"HEALING MODE +++"
Developed by Ludosity for the Games Against Ebola game jam, Princess Remedy In a World of Hurt is a simple pixel game in which the player takes on the role of Princess Remedy, a graduate from the Saturnian healing school. The game was created by Daniel Remar and Anton (Regnslöja)
with music by Mattias and Stefen, and took a total of four days to make. It has since been released for free on Steam and can be found here.
Making Princess Remedy into a series, a sequel/prequel, Princess Remedy In A Heap Of Trouble, was released September 8th, 2016.
In Slap City, Princess Remedy is avaiable as a playable character.
This game provides examples of
- All There in the Manual: The official names of the game's soundtrack are only given within the game's official SoundCloud OST.
- All There in the Script: The names of all the ailments in the game, including the one exclusive to the Reallyjoel's Dad difficulty level, are given out within the game's source code.
- Bonsai Forest: Hard to avoid in a minimalist pixel game.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Opening the Jealous Chest results in all the chests within East and West Hurtland opening for you just so that you don't have to go backtracking to obtain the rest of the upgrades.
- In the Playable Epilogue, the game allows you to see what an NPC has to say before you choose them for marriage if you hadn't done so beforehand.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: The Heartbreak, only fightable when you try and cure Frallan. They're fast, shoot bullets constantly, and has the most HP out of all the ailments in the game (minus the final boss).
- Bullet Hell: The game becomes this on hard difficulty and higher to give the game a better challenge.
- The Cameo: Hypesnakes originally appeared within a small game Daniel made in the past. They are the Title Characters of said game. Ittle Dew and Tippsie are also NPCs that Remedy can heal.
- Collision Damage: If you touch an enemy, it hurts you, but it also hurts them.
- Cool Crown: Remedy's is a bandage! The crowns worn by a few of the royal NPCs are also worth mentioning.
- Cosmetic Award: The reward for getting 100% Completion is the ability to revisit the Saturnian Palace via an Easter Egg and marry anyone there (including Remedy's own mother).
- Death-Activated Superpower: On death, the bats spawn 3 spreading bullets in the direction that the killing shot came from.
- Developer's Foresight:
- The end text adjusts itself appropriately should you choose to marry the Dark Lord, the Apathetic Frog, or Frallan.
- The Jealous Chest is specifically programmed to give you the appropriate pill upgrade should you have somehow managed to obtain a pill upgrade before opening it (as pill upgrades can only be obtained by opening chests, something which you specifically want to avoid in order to open the Jealous Chest).
- Disk One Nuke: Opening the Jealous Chest nets you a free pill upgrade an area early, making the area a lot easier.
- Elaborate Equals Effective: Justified in that Remedy's upgrades are to better medical supplies, at least until her last upgrade, which is tiaras (or frogs if you managed to open the Jealous Chest).
- Extreme Omnisexual: You can choose to marry any NPC at the end of the game, regardless of gender, species, status as an animate or inanimate object, or blood relation.
- Foreshadowing: You can encounter the Apathetic Frog within the Black Hole. Notice the word "Apathetic" in its name. The manifestation of Apathy, which is part of the ailment the prince is affected by, is a frog's head.
- Gay Option: The player has the option to pursue any NPC in the game as a marriage partner, regardless of gender, family relation, or even species.
- The Goomba: Breadcrumbs. They are the only enemy in the game without an attack pattern on normal difficulty, and they go down in one hit regardless of whether or not Remedy had upgraded her pills.
- Guide Dang It!: The existence of the Jealous Chest that allows one to obtain both an early pill upgrade and the Frog shot. You can only open it if you had opened exactly 0 chests beforehand. Otherwise, it literally refuses to open for you.
- Hearts Are Health: HP is literally called Hearts in this game.
- He Knows About Timed Hits: Several NPCs within the game, most of them within the Saturnian Palace, but also at least one within Hurtland proper, explain the controls for the game. Lampshaded if you marry one of them, as he specifically calls himself the "tutorial guy" when he remarks about his marriage.
- Hit Points:
- For Remedy, they're called Hearts.
- Internally, enemies have them, labelled as HP in the script.
- Homing Projectile: The shuriken-shaped projectiles that come from the flame-shaped enemies.
- Improbable Weapon User: Remedy herself uses medical equipment as weapons. Justified in that she is fighting diseases, which would logically be defeated with medicine.
- Informed Attribute: Due to the graphical style, NPCs that are supposed to be tall or beautiful can't be seen that way.
- Infinity +1 Sword: Frogs are this, only obtainable when you open the Jealous Chest. They replace the Tiaras as being the last pill upgrade you can obtain in the game.
