WOW. beautiful experience. im speechless. and also so, so so sad that I don't have time right now to go for another run. Thank you, though, for including how long to expect this game to run! It took me a little longer than 20 minutes, but it was still a fair enough estimate that I could reason I could play it before work, haha. I know that's a little silly, but it meant a lot to me that I was able to start my day with this experience thanks to your foresight about mentioning the game's length. Very very very very good game! Er, anti-game? I don't have words. I wan't more of whatever the Hero and the Queen have got going on. I want to play again and see how my dialogue choices might affect the conversation. I want to play again to see more of these little guys. Thank you so, so so SO much.
lovely, distinctly beautiful,made me art about it. Dark Queen is tragic and transparently lying, Hero is if anything kind of mean but also indisputably the only thing here. This is codependent or something. I like them. I want to put queen in a little jar and take her traveling (because no matter what you do, despite the size of the door, you can't walk through it)
Death animation was beautiful and killed my idle daydream that she was maybe a cursed princess or smth and maybe if she just lost then maybe she would leave (I like to think maybe she had that daydream here too)
Just finished playing on linux. Screensharing it on discord. It started glitching after I first transformed into the 2nd phase. I tried streaming it on twitch via OBS, but the stream was choppy. I regularly sh with my friends and it works just fine, I also already streamed on twitch and it worked smooth as well. However for some reason this game makes things buggy. Haven't tried the windows version under wine. Arch, KDE, X11
Alrigth. The game is awesom but sometimes it almost feel like it is rigged. The first move seem to never work even when i am frame perfect , after the AI learned how to roll so i had to spam the 3 and 2 to somehow get the ending that i call the eternal ending. It does add up to the feeling of the player getting stronger but it's still kinda unfair.
i somehow managed to kill the hero right as he killed me, this caused me to become literally immortal, i could not take damage next time he came, so in a way, i fell, i got back up, i changed the rules, just like the hero, i learned from him on my failure, and i was able to defeat him. truly, I AM UNDYING.
The overall game is good, but if you are aiming to the defeat hero route is COMPLETELY UNFAIR, you are supposed to trick the hero with the spell circle then mace, but in the last chance, his AI just breaks at the póint it gets COMPLETELY RANDOM, there's no more strategy or prediction on how to defeat hium, he just knows your trap once for all and you cant die here, and guess what happens if you die? YOU NEED TO START ALL OVER, Seriousley, i spenty the last 2 HOURS tyrying to get this ending, sorry for swear words, but this is completely bullshit, my score for the game would be 10, but that suffering alone made it go down to 6/10, better and RECOMMEND watch an video on youtube for who got interested, is not like the game is big, and there is only one other ending than that, tyhe default one, not worthy
I don't know if this is a bug or not, but I just encountered a situation where the hero AI seemed to glitch out. I was far enough along that the hero had 3 hearts. The hero would get easily hit but the middle heart would go out and then my next attack would just kill him. This made it trivial to get the Victory Ending which I don't think is intended.
I cheesed the seven hells out of the Hero, teased them with the second phase, then made them about to give up after one more death. And then just do nothing on the second phase...
A fun experience that plays with meta narrative expectations of certain genres of video games. Gorgeous art, a fun 'boss' music theme and small flourishes round out the package. Highly recommend to play over your morning coffee or tea on a weekend. Bravo Mosu, thanks for making this!
i did note an interesting lil bug; after a while of attacking, i stopped and let the hero push me into second phase. i continued to not attack, and he ran away, which un-transformed me. doing this didn't fully reset the room's state though, as the candles were still lit in purple, rather than going back to orange, and stayed purple when the first phase of the next fight attempt began.
absolutely adored this, love playing through it and trying to see what all endings i could find and tearing myself apart over the dialogue between the two characters.
the last goal i had was to beat the hero after transforming once i got the "one more time" dialogue. but i wasn't able to hit them once in that state over several attempts, so i assume they effectively become invincible at that point, if not incredibly difficult to make contact. it's kind of fitting though; one with enough hope and determination can overcome despair, especially with a goal close in sight. alas, the hero has more of those than i do. ^^;
Managed to get defeat the hero ending after he got to the second phase. You just need to stop attacking him when in second phase and then he will go back. Then continue defeating him before second phase and it will give you the ending.
