A downloadable game

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A Tiny Metroidvania for the Playdate

You've ate the king's royal cheese and are now locked in a maze like dungeon.

  • Navigate through the dungeon, unlocking abilities to access new regions
  • Dodge spikes and make your way through platforming challenges
  • Find secret rooms and collect all the hidden cheese
  • Experience a tiny metroidvania right on your Playdate!

Update Released (v1.1)! Includes:

  • Entirely new second map to play through!!!
  • Speed run timer to track your time (Access through menu on title screen)
  • Various small gameplay tweaks (e.g. reduced player hitbox, better accidental double jump detection, etc.)

v1.1.1

  • Fixed player spawning at the end of world 1...

v1.1.2

  • Made difficult jump where you had to dash through a tiny gap in world 2 much much easier
  • Fixed bug where chests/gates/cheese were not reset after starting new world

Credits:

StatusReleased
Rating
Rated 4.6 out of 5 stars
(5 total ratings)
AuthorSquidGod
GenrePlatformer
TagsMetroidvania, microvania, Playdate

Purchase

Buy Now$4.00 USD or more

In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $4 USD. You will get access to the following files:

TheKingsDungeon1.1.2.pdx.zip 6.7 MB

Development log

Comments

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This looks great and I'm probably going to pick it up, but I was wondering why it's not on  Catalog?      I've only just started using my Playdate, so there might be something about the business side of it that I'm unaware of.    I buy games via itch.io all the time, but if this is ever going to be on Catalog in the future my preference would be to own it there, so I thought I'd ask!

Developers have to submit their game to Catalog. I just never felt like doing it for this one.

Hey there, just wanted to say thanks for the amazing YouTube content you’re making. Very inspiring and super useful! I’m a developer myself and only got into making games a few months ago. Exploring what I could make as a next game after my first playdate release and was thinking about some kind of platformer.


God damn I didn’t appreciate how complex even a simple ladder can be before watching your video about how you made this game 😂


Anyway, love this game and really appreciate the time and effort you put into creating all that educational content! Thanks!

(2 edits) (+1)

This was a fun little game and I really dig the visuals!

I think the controls could be polished a little more, though - especially for a game that's all about just moving around through the game world and encouraging players to try for a faster time. A few examples of what I mean:

  • Getting on/off a ladder seems finicky to me; I often let go and drop instead of climbing the ladder. I think this is because only most games you have to press down on up to grab the ladder; you can't be holding the up button already when you pass over the tile which would be more intuitive.
  • There seems to be a stutter/seam when walking over ladder tiles and onto solid ground. This can cause jumps to wig out a bit; I would polish this to make the ground even.
  • The smash attack feels like something you should have to hold down the down button to charge up and then release to attack (esepcially paired with the animation of the guy raising his hands and then smashing them down). It feels odd that just tapping the down button sends the character into that full animation and it confused me the first time it happened when I tapped down accidentally.
  • The crank gates can be opened while the screen showing what power-up you got is still open after opening a chest. This seemed unintentional; it feels like the whole game should pause while that message box is open (certainly your character does otherwise).
  • Respawning at the start of the room when I entered it through a ladder or wall climb always causes me to immediately fall back to a previous room. This was annoying and unintuitive; if I entered the room via a ladder or a wall climb, dying should respawn me in the climbing state and not just drop me off the screen immediately.
    Reaching the end of the climbable section when climbing up a wall release the player in the falling state immediately which is pretty annoying/unintuitive. I would much prefer it just stopped letting you climb up but kept you in the climbing state, like a ladder does.
  • Just tapping left or right next to a climbable wall lets you climb it, but it might feel better to require the player to hold down the left or right button to keep climbing the wall, and release the player into the falling animation when they let go of it (or jump away from the wall)
  • Tapping A gives you the same jump height that holding A down does.  I would make tapping A give you a shorter hop - it feels wrong to just tap A and then jump. I also found it really unintuitive that you can jump in midair by running off of the edge of a block, and unintuitive that you can't double jump - even if you haven't used it yet - after jumping off of clinging to a wall. These tweaks might require some tweaks to the level design but I think it would make moving around as the character feel a lot better.
  • I like the water graphics but it took me awhile to realize what the tiles for the water pouring down in the background were - they look way to blocky compared to the thin line of the water's surface. I know they're in line with the other background tiles of the game, but I spent awhile thinking they were some different kind of ladder and trying to climb it. If it's just supposed to be the water pouring down like a waterfall, I would make the graphics look more like the water's surface - as in, a couple of thin, one pixel wide wavy lines instead of blocky angular pixels
  • In general I am not sure I am a fan of the bold outline around the character; I found it looked a little jarring compared to how clean and ordered the rest of the pixel grid was in this game.
  • Maybe I missed it but it would be nice to have a cheese counter during the gameplay so you can see how many you collected while playing instead of only when you reach the end. If you don't want the player to know how many there are total you don't have to show the total, but I spent a long time wandering around on my second playthrough of the second quest because I had only counted 9 cheeses collected and knew I needed to get 10 to have them all, only to eventually give up and go the king at the end and find out I already had all 10.

