Hampton Court

Hey! I'm so glad you are interested in the game. :) A sale just ended, so I think you missed it, sorry. I don't have plans for another sale soon, but I hope you will keep the game in mind and play it in the future!

This is so fantastic! Thank you for playing and for sharing the live stream. You made my day! :)

Hey! I'm so glad you liked the game. Making your own visual novel is such a great idea for your assignment. :) I used Ren'Py to make this game, so I also recommend it. I actually didn't know anything about game development before starting and just went right into playing around with Ren'Py and learning Python. It was a lot of fun and totally doable, provided that you're into that kind of thing. I was able to make this game without any big struggles. It just took a lot of time to write the script, make the art, compose the music, put it all together, etc. Best of luck if you decide to give it a try!

Hi! I don't plan to add anything else to the game. If that changes, I can definitely let you know.

There are four main endings, with some other smaller variations as well. Everything is dependent on the relationships with the characters and your choices. Thank you for playing!

Thank you for playing, Suki! I'm so glad you enjoyed it (and Diego!). :)

Oh no!! I'm so sorry. The king didn't like you that time! :P Thank you so much for playing!

Hey! You're welcome! I'm so glad the self-voicing works well and I apologize for not having a better system for image descriptions. I hope the descriptions I provided will help you be able to enjoy the game, but no worries if it isn't enough. I will look into the image description tools for the future! Thank you!!

Hi! Thanks for playing! I'm so glad the self-voicing is working well for the game. I'm sorry that there aren't image descriptions. I'm not sure how to add image descriptions to the game directly and unfortunately I'm not able to make edits to the game right now. If I can figure out how to do this in the future, I will let you know! Regardless, let me give you some descriptions right now!

Here are some descriptions of characters and the setting:

The setting is Hampton Court Palace, which is a real-life palace in England. It is a giant, opulent palace that King Henry VIII basically stole from his chief minister Cardinal Wolsey, who built it for himself. Henry changed some things about it to make it his, but you can also see evidence that Wolsey made it for himself. The palace became one of the king's favorite palaces. It is very famous for many reasons, not least of which for having a hallway where his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was said to be running for her life and begging to be spared, after being accused of infidelity. She was later beheaded. The palace is huge and made of beautiful red bricks. It has many towers and chimneys and a huge flower garden where roses are predominantly features. Some of the palace has more modern elements today (because future royalty added to it), but most of the palace is true to the original design. 

Some of the scenes within the setting are: a courtyard with a beautiful fountain, a well furnished bedroom, the gardens (filled with many flowers), the dining room (featuring a huge vaulted ceiling and enormous tapestries on the walls),  an exterior hallway that winds through the palace, a chapel (which is dark, with many stained glass windows), a dungeon cell, an outside view of the castle, and a scene in nature (looking out at a field with lush greenery all around). I think that's it.

The main character is someone you never see. You are meant to imagine what they look like and to put yourself in their shoes. Agnes is a blonde woman with a kindly  and sad face, although she randomly becomes a bit scary and upset. She wears an extravagant dress (green and blue) that one might wear to the court of royalty. Margaret is slender, with brown hair and a snooty vibe. She wears a fancy purple dress. She always looks dismissive and annoyed, but sometimes shows a little heart. Diego is a handsome man with tanned skin. His hair is slicked back a bit and he wears several rings. He wears brown clothes with a simple brown vest. He also has a frilly white shirt poking up around his neck. King Henry is a very large man, with an incredibly wealthy-looking outfit (red, with golden accents). He takes up almost the whole screen when he appears. He wears a fancy black hat with a fluffy feather coming out of the top of it. He has a full beard (auburn/reddish/brownish) and beady, piercing eyes. He looks serious all the time and gets extremely angry at the drop of a hat. Cromwell, whose full name is Thomas Cromwell, is a very famous historical figure featured in this game. He is wearing all black, with a black hat. He has a green scarf hanging down on either side of his neck and a golden necklace. He is holding a scroll. His skin is very pale and he is middle-aged. Jupiter is a little dog who is shaggy, with long ears and a cute face. He is usually seen leaping through the air, for some reason, haha. He has a mix of light brown and white fur.

I think that's just about it. There is a section of the game where you create a mask, which is hard to describe more than what is described in the game. The mask options end up looking ridiculous no matter what you do. There is also a portion of the game where you write a letter. The text of the letter shows up graphically, which you obviously won't be able to see. I'm so sorry about that. However, the text choices you make in the game should tell what the letter says. The wording is a bit different when written in the script on the paper, but that's about it.

