@Haywire34 Thanks for that! I'm not expanding this game, but I'm using the fundamentals I learned working on this to make something separate and larger in a similar vein.
I'm working in the love2D framework, so I can put more art in the game and generally worry less about space. It's going well and I plan to work on it for a good while, I'll probably put updates on my Instagram (@/droodlebean) if you're interested!
Amazing game! Had to drip-cheat on the last boss. I'm happy I played this, aaaand I'm happy it's over (my hands started to hurt after a while).
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