A Tale of Crowns
Chapter Twelve has been released!
A Tale of Crownsis a high fantasy romance with Middle Eastern roots, both on pc as well as mobile! It’s entirely text-based, with choices throughout to shape both your main character’s personality and skills as well as influence their relationships with others. There are four love interests for you to choose from, both female as well as male, each with their own stories and secrets for you to uncover!
I will release each chapter as I finish it, so the game will be a continuous work in progress. It will not be available for download until the entire game is finished.
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CONTENT WARNINGS: Depictions of violence, injuries and blood, death, trauma, psychological and physical body horror, sexually suggestive content and descriptions of animal cruelty. Safe to play for those 16 years and older.
The story takes place in Arsur, a fictional empire within a fantasy universe that draws inspiration from historical settings in the Middle East. Much of it is based on Kurdish culture, drawing from my own experience as a Kurdish woman.
Your character is 25 years old and was born and raised in Arsur, where magic is considered a skill no different from reading or writing. Gender, sexual orientation, and race have no bearing on social position or class; it is instead only based on wealth and level of education.
The Arsurian Empire itself is overseen by a single ruler known as the Crown. Unlike traditional monarchies, however, the title is not inherited through blood. Whenever the Crown dies, their famed golden eyes pass on to the one chosen by the spirits of this world to be the new Crown: this appears to happen at random, as Crowns in the past have ranged from the poorest farmer to the wealthiest noble.
Their parents murdered and the previous Crown of Arsur assassinated, your character finds themselves on the run as they’ve been bestowed with the golden eyes that mark them as the new Crown.
Unseen enemies at their heels, will they succeed as the Crown, or will they lead to the downfall of the Empire?
At the beginning of the story, you’ll have the opportunity to customize your Crown’s name, pronouns, sexual orientation, and their skill in magic. You can also customize many parts of your Crown’s appearance: hair color, hair texture, hairstyle, skin color, height, and clothing style are all up to you and will be reflected in the story as well.
Their ethnicity and culture is locked in as Kurdish/Middle Eastern. The Crown is also locked in as a person of color, as is in line with the setting - their specific race is up to the player to imagine.
As for your Crown’s personality, there are twelve different character traits in total, six of which will be decided based on the choices you make in-game. This will subsequently change your Crown’s behavior during story and romance scenes.
Depending on what your Crown’s sexual orientation is, the gender of the love interests will change accordingly to match that. There are four of them in total, and each love interest will have their own route which you will get to choose from at the end of the common route.
The Sorcerer;Rêzan/Rozerîn
The Crown’s Sorcerer, widely regarded to be a prodigy and expected to become the most powerful magus in the Empire.
The Hero; Xelara/Xelef
A legendary mercenary and the leader of the Crescent Blades, whose exploits were chronicled in song. Also known as the Pale Sword.
The Protector;Ashti/Azad
Once a peerless soldier in the Imperial Army, now promoted to the Royal Protector of the Crown due to their unrivaled skill and exceptional integrity.
The General;Dara/Delal
The General of the Imperial Army, known for many strategic victories in warding off attacks from hostile nations.
Artwork of the characters done by@artbygaia!
| Updated | 2 days ago |
| Status | In development |
| Platforms | HTML5 |
| Rating | Rated 4.9 out of 5 stars (2,348 total ratings) |
| Author | qeresî |
| Genre | Interactive Fiction |
| Made with | Twine |
| Tags | Dating Sim,Fantasy,Female Protagonist,Indie,LGBT,Meaningful Choices,Romance,Story Rich,Twine |
| Asset license | Creative Commons Attribution_NonCommercial v4.0 International |
| Average session | A few hours |
| Inputs | Mouse,Smartphone |
| Links | Blog |
Development log
Comments
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I discover this game totally by chance and it's incredible!
I am absolutely sure that I'll play it again with Azad (I'm currently playing with Xelef).
But it's so well written that I am sure I'll play it just to experience the other choices!
I Play with some "reading playlist" and it's even better than a série on TV. I'm totally hooked!
If each route had a guide, it would take out the fun of the game, I think. It's not supposed to be a guided experience - your choices matter and from what I've read on here, X can be a difficult character to romance if you don't "get" him as a person/personality. X seems very approachable and lighthearted, but actually trusts not easily, has a high moral compass and acts accordingly to it.
Whose route are you on now?
This is one of my all time favorite games, but I can't get it to launch from the itch app. I can launch and play it in browser just fine but when I do that nothing saves so when a new chapter comes out I have to play through EVERYTHING again. When I click launch in the itch app, it just opens a folder. If anyone knows how to fix this it would be very much appriectiated!
i haven't finished the released chapters yet (i'm on ch. 9), but OMG I LOVE THIS GAME!! there are so many details to it, so much reading, so much background, its wonderful. There is so much content already and its all perfect. I like every character, but especially Azad/Ashti and Dara/Delal, and the side characters!