Found a infinite loop. Tried to do the defeat the hero before second phase and failed. Then in the next encounter stopped attacking him. Now hero is stuck telling me ı want to see you try and ı keep not attacking him and he just goes back saying he doesnt want it to end this way. And same dialogue repeats as long as ı dont attack. Infinitly stuck ending or a bug ? Edit: Nevermind somebody else already found and posted a comment, saw it just now.
I think I know what's happening there--the shift to second phase shift and the pacifist dialogue mess each other up. I'll fix that for the next patch, cheers!
Okay, so I have gotten all of the endings then. I had done 6, (beat the hero, ignore the hero, and two different versions of the yes and no endings) and I was convinced there might be another I missed.
Fantastic job on this game. I loved all of them. And I consider this a masterpiece.
I defeated the Hero in the one more time phase, and then it got stuck on the choice between "There is yet fight in me" or "What happened?". Also the queen does not make a different animation with the Hero's corpse anymore, only snaps fingers (and before that, she did). I think I'm stuck. The hero gains damage by moving towards me. I don't do anything, he dies by contact. Must be a bug.
This 20-minute, single-room anti-game is maybe the best and most succinct encapsulation of the gameplay, appeal, and themes of the soulslike game genre. You play as the eponymous Dark Queen of Mortholme, reveling in the destruction of an upstart hero come to slay you and end your reign of terror. End their life by swinging a big fuckass mace, charging forward in blue flames, and/or summoning a pillar of purple energy (the evilest kind of energy) beneath their feet. But over time, the hero learns. And adapts. And gets better at dodging your attacks.
Then the dialogue begins. There's a whole world out there, beyond your throne room, and they get to experience it and grow and change. But you don't. You only have access to the same old stuff, the same old tricks. I would never call the Dark Queen an old dog, but, well...you know how the saying goes.
Anti-game is the perfect descriptor for this piece of art. It is, as far as I can tell, completely scripted, with no amount of skill or reactivity on the player's part able to change the inevitable outcome. And yet, I still found myself interested in the next part. What will the hero say on their next entrance? What more will I learn about the tragedy of power, the rot at the center of every Souls game? What new way will the hero learn to seemingly taunt me? (I may never know the same kind of frustration as me swinging my ludicrously large mace only for that little pixel fucker to be just out of reach.)
This game sounds like a shitpost (what is it like to experience Dark Souls from the boss' POV?), but it's so much more than that. It's a gorgeous little anti-game with stellar writing, and everyone should take 20 minutes out of their day to give it a try.
It is possible to 'win' in a sense. Stay in phase 1 enough times and never let him get to phase 2 and he gives up, leaving you to reign eternally alone.
It's possible, yes. I wrote that alternate ending scenario to cover for the likelihood that someone will figure out a cheese strat, so that player ingenuity could be accounted for in a way that still supports the main story. It ended up being found almost immediately after launch--I've watched enough speedrunners to see that one coming.
I found a cheesy method that works most of the time. Don't move away from the throne. Spam the magic circle when he is outside of melee range. Use a mace attack when the magic circle prevents him from safely getting away. This works because even though he could avoid the mace by groveling at your feet, he will never actively try to do that while you are at your throne. This means he will get hit by the magic circle or the mace depending on how fast he reacts. The reason it doesn't always work is that sometimes he'll move in such ways that the magic circle is created too close to you to allow him to consider closing the distance for a sword swing.
This is rather ironic because he talks about the glory of change and lost because he is too attached the the idea of slaying you with his sword.
I've literally just done this after triggering the second phae like three times. I've noticed late that after staying at the throne after maybe one or two deaths, the hero could literally deal no damage to me ^^'! At first i thought the lack of sword damage was because of the above, and that the bow damage was so small that i wasn't seeing it...
