Submission by Team Toast for 2025 UGD x Careers Winter Game Jam

Summary:

In A Little Empire, you play as the head of a criminal organization, fending off internal rivals who seek to use intrigue and coercion to topple you from the top job. If you lose to a rival, they take over the leadership of the organization and you continue to play as this new boss. A key mechanic in this game is deciding when to purposely lose in order to pass on the reigns to younger, more capable members. Battles between you and your rivals take the form of a real-time card game that attempts to simulate the chaotic nature of under-the-table dealmaking & criminal negotiations.

Controls:

Please use the in-game tutorial for detailed information about controls and gameplay. Mouse & Keyboard required.

Mouse: Card Selection

[Space]: Play Selected Cards

[A/S/D]: Bypass Card Timer

[Note:] If the game does not react to keyboard inputs when the game first starts, click in the game window

Theme:

The theme for this jam was "Anti-(Your Genre Here)", i.e. exploring what it would mean for a game to be the opposite of a familiar category. A Little Empire applies this theme to both the design of the game mechanics and to the narrative of the game.

Mechanically, this game aims to be an “Anti-roguelike” game by violating every major characteristics of roguelike gameplay established in the 2008 “Berlin Interpretation.” We list each of the 8 roguelike characteristics from this document and analyze how this game violates them:

1. Permadeath - Not only is losing not permanent in this game, losing is integral to proper gameplay. Your current character gains debuffs over time due to aging, and losing fights on purpose enables you to pass on the leadership to younger members of the organization.
2. Random environments - The gameplay is devoid of randomness, and the levels are identical for each playthrough. For example, while playing the game, cards are given to your hand at regular intervals, and the UI informs you of the future sequence of the cards you will receive. Variance is introduced between playthroughs from the real-time component of the gameplay.
3. Turn-based gameplay - A Little Empire is a real-time card game with no turn mechanics; fast reactions to the opponent's moves are essential to win.
4. Grid-based - No grids will be found in the gameplay, even if you look very hard.
5. Complexity - This game does not have emerging complexity as all mechanics are introduced starting on the first level. The scope of possible actions given to the player is quite narrow (e.g. play hands of cards).
6. Non-Modality - In this game, the storytelling portions and the battle gameplay exist in different modalities.
7. Hack’n’Slash - There is no mention of violence in this game, so you will find neither hack nor slash.
8. Exploration & Discovery - There are no exploration mechanics in this game.

Thematically, this game aims to be anti-“mafia genre.” Mafia-related media is often characterized by swelling drama that leads to explosive, violent action scenes. Not only is there no mention of violence and no whiff of action in this game’s story, the story was specifically constructed to gradually decrease the drama over time. While the first few levels revolve around competing to make backroom deals with politicians and killing police investigations, the later levels deal with conflicts such as [Spoiler Alert!] deciding when to schedule a golf trip and deciding whether or not anchovies are ok on pizzas. The story evolves into a bizarre tale of powerful mafia leaders overthrowing each other over bowling trips and pet birds. It turns out that comedy is a natural opposite to the mafia genre.

In addition, characters were drawn as cartoon rats to juxtapose with the serious tone of the mafia genre, and the background music was composed with synthetic sounds to contrast with the orchestral or instrumental msuic often used in mafia-related media.

Credits (SFX):

• New Notification #7 by Universfield on pixabay.com
• Muffled Giggle by theorganwizardpony on pixabay.com
• Ding - Small Bell SFX by OxidVideos on pixabay.com
• Card Sounds by henrygillard on pixabay.com
• Servant Bell Ring 2 by floraphonic on pixabay.com

Also special thanks to the developers of the Godot game engine.

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Thank you for playing!!! We had too much fun making this :)