Lady Naza appreciates a bold Crown who doesn't show any fear and will put the nobility in their place with a firm hand. There are 3 choices where you can win points with her, and one of them (like the other person mentioned) regards the choice in CH5 on which factions to tell about the assassination attempt. As a hint, I will say that the person above only has it partly right ;)
If you then get a yellow tulip from her as a gift in CH6, then you're on the right track! No worries if you don't though, there are still two other choices (one in CH8 and one in CH9) that can win you points with her as well.
Spoilers:
Ok so rant time... I was so worried in the first four chapters because I didn't know who I was gonna pick. It's why I love/hate these games they give you hot *cough* amazing men and then expect me to pick one of them. I was relieved and quite surprised when the game picked the A route.
I LOVE Azad
I'm sorry but he is so cute and adorable and every scene with him had me grinning like a fool and kicking my feet. I cried after finishing chapter 12 - I just...
Moving on this game has given me the most emotional distress. Every choice made me stare at the for two days logging in and logging out. I was just so worried I was going to kill someone. I did though - I killed the lady who knew about my parents after that I just laid on the ground.
Also I don't know how I got Bold as my flirting option because I don't even think I was choosing bold options. My girl was so direct I was just like, this could never be me in real life.
I don't know who's route I'll try and get next maybe Rezan's he was like my best friend and he was really cute and nice too.
But I guess I just really like this game. The political situations albeit stressful are awesome, the romance build up is awesome, the side characters are awesome. Does anyone else think that all the four main romance characters have like awesome chemistry.
You need enough points for one of the love interests to save you. Trust me, I got that ending the second time going back because I ended up getting D to save me, which surprised me. I changed some choices and got a bad end after. Make sure you know which love interest you want and don’t split between points for others. Be dedicated to the one you love ahah.
you can look at guide
https://ataleofcrowns.tumblr.com/post/627362513923768320/walkthrough-unlocking-an-lis-route
you can get a high romance route for D from what i know, i do not know how to achieve it though.
i recently found this out tho, so i think your best option is to try every route possible until you have a relationship that isnt unsteady
once you get there, your relationship with D should be described as 'they want to be there for you'
I think since he is a general, our political choices also affect him so I might try different choices. Kinda similar to how the 10th crown relationship worked
Also when he asks us questions maybe different combos affect it more since I did change one of my answers one time and I wasn't able to repair the relationship after
ty for the info 🙏
HAHA it should say your relationship has been progressing well, i didnt realise there were two versions! this is a direct quote from the person i learned it off and it may be spoilers, do not read if you dont want spoilers to it lol.
'The main decider seems to mostly be the choice you make at the coordination, when Kham speaks to D—, I haven't gone back and tested everything, but I consistently failed when I clicked ||"It's isn't your fault, nor is it your mother's",|| and our relationship went up when ||I allowed them to remain bowing and told them that "it wasn't their fault"|| I can't remember the result of asking them to stop bowing, but only telling them that it isn't their fault
I think what tripped me up was that if you fail this, your relationship doesn't go down until like two chapters later when D— voices their opinion during court with the Stewart.
Roughly every other choice seems to be pretty flexible, or at least, you'll know the impact of the choice on the relationship immediately after, making it easy to go back a choice or two'
eh....kinda depends.
a bit of aspoiler
view rest and scroll if you don't mind such.
I think its good to ally with the historians as they record much of the history and have dirt on the nobles which we may need for the Steward W later on due to the info from chapter 12, as for the merchant I thought it would be beneficial to let Kham deal with it since,it gains favor from her and her mother in the sense of a debt to us and does please Kham which is beneficial but that aside, up to you I mean it seems being on the political opposite of the Peris, especially Kham's mother may lead to more trouble down the line after this. However, it still in progress so hard to say but best to get as many allies and build relations as that might help for a good ending and also with the benefit of the past crowns relations with the Peris to keep up political relations.
A side note though
Spoiler...
you do seem to also get close to her if you pick a certain option and depending on your previous choices she will come to find you a "kindred spirit" in her words such as herself
sooo brownie points 👍 :)
however say you pick another option you do find out she may have more knowledge than she may lead on perhaps :^
Its all very in the air so you do what you want though you do get a bit more insight into some of her opinions if you play D's route
Potentially spoiler, but it's just discussion about who would be the assassin.
Kham getting more sus in each chapters, but Idk, maybe because I decided to not trust her at the first place. But, consider this; why peris want to assassinate the Crown, if Crown was chosen by the spirits? The personafication of the nature itself. Peris are part of nature. At least, that's my theory. An IF theory. She getting even more trustworthy when I chose not to suspect her. I owe her an apology after these 3 years🤣
When I decided to trust Kham by choosing choices that not suspect her, she really friendly to MC. Even ... (Spoiler)
Showing her human form. So Idk if it's part of her facade, but after playing both route (trust and no trust), it seem like she just PLAYING with our suspicion if we don't trust her and only being genuine if we trust her. Typical fae behavior 🤦♀️