But after making an accidental dash, i realized i had truly become "Undying"! LOL
Thank you so much for giving this "strategy" tip, I wasn't good enough normally but I really wanted to play through that ending myself (and it was so worth it!)
I so so so enjoyed this. The visuals were stunning and the emotion was perfect. I really felt for these two even in just a short time. I wanted more of them! Honestly, you should be so proud of this project! It's a really inspiring piece. I particularly loved the detail of the Queen being gentler with the Hero's body after defeat. The reaction I had when she picked the Hero up!! I can't give you enough praise, seriously, this game gave me exactly what I wanted from this concept. Thank you!
It's great, after finishing the game once it seems scripted towards one possible outcome with the illusion of choice but the battles are just an excuse for this inspiring short story... Also the visuals are mind blowingly good.
← Return to anti-game
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This is beautiful.... I have alwayssss wanted to play as a boss character! I hope to see more games like this!
Amazing game, this makes me appreciate all the player powers and controls given.
WOW. beautiful experience. im speechless. and also so, so so sad that I don't have time right now to go for another run. Thank you, though, for including how long to expect this game to run! It took me a little longer than 20 minutes, but it was still a fair enough estimate that I could reason I could play it before work, haha. I know that's a little silly, but it meant a lot to me that I was able to start my day with this experience thanks to your foresight about mentioning the game's length. Very very very very good game! Er, anti-game? I don't have words. I wan't more of whatever the Hero and the Queen have got going on. I want to play again and see how my dialogue choices might affect the conversation. I want to play again to see more of these little guys. Thank you so, so so SO much.
Such a beautiful game. These visuals are going to stay with me for a while, absolutely stunning.
lovely, distinctly beautiful,made me art about it. Dark Queen is tragic and transparently lying, Hero is if anything kind of mean but also indisputably the only thing here. This is codependent or something. I like them. I want to put queen in a little jar and take her traveling (because no matter what you do, despite the size of the door, you can't walk through it)
Death animation was beautiful and killed my idle daydream that she was maybe a cursed princess or smth and maybe if she just lost then maybe she would leave (I like to think maybe she had that daydream here too)
feelings were felt
Just finished playing on linux. Screensharing it on discord. It started glitching after I first transformed into the 2nd phase. I tried streaming it on twitch via OBS, but the stream was choppy. I regularly sh with my friends and it works just fine, I also already streamed on twitch and it worked smooth as well. However for some reason this game makes things buggy.
Haven't tried the windows version under wine.
Arch, KDE, X11
Very very cool game!
Getting hit with a "The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000142)" on windows, even running as admin. Anything I can try?
What the specs for this game? Everytime I try to launch it the game closes without even loading.
Had this error as well on windows. My solution was to find the exe, then attempt to open it like five times and then it worked.
Oh. I will try it, thanks for the tip.
Alrigth. The game is awesom but sometimes it almost feel like it is rigged. The first move seem to never work even when i am frame perfect , after the AI learned how to roll so i had to spam the 3 and 2 to somehow get the ending that i call the eternal ending.
It does add up to the feeling of the player getting stronger but it's still kinda unfair.
This was great, I was hoping for some kind of Friendship ending based on the hint of playful banter between the two but I still enjoyed it
i somehow managed to kill the hero right as he killed me, this caused me to become literally immortal, i could not take damage next time he came, so in a way, i fell, i got back up, i changed the rules, just like the hero, i learned from him on my failure, and i was able to defeat him. truly, I AM UNDYING.
Love this!
great game!
The overall game is good, but if you are aiming to the defeat hero route is COMPLETELY UNFAIR, you are supposed to trick the hero with the spell circle then mace, but in the last chance, his AI just breaks at the póint it gets COMPLETELY RANDOM, there's no more strategy or prediction on how to defeat hium, he just knows your trap once for all and you cant die here, and guess what happens if you die? YOU NEED TO START ALL OVER, Seriousley, i spenty the last 2 HOURS tyrying to get this ending, sorry for swear words, but this is completely bullshit, my score for the game would be 10, but that suffering alone made it go down to 6/10, better and RECOMMEND watch an video on youtube for who got interested, is not like the game is big, and there is only one other ending than that, tyhe default one, not worthy
It's a linear game. There's one main ending, anything else is discouraged by the narrative.
