Path to Tribute by machrom

[raw]
made by machrom for Ludum Dare 48 (COMPO)

Path to Tribute

About

Finally back to Ludum Dare after having missed quite a lot of them in the past few years due to one thing or another. But anyways... Am I glad to be back!!

Introduction

IntroPreview.png Picture says it all.

A few previews: preview2.png Preview3.png

Theme

The theme deeper and deeper in my game is because to win you have to go deeper and deeper into the woods. Don't be scared.

Controls

Either mouse and buttons on screen, or keyboard and mouse: - Left click to place jobs to chop wood or build buildings (jobs are automatic) - Right click to remove current selection (if you don't want to build/remove something but have it selected) - Hold Ctrl while placing buildings to place more!!! - You can hold the left click (while holding ctrl) for ultra fast placing, also you can hold down left click to continue placing cutting jobs as well - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 shortcuts for various buildings (you'll see in game) - H for help - C to remove (when you see the big red X, click and everything is erased (jobs and buildings)) - Middle mouse hold and move mouse to move camera OR W, A, S D, to move camera - M to mute music

Music

My weakness, but I don't like a game without it. So if you don't like it, press M for salvation.

Art

Original artwork, by my hand, in the shortest time possible (less than a minute for some of them though)

Monsters: - Wolf - probably won't get to your tower - Bear - probably will get to the tower and take a bite - Treant - didn't test it, good luck :slight_smile:

Buildings

  • Road (5 wood, 5 gold) - it leads to victory
  • Main Camp (0 wood, 15 gold) - you can't do anything without it (it's THE main camp after all)
  • Worker House (10 wood, 10 gold) - a new worker chills here
  • Trading Post (40 wood, 15 gold) - Who needs gold?
  • Forward Camp (20 wood, 10 gold) - What time is it?
  • Tower Template (10 wood, 5 gold) - For pacifists (I didn't have time to mark their range, or make their animation... 5 tiles)

Tips

Well, wouldn't you like those - Towers take a worker - permanently (he lives there now) - Workers take 1 gold for a job (greedy workers) - Build the trading post before you go out of money - Jobs take more time depending on the distance from your camp (I didn't specify which one :wink: )

Afterword

I didn't spend as much time on this as on my previous games, so there are some things I wanted to do to make it have more "suspense" (this is also for me, for a possible "future" update): - Add time limit to reach the statue (3 difficulties) - The monsters may not be so balanced - Health bar and repair for buildings (hardcore mode currently, no repair) - Balance the things (never tested late game..., also the map may be a bit too big, but it was too much to change since a few things depended on it)

This is something of a question for you players as well: When I was around half way through making this I thought, why not make a time limit "xy" days, then each day you have 24 "time units", in each time unit you can do whatever you want with workers, and their jobs take n "time units". It would make the game turn based, and the monsters would have to be different as well. But it seemed like a really good idea to me, it would make it more strategic. So what do you think?

Note

If you see any bugs, have any comments or anything. Please comment, I will squash them before you open the game (probably won't for a day or two though, I'm honest)

Sorry for any grammar mistakes or anything like that, I wrote this before going to sleep. Gonna take another pass at this when my mind gets some well deserved rest.

P.S. Gonna move those files to Itch when I get the time, so don't be surprised when it's not google drive anymore.

Updates

  • Update 1: Removed some dev related things.
  • Update 2: Moved things to Itch and added a web build (could have more bugs than Win build)
  • Update 3: Bugfixes - on restarting the game some things did not reset, if you remove the main camp job the game won't end, and you can no longer remove the main camp after it has been built

Ratings

Overall 536th 3.341⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 643th 3⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 515th 3.091⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 610th 3.318⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 699th 2.932⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Audio 288th 3.432⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Humor 586th 2⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 366th 3.386⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 15🗳️ 20🗨️

Feedback

Lakea
26. Apr 2021 · 12:54 UTC
A very good entry, played it for quite a while but didnt make it and got killed, enjoyed it though and will likely play again.
glitchman
26. Apr 2021 · 12:56 UTC
My camp 8)
Good Luck!

![2021-04-26_155547.png](///raw/200/81/z/3d6e6.png)
grena
26. Apr 2021 · 15:41 UTC
Very complete game, I really enjoy the concept: managing a camp while building and protecting a road. Inspiring! I was pretty confused by how tower & monster work to be honest, but I'll give it another try. With a little more information (building costs for example), this would be so nice.

Visually, this is enough for me in a gamejam! :D
Anyway, cool entry, I had fun playing it.
LDJam user 237588
26. Apr 2021 · 17:04 UTC
I actually quite liked the music. How did you make it?
hypp
26. Apr 2021 · 17:07 UTC
A bit confusing to me, but then I don't play these kind of games very often! I would have liked some kind of tutorial mode!
PurpledArtFrog
26. Apr 2021 · 17:29 UTC
Thank you very much for your entry - I hope you had great fun making it :smile:

This was a great little surprise.. a lot of work seemed to go in to it :smile: Good job :smile:

I hope you'll drop by mine and give it a spin :wink:

:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
squigglez
26. Apr 2021 · 17:33 UTC
surprisingly deep. i like the idea and most of the mechanics. i wish it was more clear when you are being attacked and where. with some sound and other game-feel polish, this would be really great!
🎤 machrom
27. Apr 2021 · 07:36 UTC
Thank you all for the feedback!