All in all this was a fun game and I enjoyed the two quests I played with it, but I think with just a little more polish to the movement this could be a stone cold classic! I'm also curious if you would consider allowing people to make their own "quests" to upload and play themselves and/or share with others?

Hey tylorlilley! Thanks for playing and the comprehensive comments. You seem to have a pretty good sense of game design. I pretty much agree with most everything that you wrote - many points I considered addressing. After I released this about 6 months ago, however, I decided that my time would be better spent on making new games instead of going back and continuing to work on this one. That ties in with the making custom quests thing too - theoretically it would be possible to make it pretty easy to make new levels by sharing the LDtk file, but that would require some more work to make it easily importable. Could be a pretty cool system for another Playdate game to explore in the future though.

(+2)

Wow, thanks for the reply and the kind words! I completely understand the choice to move on to other projects instead of continuing to polish this one (even if I think just a little more polish to the controls/moveset would go a long way in this case). I still had fun with it either way and I look forward to seeing what else you do!

Fun game. I haven’t played many Metroidvania-style games so I’m not proficient. I’m stuck here. I understand what I need to do but even when I make it to the ladder I still fall and die. Any hints?

To make getting to the ladder easier, you can try running off the block first, and then jump and dash. Instead of holding up to grab the ladder, try timing the up button when you are right over the ladder.

I’m trying that out but I hit a bug it seems. When I run off that block and then jump and then dash the screen flickers with bands of white. This happened twice so far and currently it’s so bad it’s covering up most of the screen. I put the device to sleep in case I can grab any logs using the SDK. I have that installed on my Mac.

That's strange - haven't heard of that bug before so any logs would definitely be helpful. Thanks!

I’ll see what I can get. I have a video but I don’t have YouTube to post here. It looks like a screen redraw bug because the white horizontal bands only cover the areas that don’t have movement. And even after I exited the game even in the main menu the screen was flickering. So maybe a Play date bug.

I made it past that screen, thanks for the tip. The next screen, oy. I think it’s too hard for me and unfortunately. If this is a sign of the screens to come I’ll probably have to bail out here, kind of a bummer. But it was a fun game while it lasted!

(+1)

This is a fantastic little game.  Level design is very clever.  This is one of my favs on the Playdate and is better than a lot of Series 1's games I must say!

Thanks - glad you enjoyed it!

(+1)

This was a WICKED FUN game!

Thanks for playing :)

(+1)

I played it a bit 

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(+1)

Really enjoyed this! Found the 2nd map more difficult and engaging than the 1st map so glad you added it in.

Glad you liked it! Thanks for playing :)

Hi ! Is the game made for macOs too?

You could play on the Playdate Simulator app (https://play.date/dev/), but it's designed for the Playdate.

Thank you for answering!:) I'm gonna try the simulator, I really want to play the game

(1 edit)

This is a fun little platformer that plays really well! Very much worth the money.

I couldn't find a way to message the creator so I'll just leave this video here. I think there's a spawning bug right here, but who knows maybe that's the intended behavior!

(+1)

Yeah - it's because it's spawning you at the start of the room, but it doesn't automatically switch you to a climbing state so you don't grab the ladder and fall immediately to the previous room. Not necessarily a bug per se, but definitely a QoL change I should make. Thanks!

(+1)

Probably not a big deal most of the time, but I kept dying in that room so I kept having to climb the ladder over and over! Thanks for taking a look.

(+2)

I love this little game! Just finished both maps. It's cool seeing the item order is completely different for the two maps. Also appreciate the timer options and best run time tracking. It'd be amazing if someone created a page at SRC for this.

Thanks for pointing out the item order thing! Randomly realized I could easily change up how each map played by just changing the ability order - that was fun to implement.

(+1)

looks cool!

(+2)

"Just did a cash out refinance on my summer castle", that's pretty funny!

(+2)

Fun and tight little game!

(+1)

Thanks for playing!

(+1)

Just bought and sideloaded. Cant wait to give it a spin!