I don't know if this is a bug or not, but I just encountered a situation where the hero AI seemed to glitch out. I was far enough along that the hero had 3 hearts. The hero would get easily hit but the middle heart would go out and then my next attack would just kill him. This made it trivial to get the Victory Ending which I don't think is intended.
So far i've gotten the funniest "ending":
I cheesed the seven hells out of the Hero, teased them with the second phase, then made them about to give up after one more death.
And then just do nothing on the second phase...
They said they'd come back....
They didn't x`)
nice
HERO PLS, ROMANCE ME-
Honestly...I wish the Queen could be redeemed. I got an ending where the hero said she had changed, and well:
I wish she could. I honestly wish we could get more of this, as it left me...happy, yet sad.
(Anyways can't wait for the fanart lol)
A fun experience that plays with meta narrative expectations of certain genres of video games. Gorgeous art, a fun 'boss' music theme and small flourishes round out the package. Highly recommend to play over your morning coffee or tea on a weekend. Bravo Mosu, thanks for making this!
i did note an interesting lil bug; after a while of attacking, i stopped and let the hero push me into second phase. i continued to not attack, and he ran away, which un-transformed me. doing this didn't fully reset the room's state though, as the candles were still lit in purple, rather than going back to orange, and stayed purple when the first phase of the next fight attempt began.
absolutely adored this, love playing through it and trying to see what all endings i could find and tearing myself apart over the dialogue between the two characters.
the last goal i had was to beat the hero after transforming once i got the "one more time" dialogue. but i wasn't able to hit them once in that state over several attempts, so i assume they effectively become invincible at that point, if not incredibly difficult to make contact. it's kind of fitting though; one with enough hope and determination can overcome despair, especially with a goal close in sight. alas, the hero has more of those than i do. ^^;
Managed to get defeat the hero ending after he got to the second phase. You just need to stop attacking him when in second phase and then he will go back. Then continue defeating him before second phase and it will give you the ending.
Found a infinite loop. Tried to do the defeat the hero before second phase and failed. Then in the next encounter stopped attacking him. Now hero is stuck telling me ı want to see you try and ı keep not attacking him and he just goes back saying he doesnt want it to end this way. And same dialogue repeats as long as ı dont attack. Infinitly stuck ending or a bug ? Edit: Nevermind somebody else already found and posted a comment, saw it just now.
I think I know what's happening there--the shift to second phase shift and the pacifist dialogue mess each other up. I'll fix that for the next patch, cheers!
how many endings does this game have ?
One "canon" ending (with four different last words to end on), plus two alterate endings to cover for players who do unexpected things.
Okay, so I have gotten all of the endings then. I had done 6, (beat the hero, ignore the hero, and two different versions of the yes and no endings) and I was convinced there might be another I missed.
Fantastic job on this game. I loved all of them. And I consider this a masterpiece.
Another ending is when you dont attack at all. Hero goes back a few times because of boredom then comes back and kills you.
I defeated the Hero in the one more time phase, and then it got stuck on the choice between "There is yet fight in me" or "What happened?". Also the queen does not make a different animation with the Hero's corpse anymore, only snaps fingers (and before that, she did). I think I'm stuck. The hero gains damage by moving towards me. I don't do anything, he dies by contact. Must be a bug.
Super weird bug, I'll have to see if I can fix it. So this happened after killing the Hero during the dialogue that ends in "one more time"?
Yes!
By the way I reseted the game and replayed it and beat it as normal. I really liked it, it's not only fun but beautiful. ♥
Absolutely amazing game for the short 20 min time, reminds me of the premise of slay the princess
This was wonderfully well done, short and sweet with very good dialogue.