@grena, yeah the towers & monsters were late additions so I didn't have time to give all the visual feedback I wanted. Towers have a range of 5 tiles, and shoot every second I think. Monsters have a certain range, damage and attack speed. So when the monsters are close enough to a building they attack (their logic where a building is, is not that good so they always go to a specific building tile). Building costs are written here since I wanted to make a popup with that info when you hover over a building button... but as you can see I didn't make it in time.

@hilkojj Abundant music, I started messing with it a few weeks ago and it seemed like a good enough thing.

@purpledartfrog done! I gave it a spin!

@squigglez Yep I agree, no time to flesh out the whole monsters and attacks thing!
Jeremia
27. Apr 2021 · 08:45 UTC
I think its a cool game, I always like to see builder games made in a jam.

The first time I played I could not build a second main camp, so I deleted the first one and promptly lost.

The second time realised that I would have to place a *forward* camp, but unfotunately I somehow lost all my workers, and then I could not do anything.

(I played the web version)
🎤 machrom
27. Apr 2021 · 09:27 UTC
@jeremia well that is an unfortunate turn of events. Yeah I just realized that there are a few bugs regarding the removal of main camp. I probably broke it when I wrote the logic to detect "defeat", and I suggest to reload the page/game before trying again (because I forgot to reset some things and the reason why your second try didn't work probably). I will try to fix it and release again, but basically you should be able to remove the job about building the main camp, but not remove the main camp after it's been built. I'll update you when I fix it.

Thanks for the feedback!
🎤 machrom
27. Apr 2021 · 10:48 UTC
@jeremia the issues should be fixed now.
Jeremia
27. Apr 2021 · 11:26 UTC
@machrom I now know why my workers where all gone, they were inside the towers I built.

Sadly I just randomly loose now:
![Unbenannt3.PNG](///raw/9cf/12/z/407df.png)
Notice all the towers I built to make sure it weren't the wild animals.


(I played the windows version)
🎤 machrom
27. Apr 2021 · 11:34 UTC
@jeremia well that is a problem, I have no idea why the defeat would be random... Thanks for playing and trying it again. I'll try to figure it out and I'll let you know if I find something :thumbsup:
Frogman
28. Apr 2021 · 18:37 UTC
Nice game! I liked the feeling of a slowly growing camp, constantly gaining more gold and workers. It was very confusing at first - I wasted all my gold without building a trading post, and it took me a while to get un-stuck - but it was pretty fun afterwards. I also lost randomly, which is a shame as I was relatively close to finishing. One thing I would've improved is allowing you to constantly keep building the same building again without selecting it again, but other than that, good entry!
Zohar
28. Apr 2021 · 18:39 UTC
Good game! here are some bugs I found:
![unnamed.png](///raw/57b/93/z/41570.png)
![unnamedg.png](///raw/57b/93/z/41571.png)
yellowsalamander
30. Apr 2021 · 08:57 UTC
Great entry! However, I feel like the wait time UI should have also been pixel art, to be consistent.
Brad Make Games
30. Apr 2021 · 09:03 UTC
Overall the game was interesting but could be improved in some areas. The games music wasn't bad at all, it felt like it fit the game and wasn't annoying or anything. As for the art I really liked it. There's not a lot of art overall but what is there looks good. When it comes to the gameplay it is a neat idea and it seems to work, but lacks a lot of visual feedback. I was never really sure if my towers were doing much, how roads were helping, or why I would lose. Overall the game was still enjoyable and a great entry!
Maybeagoose
30. Apr 2021 · 09:19 UTC
Very good <3
🎤 machrom
30. Apr 2021 · 10:18 UTC
@frogman thank you! Randomly losing is a bug that I may have introduced with the last "fix", but I'm not sure why it happens. You can build the same building constantly, just hold CTRL while placing :smile: . (or at least it should be like that unless it's bugged)

@zohar how the hell did you manage that? :joy:

@yellowsalamander yeah, didn't have time to pixelate it.

@brad-make-games I agree, a lot of visual feedback is missing for monsters/towers, mainly because I didn't have time to make it. Roads don't help actually, they're just there since to win you have to build it all the way to the statue. So, they're kind of an obstacle actually. Losing seems to have a bug, sorry about that.

@maybeagoose thank you!

Thank you all for the great feedback! :smile:
krexor
30. Apr 2021 · 15:18 UTC
Fun building game. It's always hard to balance these kind of game especially for a game jam, but I think you did a good job.

I found scrolling around to be a bit slow, would have been nice with a speed setting for this.

Overall a solid game.
RefraX295
30. Apr 2021 · 15:48 UTC
Fun game with some solid gameplay. The underlying idea is somewhat similar to that of my own entry, so I found it fascinating to see it implemented differently. I think you took the right approach in focusing on the core mechanics rather than graphics, which is something I didn't quite get right in my game. I also thought the music was actually pretty good.
🎤 machrom
05. May 2021 · 11:21 UTC
@krexor thank you for the feedback! yeah scroll sensitivity would have been nice.

@refrax295 I completely agree, went ahead and tried your game today and found out it's the similar yet quite different. You went the 3D route, I always think that's harder to make it well so good job! I'm somewhat of a strategy fan so I loved seeing your game and the way you did it. Thank you!
Threeli
08. May 2021 · 22:11 UTC
So this is a really cool idea, and it's light and flexible enough that you could really go places with it. I think somewhat shorter challenges could be chained together for a large overall experience. Overall it felt intuitive and the difficulty ramped nicely. The only constructive notes I might have are already written here: more general visual feedback for what was happening, and an adjustable scroll speed.

This is a great entry, and it drank up a lot of my time this morning. Great stuff!