Journey of the Prairie King
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Under Construction This article or section is under construction. It may be in the process of an expansion or major restructuring. Last edited by Kektklik on 2016-03-28 00:49:08. |
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Journey of the Prairie King is a game playable on the arcade machine in The Saloon. Abigail also possesses a console version of the game that she will play with you during an event once you have raised your relationship level with her. Random elements of the game are not affected by luck[1].
Please note that none of the powerups or enemies are referenced by any name in-game, so they have been named by members of the community.
Gameplay Mechanics
Gameplay consists of a top-down shooter, resembling "twin-stick" shooters. WASD moves the character and ↑←↓→ shoots. Shots can also be fired diagonally by combining two fire keys.
Waves of enemies appear from the edges of the screen and move towards you, while a timer bar at the top of the screen ticks down. Your character has no health bar and will be killed by any enemy or projectile that touches him. You start off with 3x lives, although more can be collected during gameplay. Losing all your lives results in a Game Over. Once the timer bar depletes, enemies will stop appearing, and once you've disposed of the rest of them, you can move to the next area. Enemies will sometimes drop powerups and coins upon being killed. Powerups are stored in the slot in the top-left, unless the slot already contains an item, in which case it will be consumed on pickup. Stored powerups are activated with space and can greatly turn the tide of gameplay, allowing you to get out of precarious situations. Every few levels (see levels), once you have cleared the area, a travelling merchant will present three upgrades to purchase. Only one upgrade can be bought per visit. Each stage ends in a boss fight, where the boss has a large amount of health and shoots bullets at you.
Powerups
| Image | Name | Description |
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Coffee | Increases your movement speed. |
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Extra Life | Looks like the characters head. Adds one to your life total. (Note: Game Over occurs at -1 lives.) |
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Machine Gun | Your fire-rate increases significantly; your bullets come out in a hose-like fashion. |
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Nuke | Instantly destroys all enemies on-screen. Enemies killed like this do not drop upgrades. |
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Shotgun | You fire three bullets at once in a cone in the direction you fire. |
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Smoke Bomb | Teleports your character to a random spot on-screen and gives your character stealth. While stealthed, enemies will stand still with question-marks above their head. Enemies will continue to spawn, building up inside the spawn zones. |
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Star | Increases your fire-rate, increases your movement speed, and causes you to fire in a cone. Effectively combines the machine gun, shotgun and coffee into one convenient, deadly pickup. |
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Tombstone | A bolt of lightning strikes your character, turning you into a zombie for a brief amount of time. You gain movement speed and kill on contact, enemies flee from you, and a brief sound clip plays in the background. This form lasts as long as the music plays. You can still shoot as normal in this form. After the music stops, you return to normal. |
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Wheel | Your shots fire in all possible directions at once. |
Upgrades
Upgrades are bought with coins dropped from enemies, which come in 
and 
denominations, the coins being very rare.
| Image | Name | Purchase Price | Description |
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Boots | 8
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Upgrades movement speed. |
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20
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Gun | 10
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Increases shooting speed. |
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20
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30
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40
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Ammo | 15
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Increases bullet damage. If a bullet destroys an enemy with with damage left over, it will keep going until its damage is depleted, allowing you to kill at least two weak enemies with one bullet. Mushrooms from Zone 2 can be killed in one hit on the first upgrade, and with a second upgrade so can the Mummies in the final world. |
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30
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45
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Enemies
| Image | Name | HP | Description | Appears in |
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Orc | 1 | The weakest enemy. Walks slowly towards the player, often spawning in large numbers. | Stage 1 (areas 1-4) |
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Spikeball | 2 (+5 upon deployment) | Enters the area, walks to a location in an area between the middle and the perimeter, and deploys into an armored spikeball. While they can hurt the player, whether deployed or undeployed, it can be beneficial to leave some around for crowd control, as they block Orc movement. If the time has run out and the last remaining enemies are only spikeballs, they will die in one hit. | Stage 1 (areas 2-4) |
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Ogre | 3 | Moves slowly, but soaks up damage. Destroys spikeballs on contact. | Stage 1 (areas 3-4), Stage 2 (areas 1-3) |
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Mushroom | 2 | Moves quickly, running as fast as a player without speed upgrades. | Stage 2 (areas 1-3) |
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Pixie | 1 | The first flying enemy. Can spawn anywhere on the perimeter and fly towards the player. | Stage 2 (areas 1-3) |
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Mummy | 6 | Moves slowly and soaks up a lot of damage. Spawns in large hordes. | Stage 3 (areas 1-3) |
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Imp | 3 | A flying enemy that can spawn anywhere on the perimeter, seeking the player. | Stage 3 (areas 1-3) |
Bosses
| Image | Name | HP | Description | Appears in |
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In the first two stages you have to fight an old fashioned cowboy duel with some cover.
A witch is the last boss. Compared to the first bossfights she is completely different. You don't have any spot to hide, so you have to dodge every bullet. Additionally she is spawning random enemies next to her.
Levels
To beat the game you have to play 3 stages with 5 areas, totaling 15 areas. The last area of each stage is a boss encounter.
Trivia
- Once the player finds enough lost books, a book will be available in the northern end of the library that reads,
"Journey of the Prairie King -- The Smash Hit Video Game! Did you know? Anyone who beats ' Journey of the Prairie King' is automatically entered into a drawing for a special prize! Did you know? The developer has stated that the protagonist is based on a real-life character... A true cowboy hero from a prairie-island in the Gem Sea!"
- There is a bug in the game that prevents player progression under certain circumstances: If the nuke power-up is used during the first boss fight, the enemy will vanish from the screen but the stage will not end. Also occurs with the Tombstone power up and the last boss. This situation can be escaped from by hitting esc, which will close the game and return you to The Saloon.