December 2, 2025

Hey hey, long time no blog! Today's entry will be a (long-overdue) devlog for The Three Princes, my entry for Fire Emblem Universe's annual single-chapter contest (called "Supremely Intellectual Games Utilising Real Design" aka SIGURD this year). I'll cover different ideas I had, inspirations for the game, and a bunch of other stuff! It should go without saying that this blog entry will contain spoilers for The Three Princes. I highly recommend giving it a download via the link above and playing it before reading this. It should only take you about an hour or two to finish a run and a little beyond that if you want to see the different endings.

Working Under a Deadline

I'm no stranger to making a game in a limited amount of time. I've participated in game jams and contests ocassionally in the decade I've been game developing, so I have a good idea of how to manage my time with these sorts of things. Not to say that I've succeeded in submitting a game for every jam/contest I participated in, but I've been around the block.

For SIGURD in particular, entries were judged on three categories: gameplay, presentation, and story. Gameplay was worth more points, so I knew I had to make sure that aspect worked well before putting a lot of work into anything else. With it being a one-chapter project, the cast had to be small as to not overwhelm the player with a bunch of characters to work with. And with a small cast, each character had their designated role to fill in order to make up a balanced party. I like reusing characters in my works to the point where they've become archetypes for my stories, so I decided to use characters from my Fire Emblem fangame Cycle of Remorse so that those who might be familiar with that game can have a good idea right off the bat how those units function. On top of that, reusing characters meant I could reuse assets (with some tweaking to better fit the setting) so that I could cut down on production time even more.

Speaking of which, to make the most of your development time during a jam/contest, find ways to save time! Even before a jam/contest starts, you can take steps to make developing the game easier for yourself. While you typically can't work on your game in-engine or make assets for it before the start of the jam/contest, there are usually no rules against brainstorming ideas. So once you're aware of a jam/contest you want to participate in, brainstorm as much as you can! I constantly write down ideas for games I want to develop in the future. That way, I can choose one of them to work on for the jam/contest or just be able to work on it later in general. The pre-jam/pre-contest period will also be a good time to identify what you want your game's main mechanic to be (if it's more gameplay-focused) or its main plot (if it's more story-focused).

Now, you may have noticed that I didn't consider audio/visual elements to be top priority. This is because there are SO MANY resources to get placeholder graphics, music, and sound effects. itch.io has a section dedicated to assets in general. And I have a section on my own website with free music and sound effects (under the "Royalty-Free Music" section). And that's just the tip of the iceburg. So, don't be afraid to use placeholder elements for these aspects! Not only will this leave more time for you to focus on gameplay and story, but these free assets also tend to be so high quality that your game will still end up aesthetically pleasing. (Is this me saying that generative AI sucks and that I'm tired of people using the excuse of "I'm not an artist, musician, etc." to justify using generative AI assets in their work when there are FREE FUCKING RESOURCES AVAILABLE IF YOU JUST GO OUT AND LOOK? YES IT FUCKING IS, BITCH--)

If you're participating in one of your first jams/contests, don't be discouraged if you don't have time to pretty up your game or even get it to where you want it to be gameplay/story-wise before the jam/contest deadline. What matters in the is that you have a (mostly) functional game that a player can experience from beginning to end. (I say mostly because we're only human and make mistakes. Sometimes you miss a bug or two, and that's okay!) Time management in game development is a skill to improve upon and you'll get better at it the more you do it, especially if you take the time to reflect upon the development process after the fact. On top of that, jams/contests usually don't have any rules against updating your game before the deadline or after the judging period is over. So, feel free to bring your game up to its fullest potential then!

Gameplay

With The Three Princes taking place indoors, I couldn't justify any units riding mounts despite the fact they're such a common unit type in the official Fire Emblem games. (Who'd ride a dragon or a winged horse into battle in a dilapitated tower?? No one, that's who.) So, Forrest who had been a horse-riding Mage Knight in CoR became a defense-heavy Knight to reflect his defensive capabilities he had in that game. While Kai was a Mercenary in CoR, his statline more reflected one of a Thief or Myrmidon (which was to set some gameplay-story integration regarding Kai's backstory.) Here, him being a straight-up Thief brought in his familiar statline and made it possible to play around with his backstory in The Three Princes as well as give an incentive for players to steal from enemies' inventories. Trevor returns as a Mage with the addition of not only being able to heal himself, but also heal his allies. It's a much needed utility role that works with this small cast.

