Beggar King is a 2D platformer survival game originally made in GMTK 2017 game jam. It has since been iterated with new art and features.

Contribution

Featured

3D to 2D Workflow

Inspired by Dead Cells, I applied an efficient workflow to turn 3D animation into 2D sprite sheets. This significantly reduced the time to make character animations.

Day Night Cycle

I worked on many systems related to our day night cycle, including lighting, scheduled AI activities, and environment shaders.

Malice Bloom Effect

I contributed to the floating glyph and flash effect. We researched many murals and reiterated this effect a lot. We settled with this one for its stylistic and logical consistency with the rest of the game.

Clock Events

I programmed the scheduled event editor including timer, alarm, and calendar events. These components enabled easy edits of scheduled events.

AI Pathing

I programmed the AI navigation module based on The AI Systems of Left4Dead. The agent perceives ceilings, holes, and cliffs. It can navigate freely across 2D terrains.

Bugs

Because who doesn’t

Making of…

The original Beggar King was made in 2017 for the Game Maker’s Toolkit Game Jam within 48 hours by Kevin Hu and Sichen Liu. Set in a 20th century metropolitan city, the game challenges the player to survive on the streets by saving spare coins, dodging malicious mobs, and fighting constant hunger.

Two years after its original publication, the game was redesigned with a Chinese aesthetic, similar to but not entirely copied from the Dunhuang murals art style. The world setting is brought back to ancient China - a time where regulated begging was a social norm and beggar communities were highly organized. The game is still currently being developed by the same author (me!) who is begging to survive at college.