The King Is Back

About the game

The King Is Back is a few minutes of gentle humour. You are a king who walks home after a long time away, stopping to pet a wild cat on the way, and finds that his town has changed: the sign has been painted over, and the old tavern is now a bird-themed cafe run by a friendly man called Nigel, who does not understand why anyone should command him to do anything. The king, who is used to being obeyed, discovers that asking nicely is a new experience.

There are four small areas to explore, a forest, the cafe and two more rooms, and everything you walk into has a line to read. The text uses the effects of Bitsy's dialogue system, shaking, waving and rainbow letters, to give the king's grumbling its character. It was made in Bitsy for the TIGSource "wholesome" game jam of 2018 and has no fail state.

Playing it here

Click Play, then use the arrow keys (or W A S D) to walk. Walk into things and people to read what they say, and press any movement key or Enter to move on to the next line. On a phone or tablet, swipe or tap on the screen. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no save: the whole thing starts over when you reload.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

Talk to Nigel twice. He says something different the second time you speak to him.

Look everywhere. The cafe has a bucket, a cup of tea, a bookshelf and a coffee machine, and each has a line.

It is short. The whole thing takes about five minutes.

Credits and licence

The King Is Back was made by Víctor Enrique (tofumarinado) and published under the MIT licence in the repository tofumarinado/the-king-is-back. The licence text, together with the licence of the engine, is linked from this page. The page is the single-file export of the Bitsy engine (MIT, the Bitsy authors) with the game inside. We changed nothing but a rule that stops the page from making any request outside this site.