- Instant Ice: Just Add Cold!: One of the sick Valkyries within the Crystal Palace is portrayed as being encased in ice. Try and heal her, and she'll state that she "appears to have a cold".
- Invincible Minor Minion: The Hypesnakes, appearing only in the Reallyjoel's Dad difficulty level, are a parody of this: a horde of them appear after a few seconds, pushing Remedy back once they appear on screen. They have 10 million hit points (according to the game's code) and will kill Remedy in one hit should they come into contact with her. The Apathetic Frog can also be seen within said battles, but given that he's programmed as an indestructible block…
- Lethal Joke Item: The highest upgrade for Remedy's pills, obtainable only by opening the Jealous Chest and collecting the rest of the pill upgrades, are "Frogs".
- Life Meter: An orangish one, at the bottom of the screen, decreasing from right to left, and represented by Hearts, which are the term for the HP.
- Love Hurts: Poor Frallan. She got dumped by Remedy during high school and still angsts over that fact by the time you reach her. You have to cure her by destroying "Heartbreaks", the toughest non-boss enemy in the game.
- Like Parent, Like Spouse: It's possible to invoke this by choosing Queen Amelia, Princess Remedy's mother, as Remedy's spouse (much to Queen Amelia's bewilderment). Only possible to do so once you received 100% Completion.
- Medical Monarch: Princess Remedy, of course.
- Mundane Made Awesome: The entire game's about healing ailments. This is represented in-game by a transition to a battle screen where Remedy battles representations of said ailments using pills, etc. as her gun and flasks as grenades.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: The Breadcrumbs enemy, who only have 1 HP in every difficulty.
- Palette Swap: Several NPCs are the same sprite colored differently.
- Playable Epilogue: The game allows you to keep playing after you've healed the prince so that you can either choose which NPC to marry or heal any character you hadn't healed beforehand.
- Punny Name: The Seal of Quantity is a literal seal that you have to cure of literally every ailment within the game (except the Heartbreak).
- Regenerating Health: Happens during healing encounters whenever Remedy isn't taking damage. You can even find upgrades to your health regeneration.
- Retraux: The graphics are highly reminiscent of that of the ZX Spectrumnote and even mimics its limitations to some extent. The music sound effects and the music, however, are reminiscent of the NES.
- Sad Battle Music: The final boss is accompanied by this in order to show how vile it is compared to the rest of the other characters.
- Save the Princess: Remedy is on a mission to save a prince from a major illness.
- Scratch Damage: It's surprisingly easy to overlook some of the early healing encounters, but no matter how far Remedy has upgraded before facing them, she will always take some amount of damage from the enemies involved.
- Shout-Out: Some NPCs you encounter just before entering Hurtland are named Ron, Doc, Becker, and Plait.
- The Final Boss is one big reference to the final boss fight from Final Fantasy VI.
- Silent Protagonist: Downplayed in that there is only one time you get to see Princess Remedy speak within the game — that's when you choose to marry an empty chest during the Playable Epilogue.
- Spread Shot: You can find upgrades which turn your primary shot to this, adding more bullets.
- Stationary Enemy: There's one in each world, except world 5:
- 1: Breadcrumbs, whose script comment is: "sit still".
- 2: Flames, whose script comments say "sit still, fire".
- 3: jelly - sit still, return fire
- 4: dragon - sit still, fire straight phase
- Superheroes Wear Capes: Princess Remedy wears a yellow cape with diamonds on its edge.
- Take a Third Option: It's possible to invoke this by choosing to marry an empty chest within the Playable Epilogue. Doing so allows you to see Remedy's one line in the entire game.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: The beakers you can throw act like these, dealing good burst damage and going over walls. However, you can only throw a certain amount per healing encounter.
- Unwinnable Joke Game: Like all of Remar's games since Iji, this game has a "
Reallyjoel's Dad" difficulty level unlocked by holding right on the difficulty select screen for five seconds. It becomes pretty obvious that it's this trope once you noticed the fact that the first Heart gate now requires an infinite amount of Hearts in order to unlock, but that's not the only thing that makes this difficulty level unique… (This is lampshaded by, among a few other NPCs within this mode, Queen Amelianote by them directly stating that this mode's impossible for her to complete and that she should've picked an "easier difficulty"). - Visible Silence: The only dialogue ever given by the Apathetic Frog, who doesn't have a care in the world.
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: The ailment that affected the prince is surprisingly very dark for an otherwise light-hearted game. That Guy even tries to taunt Remedy by not only rhetorically asking if "rage, loss, and sorrow" can be cured, but also by stating, "The pain lets us know we are alive... Your healing is not needed in this world!" Not to mention the music that plays while you're fighting it.
