Hampton Court
A downloadable game for Windows and macOS
Welcome to the Court of Henry VIII, Where Your Choices Decide Your Fate
The year is 1539 and you are a foreign princess thrown into the midst of the vibrant and strange court of Henry VIII. Your choices throughout the game change your relationships with the characters and influence the story. There are multiple endings. Be careful what you say! How will you fare at court? Will you find love? Will you find fortune? Will you survive to tell the tale?
This is a work of historical fiction. Some of the characters are from history and others are not. What happens in this game is an alternate reality from real history.
Total play time: about 2 - 2.5 hours (with lots of replayability!)
I hope you like the game!
Game, Story, Art, and Music by Chris Collins
Copyright © 2019 Chris Collins, All Rights Reserved.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $4.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I just finished the game and I must say... Wow. I thought it was going to be a short and sweet game, I didn't have my expectations very high, but this has surpassed anything I've thought previously. The art, the music, the story, the characters, the overall atmosphere... amazing!! I'm a huge history and fashion history enthusiast, and I must say how impressed I am with all the research you've done, especially regarding the clothing! And as an artist, I must admit that I love your art style so much, it's so expressive, unique and aesthetically pleasing, I just adore it!
Truthfully, I was so scared that I'm going to make the wrong choices and get executed, but the plot twist and the fact that I was able to run away safely with Diego and my dearest Jupiter has made me so happy! It was the ending I strived to get. Yes, I did have to stab Cormwell, but it was especially pleasing to piss Henry off, since he definitely deserved it. Also, I was so happy to see that I was on good terms with Agnes- she honestly deserved better, I truly love her. Same for Margaret- such a strong character, and I was happy to be on good terms with her as well. Regarding Diego, I absolutely love his character! I did tell him that I love him, which is exactly what I wanted, and I do appreciate the fact that you don't have to sleep with him in order to be his lover; as an asexual, I thank you for that!
And lastly... Jupiter, the best dog ever! I love him so much, and my love for dogs certainly was satisfied. Thank you for adding this good boy to the game!
I'm sorry for rambling, I just felt so much while playing this game, I just had to get it out!
amazing game, absolutely recommended!
5/5 stars!
can't wait to see more games from you! :)
Thank you so so much for this kind and heartfelt review. It means so much that you liked the game. Your reactions are exactly what I was hoping for. And thank you for saying that I did my research — I tried very hard in that respect. The only thing I did not attempt was the make the language historically accurate because I wanted it to be accessible for everyone. Anyway, thank you so much!! :)
Enjoyed the game, and I liked the ending I got - my main takeaway from this game is 'if you ever get sent back in time and end up in an English court, make sure to keep a knife in your boot at all times' haha
Just got this game and finished it, This game is very good! Great gameplay and art styles and music, and you may have added a book to my reading list thanks to the credits, it also gave me a perspective of how difficult it was to be a female in the medieval times, when men where valued more. Just a question though, how many endings are there, and how much time did you spend on developing this game? as a fellow begginner developer, this must've taken atleast 3 months if you didn't encounter a lot of bugs?, (which i doubt that you didn't).
all in all, a 10/10 game
Thank you for this nice message! I believe there are about 4-6 significant endings, with many more small differences throughout the game. Overall, the story is the story, so it's not one of those games where literally everything can change. You can miss large sequences of the game, however, depending on how "well" you play the game of court. There are a couple of people you can kill and of course you can die by the end of it. But you will always be trying to escape and go through similar steps to do so. I wanted the main character to have a distinct personality and motive, but also allow the player some control. I'm so glad you liked the game and that it gave you some new perspective! I hope you will read the book that you mentioned. Tudor history is an addicting rabbit hole to lose yourself in!
I think it took about 8 months to complete this game. I worked on it all the time. The coding and writing took a while, especially because of the complexity of certain things. For example, the scene where you make a mask took a lot of time to get just right (without any dead ends). Same with the puzzle of how to poison the fountain. It also took me a while to play around with the relationship scores for the characters. I wanted to make sure it was easy enough to influence the characters in a natural way to change the story. I had to go back through the whole thing to adjust the scores because I made a mistake and everyone would have gotten the same ending.
The most time consuming part, however, was probably all the art and media. Since I did everything myself, I had to make a lot of art, designs, music, and sound effects. There were many iterations of this until I was happy - haha. Then, of course, there was the business of making marketing materials to promote the game, setting it all up on my website (and here). It took a lot more work than expected, but it was such a fun project to do! I hope people will enjoy playing it. :)
I really love this game
Thank you so much! :)
Excellent discovery! The story fascinated me from start to finish, with incredible replayability. The music immerses us in the story and the drawings are very good: a mixture of satire and art. Can't wait to see Chris Collins' next works! To play absolutely!
