Besieged: Or How to Get Out of a Castle.... Without Being Catapulted

From Adventure Game Studio | Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Besieged in-game screen shot

Besieged: Or How To Get Out of a Castle... Without Being Catapulted is a short medieval adventure game. It was made with AGS version 2.72 and released in November 2008 by BaRoN and Yarooze. The game features The Dung Shoveler, a nameless peasant whose entire purpose in life is to... well, shovel dung. Besieged is probably best known for its near entire reliance on potty humour to carry the plot.


Plot Summary

The game takes place in a fictional country in the deepest, most ignorant part of the medieval period. A king has been besieged by the Evil Count Bleicher and will soon be defeated if he is not reinforced. The king hatches a cunning scheme to catapult a messenger over the enemy lines to go for help; his medieval mindset does not allow him to foresee the imminent death of said messenger. His entourage have their suspicions and pass the honour down the medieval hierarchy until the buck stops at the lowliest pawn in the army. Fortunately he can think of someone even lower down: the Dung Shoveler!
The Dung Shoveler narrowly avoids being captured by the pawn thanks to being forewarned by the Sexy Servant Girl. He must now break the siege himself before he is caught and catapulted to death. He butts heads with a surly guard, a resourceful cook, a jaded watchman, a menacing prisoner: even the king himself and his diabolical nemesis, the Evil Count Bleicher. Will the Dung Shoveler save the day and win the heart of the Sexy Servant Girl, or will he invent a new form of pate about two hundred feet from the castle walls?

Stylistic Elements

  • Character Art and Animation: The style and sometimes actual characters from medieval paintings and tapestries were used in creating the cast for this game. The movement of the characters was made intentionally medieval, such that characters do not necessarily move in the anatomically correct manner. The palette for the characters was also lifted from medieval works so that it would be stylistically consistent.
  • Backgrounds: The backgrounds are symbolic and abstract rather than realistic, again much as are early medieval representations of the real world. Scale and depth are whimsical elements rather than objectively regulated.
  • Potty Humour: The medieval world was an extraordinarily filthy place, and the developers thought it necessary to reflect that in the humour of the game. There are a lot of toilet jokes in this game.
  • The Retry Function: If the Dung Shoveler dies it is possible to "Retry" from just before the point of no return. The function is similar to the "Back" or "Undo" buttons common in most applications these days. This enhances the player's experience by not penalizing him for trying audacious actions, and by liberating him from the mundane necessity of saving his place every couple of seconds "just in case". The function has been incorporated into both BaRoN's and Yarooze's other projects and is slowly becoming more popular among developers in the AGS community.
  • Music: The music was composed by Funkmast, who actually went back to medieval times and beat up troubadours to elicit their very best material.


See also