Rat King

You are the Rat King: an old, scarred rat in a stolen red cloak. Your subjects are a squeaking, climbing, hungry swarm. Together you'll gnaw, climb, and scurry up a castle, from the sewers to the throne room, where something is waiting...

How to play (touch or mouse)

• Hold and drag to lead the King. The swarm follows him.
• Rats climb on each other. Hold your finger above a wall, and they'll build a living ladder. More rats means higher climbs.
• Eat crumbs, cheese, grain sacks, and cockroaches to grow the swarm.
• Tap somewhere to send a squad of 5 rats there. They stay put until you call them back.
• Tap a pressure plate to post exactly enough rats to hold it. The portcullis only stays up while they do.
• Tap the flag, the King, or the RALLY button to call squads back.
• Get the King to the golden crown at the top of each level to win.

Keep the King alive. If he dies, it's over. Rats at his side will throw themselves in the way of claws and beaks. Cheese heals him. Long drops onto bare stone hurt him, so let him ride down the swarm instead.

Credits

Made for Slapjam AI (theme: Castles).

AI tools used

• Claude (Anthropic), via Claude Code: game design, all code, level design, the pixel art (every sprite, tile and room is drawn by code, not image files), the synthesized sound effects, and the itch.io page art.
• Claude sub-agents: Claude Sonnet sub-agents painted the room textures and props for the dungeon, library, chapel, armory, treasury, battlements and throne room. Another Claude sub-agent composed the synthesized soundtrack.

Fonts: Jersey 10 and Tiny5, from Google Fonts, under the SIL Open Font License.

No external image or audio files are used. Everything is generated in the browser.