The initial trek up the tower was meant to be a tutorial of sorts for later parts of the game. The upper floor's rooms introduce new mechanics per room: the introduction of Briar and their weakness to fire, off-colored floor tiles that deal damage, and an incentive to use Kai's "Trade" command to be able to give new weapons to Forrest to allow him to take advantage of his own personal skill. The final room before the basement section has a breakable wall that is IMPOSSIBLE to break. I calculated damage on my end to make absolutely sure a player couldn't break it during a run. You gotta give them that false sense of hope lmao Speaking of the basement, some players expressed that that section was too slow-paced which I can agree with, looking back. So I made some changes to the most recent update to hopefully pick up its pace a little bit and to keep things more interesting during that section.

As for balancing the difficulty of the last part, I honestly have no idea if Krista is too hard or too easy as a final boss lol There seemed to be some satisfaction for players who killed her at the first opportunity or decided to activate the final chase sequence, so I'm not too concerned about that. For players who did not realize there was a final chase sequence, here's a hint to activate it. Briar popped up, right? What have you been doing with briar tiles this entire time?

Speaking of the final chase sequence, it was a hassle to keep together coding-wise lol Since I reused the upper floor's layout for the final portion of the game, I had to make sure the briars that were destroyed earlier properly respawned, all the enemies encountered were replaced with new enemies, and the door to exit the tower was actually open. The second thing worked in the contest entry. The rest... did not. That was all fixed after the contest but man I felt so bad since one of the contest judges made it to the end of that section only to find out the final door didn't open. This is a reminder to always check your code for huge bugs before submitting to a game jam/contest! You'd think that I'd remember to do that after a decade of game developing but no apparently not.

Plot and Writing

The Three Princes's fairytale vibes were largely inspired by Sleeping Beauty. Months prior to the contest, Noralities posted a video called Sleeping Beauty Deserves a Better Ending. I was so fascinated by how many times the tale had been adapted and the sheer number of variations it had that I thought to myself "Why don't we make this a turn-based strategy game?" I could have stopped at the princes rescuing the princess from the tower, but the plot would've been too simple if it was just that. Hence, I went with the twist of Krista being the antagonist rather than the "prize". (Did I also give Krista rose and briar motifs just to have an excuse to draw the titular three princes tied up with briar for the bad ending CGs? Perchance. You can't just say "perchance.") I wish I could say the game was inspired by the song "74" by Itoki Hana and Toby Fox but it didn't even cross my mind at all during development even though it fit perfectly with the premise and I love that song to death. However, I did use it as background music for the speedpaint video of the promotional art I made for it after the end of the contest, so I guess that's something.

Regarding the party's characterizations, I chose to borrow elements from both their depictions in CoR as well as concepts I have drafted out for my future project With Souls Intertwined. Though, to be fair, a lot of their CoR and WSI characterizations have a lot of crossover. Forrest, like his CoR and WSI counterparts has his not-so-hidden feelings towards Krista. Even when she's evil, he still wants to tap that. He also retains his devotion to his country from his CoR counterpart. Trevor also borrows from both his CoR and WSI counterparts with his flamboyant personality. His identity as a trans man is more borrowed from his CoR counterpart (but I guess his desire to be more human than robot with his WSI counterpart could be read as an analogy to that? idk). Kai borrows a bit from both CoR and WSI with his rogueish personality from CoR and his connections to a ruling family from WSI. (To be honest, his rogueishness may carry over to WSI at this rate lol He was meant to take up more of a serious mentor role there but god damn i love him having a bit of a playful edge.) As for Krista, well... hehe :)

The writing for The Three Princes has been praised by both the judges and players alike to the point where I'm not sure what to do with all the compliments. I'm just genuinely surprised that people actually liked my writing. I think the reception of my early game dev projects might have something to do with this case of imposter syndrome. When it was still in development, one guy ragged on Legend of Percivus for being a generic take on a JRPG (which I can admit to be true and something I wanna get back at that guy for since I'VE FUCKING IMPROVED, BITCH COME AT ME--but for real, that dude was beefing with me, a literal 17 year old who was trying to make a game as a christmas gift for their friends what the actual fuck--). I'd Cross the World for You was a bit... out there to say the least. And Romancing of Heroes: Boys' Side felt amatuer and not all that emotionally compelling for a dating sim. I guess I've improved since then, but it's still tough to get a grasp on just how large of an improvement it actually was.

Closing Thoughts

The Three Princes placing 4th overall was quite a pleasant surprise. With it being my first single-chapter contest I've ever participated in, I didn't expect to get such a high ranking. I think that my experience with game jams and contests helped with that on top of my general game deving experience. I hope to participate in next year's single-chapter contest again! I don't have any ideas that could fit into a single Fire Emblem chapter at the moment, but I've got plenty of time to come up with something. Even then, I still gotta work on Cycle of Remorse. So, I'll still be occupied for a good while even if I don't end up participating in next year's contest.