The Royal Guard – #TriJam 185

The Royal Guard is the Drentsoft Games entry to TriJam #185. The theme for this was Kings and Queens and I had the idea for a game somewhere between Papers Please and Love Letter. It is a card game where you play as the guard assigned to keep the throne room safe on his first day. People keep coming to visit and you have to determine if they are friend or foe. You can ask 2 questions out of a possible 4 questions. You then have the choice to allow the character entry, send them away or jail them. There is no harm in jailing someone… unless they are a member of your royal family. There is no harm in sending them away… unless you’ve not let any royals into the throne room after 2 runs through the deck, both result in a failure. The biggest risk comes from letting people into the throne room, if you let more enemies in than friends then they usurp the throne.

The game had some problems as submitted to the jam. The first is that it’s a bit awkward dealing with 2 characters at once and doesn’t really add anything to the gameplay, this had the result of limiting how effectively the UI could be laid out. The second is that the game is a little too random, it’s very hard to tell if someone is an imposter. This is partially due to not being able to implement all the features I wanted.

The game received a light redesign to present the player with just one encounter each turn, allowing for a more coherent UI layout. It’s still not perfect but it does feel better to play. You can play the updated version in the browser or by download on Windows Mac or Linux. You can also download the original jam submission for comparison.

Give it a try and let me know if it should be developed into a full game.