1205: Long Live the Queen

A short while back, a few indie developers that I enjoy the work of very much released a bundle of games that looked interesting. Among this selection of games was a title known as Long Live the Queen by Hanako Games, developer of Magical Diary, a game which I enjoyed very much. I picked up the bundle and, as tends to happen frequently with this sort of thing, forgot all about it completely until recently.

The specific circumstances which caused me to remember the existence of Long Live the Queen as a Thing were catching a glimpse of it on Steam Greenlight earlier. The premise of taking a young anime girl, dressing her up and then watching her die horribly sounded appealing and interesting, so I decided to check the game out for myself.

What I discovered was a very interesting “life sim”/strategy game with a surprising amount of hidden depth. Since Hanako Games is a small developer with only a couple of people to its name — creator Georgina Bensley and one or two others — it’s a game that was obviously made relatively “on the cheap,” as it were, with relatively little in the way of graphics and sound/music, but that doesn’t stop it from being very interesting indeed.

Essentially, Long Live the Queen is a game somewhat akin to old Japanese games like Princess Maker, in that you have a young anime girl to take care of and must train her up to deal with various situations appropriately. The course which the game’s plot takes depends on the skills which you choose to train up, and the skills which you can train most effectively are determined by Our Heroine’s current mood — for example, if she’s depressed, she’s particularly wont to express herself through things like music and singing, whereas if she’s angry, she can channel her aggression into training in things like military strategy and proper use of weapons. Training to particular levels in things unlocks various costumes appropriate to the skills she’s learning — for example, learning a lot of spiritual skills unlocks a priestess outfit, while becoming a “Lumen” and awakening to her family’s magical heritage unlocks a particularly awesome “magical girl” outfit.

These skills aren’t just for bragging rights, though. Each in-game “week” sees various events happening, many of which require a skill check to successfully resolve. Failing the skill check isn’t necessarily a bad result, though — it simply means that Our Heroine doesn’t have the requisite skills to resolve a situation in a particular way. For example, early in the game, she’s sent a necklace by a Duke who is proposing marriage to her, but having a distinct lack of knowledge of the way things work in the royal court means that she doesn’t recognise the gift for what it is and instead responds with a rather unqueenly “Oooh! Sparkly!” — but it cheers her up.

Making it through the game without dying horribly is a case of carefully making decisions and levelling up skills appropriately, and it’s not at all uncommon for Our Heroine to meet a sticky end — in fact, it’s positively encouraged via the “collect them all!” death checklist in the game’s main menu. It’s almost preferable to play the game like a roguelike — starting from the beginning, only saving when you’re stopping playing rather than before you make a critical decision, and dealing with the consequences of your actions. In a nice touch, reaching the end of a game — whether with Our Heroine’s coronation as Queen or with her death — allows you to export a complete log file of everything that happened so you can perhaps figure out what on Earth went wrong.

In short, it’s a very interesting game, and well worth checking out. Don’t go into it expecting something spectacular — the music loops are nice, but very short and repetitive, and there’s not a lot of variation in the graphics (though Our Heroine’s various costumes are all great) — and you’ll have a great time building your own custom princess and seeing how she survives in the world.

Find out more here.