The King’s Gauntlet
Indie Game Project
Description
The King’s Gauntlet is a story-driven, class focused, rogue-lite set in a world of magic and mystery inspired by mythology and folk-lore. It began as a passion project in 2016 and was continuously developed with a friend until 2018.
Inspiration
The idea for a game like this emerged from the surge in rogue-lite popularity after the launch of titles like The Binding of Isaac, Spelunky and Nuclear Throne. Like many others, we were fans of this genre and the amazing procedural-generation-powered gameplay that it brought forward but we wanted to see an experience that could exchange a bit of the randomness for character development and linear storytelling.
As we completed our last year of high school this project was largely seen as a learning experience, it let us express our creativity and get comfortable with coding in a way that felt challenging, rewarding and fun! After some time passed and we started pursuing degrees in computer science, TKG was now a playground to experiment with those newly found concepts and achieve a much better gameplay experience beyond even what we initially imagined.
Features
The game has a combat system, inventory management, simple AI and pathfinding, dynamic lighting, automatic tiling, random level, loot and enemy generation, physics particle simulation, boss fights, a diverse cast of enemies, and many other features.
I got to mess around with a bunch of different concepts that I would never have had to tackle otherwise. I was motivated to venture into spaces that really only made sense when thinking about an interactive experience like this. It taught me the importance of researching proper implementation, of compartmentalizing issues and having the confidence to pursue a solution no matter how difficult it may seem at first glance.
Below you can find a compilation of some of the gifs we created over time showcasing some of these features.
Game Showcase
In 2018 we were fortunate enough to have the experience of showcasing a playable demo of The Kings Gauntlet at MOJO, an event that takes place in IST TagusPark every year.
It was an incredible experience and one I hope to repeat soon!
Conclusion
I can say that I am very proud of this project since it marks the inception of my love for game development and the first of many experiences that gave me the ambition and passion that I now have for solving problems and empowering my creativity through the tool that is technology.
We still haven’t been able to go back and prepare a playable demo to showcase all of the hard work we put into it but you can read a bit more about it over on our itch.io page:
Also, check out the twitter page for more gifs :)
