I Have 1 Day
is an online Flash Point-and-Click Game by Cellar Door Games.
The game opens with a mysterious man looking at a castle in the distance, only for a guard to knock him out. He wakes up in the prison, confused, panicked, and with only 1 day to get back to the castle. But why?
Besides your typical point and click mechanics, players also have a time mechanic. Certain actions will require you to spend hours, and some actions may consume more hours than another one. Will you find the shortest time needed to make it back in time?
This work contains the following tropes:
- Big Bad: The Black Wizard, who performs two body-swap spells, which ends up with him posing as Prince Grey, his assistant as The Black Wizard, and Grey as the assistant in a bid to take over the kingdom.
- Evolving Title Screen: Getting the Golden Ending will now showcase the title screen in daylight with Prince Grey in his original body, a crown now on the 1 in the title.
- Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle: The game includes the variation of the puzzle where people move at different speeds rather than keeping them separate. The wizards are amazed that the process is sped up by adding another person.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: Prince Grey was the victim of this via the Big Bad, who also did this with his assistant to try and throw off the reversal spell.
- Gone Horribly Right: The Haste scrolls enable the user to speed things up, but they're too powerful at the speed part. Zanda explains that he nearly burned his house down after using one to cook eggs, but he's willing to sell his last one that wasn't destroyed in a recall. Buying it is key to the Golden Ending, as Grey uses it to accelerate the clock in front of the castle to trick the guard into thinking he can let the public in now.
- Great Escape: The quickest way to get out of the prison is this, by digging a hole out of the cell, stripping down a scarecrow, putting it in your place in bed, and using the scarecrow's clothes to pose as a civilian to just walk out.
- Knights and Knaves: The wizards guarding the dragon's home pull a variant of this puzzle after they learn that Zanda sent you. Two of the wizards say something, and you have to point out who's telling the truth. The yellow wizard is the answer, since he told you the rules of the game, but just didn't mention that you could pick any of the wizards instead of just the other two.
- Laser-Guided Karma: At the end of the Golden Ending, the Black Wizard watches the castle like Prince Grey at the beginning, only to get knocked out by presumably the same guard and gets arrested.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: One puzzle amounts to this, where Sue will let you take one more job from the board if you can "mute" the town crier. The solution is to literally mute the game on the HUD.
- Multiple Endings: Depending on if you make it to the castle at 22 hours or 23:
- 23 Hours: The Black Wizard has turned everyone at the castle into frogs, including the King. Prince Grey manages to swap back into his body, and drives off the Black Wizard, but no one, including Zanda, knows how to undo the frog curse.
- 22 Hours: Prince Grey gatecrashes the coronation before the Black Wizard posing as him begins his plan, uses the Body Swap spell to get back his own body and drive off the Black Wizard. The King is saved, Zanda joins the other wizards and they seemingly accept the fake blue one, and Grey marries Sue, the job board lady.
- Race Against the Clock: Like the title says, the player has 24 hours to get a reversal spell and make it to the castle before the Black Wizard can take over the kingdom posing as the prince.
- Step One: Escape: As soon as you start, you're imprisoned for trespassing on the castle grounds. While the guard says he'll let you out early if you clean up the cell in 3 hours, it's better to turn a loose brick to escape, replace yourself with a scarecrow, and leave prison, as time is of the essence.
- Time Rewind Mechanic: The journal records all actions done in game, and can be used to go back hours to undo actions and find better solutions.
- Toilet Humor: Zanda needs "Dragon's Water" to complete his spell for you, which is generally a liquid that is secreted by dragons, mostly as urine. It takes a long time to distill this way though, so he's open to a cleaner option, being tears from a dragon. You find a huge litterbox in the Dragon's Den to get the urine Dragon's Water, which you also need to douse your clothes in to escape.
- We Will Meet Again: If Grey makes it in time to stop the Black Wizard's plans, he swears vengeance against the prince before teleporting out with his apprentice.
