Path to Tribute by machrom
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
Picture says it all.
A few previews:

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🗨️ |
Good Luck!

Visually, this is enough for me in a gamejam! :D
Anyway, cool entry, I had fun playing it.
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:
@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!
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)
Thanks for the feedback!
Sadly I just randomly loose now:

Notice all the towers I built to make sure it weren't the wild animals.
(I played the windows version)


@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:
I found scrolling around to be a bit slow, would have been nice with a speed setting for this.
Overall a solid game.
@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!
This is a great entry, and it drank up a lot of my time this morning. Great stuff!