This 20-minute, single-room anti-game is maybe the best and most succinct encapsulation of the gameplay, appeal, and themes of the soulslike game genre. You play as the eponymous Dark Queen of Mortholme, reveling in the destruction of an upstart hero come to slay you and end your reign of terror. End their life by swinging a big fuckass mace, charging forward in blue flames, and/or summoning a pillar of purple energy (the evilest kind of energy) beneath their feet. But over time, the hero learns. And adapts. And gets better at dodging your attacks.
Then the dialogue begins. There's a whole world out there, beyond your throne room, and they get to experience it and grow and change. But you don't. You only have access to the same old stuff, the same old tricks. I would never call the Dark Queen an old dog, but, well...you know how the saying goes.
Anti-game is the perfect descriptor for this piece of art. It is, as far as I can tell, completely scripted, with no amount of skill or reactivity on the player's part able to change the inevitable outcome. And yet, I still found myself interested in the next part. What will the hero say on their next entrance? What more will I learn about the tragedy of power, the rot at the center of every Souls game? What new way will the hero learn to seemingly taunt me? (I may never know the same kind of frustration as me swinging my ludicrously large mace only for that little pixel fucker to be just out of reach.)
This game sounds like a shitpost (what is it like to experience Dark Souls from the boss' POV?), but it's so much more than that. It's a gorgeous little anti-game with stellar writing, and everyone should take 20 minutes out of their day to give it a try.
It is possible to 'win' in a sense. Stay in phase 1 enough times and never let him get to phase 2 and he gives up, leaving you to reign eternally alone.
How? The hero is almost unkillable past a certain point and dodges all attacks. Is there a way to cheese the fight?
It's possible, yes. I wrote that alternate ending scenario to cover for the likelihood that someone will figure out a cheese strat, so that player ingenuity could be accounted for in a way that still supports the main story. It ended up being found almost immediately after launch--I've watched enough speedrunners to see that one coming.
Oh and great writeup by the way! I enjoyed reading it
I found a cheesy method that works most of the time. Don't move away from the throne. Spam the magic circle when he is outside of melee range. Use a mace attack when the magic circle prevents him from safely getting away. This works because even though he could avoid the mace by groveling at your feet, he will never actively try to do that while you are at your throne. This means he will get hit by the magic circle or the mace depending on how fast he reacts. The reason it doesn't always work is that sometimes he'll move in such ways that the magic circle is created too close to you to allow him to consider closing the distance for a sword swing.
This is rather ironic because he talks about the glory of change and lost because he is too attached the the idea of slaying you with his sword.
I've literally just done this after triggering the second phae like three times.
I've noticed late that after staying at the throne after maybe one or two deaths, the hero could literally deal no damage to me ^^'!
At first i thought the lack of sword damage was because of the above, and that the bow damage was so small that i wasn't seeing it...
But after making an accidental dash, i realized i had truly become "Undying"! LOL
Thank you so much for giving this "strategy" tip, I wasn't good enough normally but I really wanted to play through that ending myself (and it was so worth it!)
Thank you so much for your work, I'm truly amaze. I hope we can see more of the queen in the future.
Android please!
yuri in my darksouls game? yes please
This was honestly beautiful to play through. Anyone reading this--I really recommend just diving in and playing through it blind.
Baller game
Honestly I really enjoyed this! now I wanna find similar games tbh
also, THIS GAME IS SUCH HIGH QUALITY OM LEGIT IS BEAUTIFUL
I so so so enjoyed this. The visuals were stunning and the emotion was perfect. I really felt for these two even in just a short time. I wanted more of them! Honestly, you should be so proud of this project! It's a really inspiring piece. I particularly loved the detail of the Queen being gentler with the Hero's body after defeat. The reaction I had when she picked the Hero up!! I can't give you enough praise, seriously, this game gave me exactly what I wanted from this concept. Thank you!
I was *exactly* high enough for his
It's great, after finishing the game once it seems scripted towards one possible outcome with the illusion of choice but the battles are just an excuse for this inspiring short story... Also the visuals are mind blowingly good.