Thank you so much! You are too kind! :)
I loved this game! Looking forward to replaying. I love Jupiter so much. Haha, there were scenes with him when I almost cried.
That makes me so happy! Thank you for playing! :)
It was free so I gave it a shot, but just gave a donation because it was great. As a history fan it is SO nice to have a historically accurate game (if not in actual events, then in tone, costumes, attitudes, etc).
Thank you so much, Towerbird! That means a lot to hear. Thanks for the donation as well! :D
I enjoyed it. When we slept with Diego I wish we could have cuckold king Henry VIII.
OMG XD
Gorgeous.
Thank you! :)
OK. I'm not in the habit of writing reviews or comments, but this game just triggered a whirlpool of thoughts and emotions. English is not my native tongue, so I apologise for any possible mistakes or crooked language, it's a work in progress =) Overall, I think, the game is very well made.
The art style is just singular and you can really imagine how all these characters would look like irl. It's a breath of fresh air amidst anime-style visual novels, which look too much alike.
Music is nice, pleasant, not too distracting from the story and relays the atmosphere of the age.
Despite shortness of the novel, the characters are incredibly well developed. Even though a woman's life at court felt like getting in a viper's nest, where any careless move could be fatal, after the first playthrough I've realized that I really like the female cast: silly, naive Agnes and strong, cunning and surprisingly honest Margaret. And Henry is... wow... So not very sharp and full of himself. I guess a lifetime of endless flattery and everyone's hypocrisy would do that. Oh well, in the end I managed to stab Cromwell and smother the king and escape with my life. :D Though my favorite ending is where he dies naturally.
Thank you so much for the dedication to all those women, whose lives were cut short and whose stories were never told. I'm not into history, but there are a lot of novels, movies and games inspired by the Tudors era, so you end up learning bits and pieces. And it's so sad to see how men of power used to percieve women mostly as tools for establishing their families position, forging political alliances or simply producing heirs. The game relays the hopelessness of their situation vividly.
Hi Maarit - Thank you so much for your very kind and thoughtful review! It means so much to read this and hear about your experience with the game! I am thrilled that you liked it. :)
lol i smothered the king yet had positive relationships with everyone ??
Sounds like nobody saw you! :P
I loved this game so much but I felt like the choices didn't really matter just like The Walking Dead also good work chris im looking forward to other games made by you and i was hoping i could translate the game to other languages since im multilingual
I went through this but unfortunately I didn't like it. The choices are plentiful and probably meaningful, the problem is - my goal is _hard coded_ and my character wants to escape, no matter what. Maybe I got my expectations wrong but I was hoping to be able to chose goals (and so personality as well) of my character. Like - for example - that she will actually _want_ to become Queen.
I'm sorry you didn't like it, Elvira! I can understand if you don't like visual novels with predefined protagonist personalities. This game is more of an interactive narrative with various endings, and not as open-ended as some other VNs. The princess definitely has a personality haha! :P
Thanks for playing anyway!
Finished the game and I really enjoy the lack of enjoyment of being a confused princess in the setting. I can't really pick what I love most about the game, since I love all aspects of it, but I can say that most of the characters are lovable to an extent, the choices really put me in some REALLY tight spots, and the story is most enjoyable.
I felt a lot of emotions throughout the story that are unique to each characters depending on how the relationship is built, and I really love that you put how good the MC's relationship is with everyone. It gives me ideas on which ending to go for next and what I should do.
It really is an enjoyable emotional roller-coaster.
Thanks! I'm thrilled you enjoyed it. Thank you for playing! :)
I loved this game! The writing is good, i didn't any spelling errors, the music is very fitting and most important DOG LOVE! How many endings are there? I'd love to make sure i got them all.
I'm glad you liked it! There are a handful of endings and a lot of small story aspects that can change, but the exact number is a secret! :P
I just finished the game and am really impressed. Everything was so professionally done(the music and visuals). The length was perfect and felt like a really engaging movie.
I also loved the amount of choices. There were so many and I really had to think about what way I needed to speak to each individual person. That's rare in a visual novel as you typically don't feel it even matters, but I felt I needed to approach every situation differently here.
I've always been really interested in King Henry and it was pretty cool to get to play through the experience.
Is this on steam? It really should be if it isn't. It deserves a ton more exposure.
Thank you! It isn't on Steam right now, but I am considering it for the future.
yes put it on steam. one of the few itch-io games that is GOOD. this game just won't get the recognition it deserves on here.
Thank you so much! That means a lot to hear. :)
I stan :D