I hope this helps and that I am remembering everything correctly. I apologize for not doing a better job with the game being accessible for all players. If I can figure out how to make it better in the future, I will.

Thank you for your support! 

Thanks for the feedback! It's all coded based on scores that you have with each character. Many of your dialogue choices affect the score you have with that character. So, depending on your overall relationship with the main characters, the story branches and reaches different endings (with some other minor details changing elsewhere). I wouldn't be able to give a specific walkthrough (because there are many possible ways to play) but I would suggest that you try to have different relationships with Henry, Cromwell, and Diego (specifically). Once you are close to the climax of the story, those scores will make the story branch off. I hope that helps!

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you had fun with it. You got a good ending! I'm also obsessed with Tudor England (clearly).  Poor Diego—lol. Thanks again! :)

I'm so glad you liked it! Thank you so much for playing. :)

I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing. :)

Thank you, Margaux! I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Good job on getting positive relationships with everyone. That's impressive, haha.

Thank you so much!! I'm so happy you liked it. 😊

Thank you, Sofia! :)

Thank you for playing!

Thank you so much for playing it and reviewing it! It means so much to know that you liked it. :)

I'm so glad you liked it! Thank you so much for your review!! Sorry you died. I hope Margaret likes you next time! :)

I'm glad you liked the story! I understand how you feel. 😝

Thank you for playing!

Thank you!! I'm so glad you liked it (and good job)! 😊

Yay! :) Thank you for playing my game!

Thank you so much! You are so sweet. I'm super happy that you enjoyed it. 😊

Thank you so much! 😁

Thank you for playing my game! I'm so glad you liked it. There is another significant ending (if you don't do #3), but I think you got the big ones! There are small differences as well depending on your relationships. 

Thank you for offering to make a donation! You could always purchase the game or use paypal here: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/chriscollinscreative 😊

Thanks! I'm so glad you liked it. There are about 5 significantly different endings and many smaller differences scattered throughout the story, depending on how you play. 😁

Thank you! I'm so glad you like it. 😊

Thank you for sharing it! I really appreciate that. I don't have a Twitter currently, but thank you for offering. 😊

Thank you so much! I'm so glad you enjoyed it. 😊

 *SPOILERS* I would try to get to the ending where you stick with the king until he's on his death bed, but then choose the more extreme (and violent) option.  You got most of the big endings already, but there are some other possibilities. You could escape alone instead of with 'blank', for example. I think those are all the big ones! *END SPOILERS*. 

Thank you for playing and reviewing! 

Thank you so so much for this kind and heartfelt review. It means so much that you liked the game. Your reactions are exactly what I was hoping for. And thank you for saying that I did my research — I tried very hard in that respect. The only thing I did not attempt was the make the language historically accurate because I wanted it to be accessible for everyone. Anyway, thank you so much!! :)

Thank you for this nice message! I believe there are about 4-6 significant endings, with many more small differences throughout the game. Overall, the story is the story, so it's not one of those games where literally everything can change. You can miss large sequences of the game, however, depending on how "well" you play the game of court. There are a couple of people you can kill and of course you can die by the end of it. But you will always be trying to escape and go through similar steps to do so. I wanted the main character to have a distinct personality and motive, but also allow the player some control. I'm so glad you liked the game and that it gave you some new perspective! I hope you will read the book that you mentioned. Tudor history is an addicting rabbit hole to lose yourself in!

I think it took about 8 months to complete this game. I worked on it all the time. The coding and writing took a while, especially because of the complexity of certain things. For example, the scene where you make a mask took a lot of time to get just right (without any dead ends). Same with the puzzle of how to poison the fountain. It also took me a while to play around with the relationship scores for the characters. I wanted to make sure it was easy enough to influence the characters in a natural way to change the story. I had to go back through the whole thing to adjust the scores because I made a mistake and everyone would have gotten the same ending.

The most time consuming part, however, was probably all the art and media. Since I did everything myself, I had to make a lot of art, designs, music, and sound effects. There were many iterations of this until I was happy - haha. Then, of course, there was the business of making marketing materials to promote the game, setting it all up on my website (and here). It took a lot more work than expected, but it was such a fun project to do! I hope people will enjoy playing it. :)

Thank you so much! :)

Thank you so much! You are too kind! :)