Tremblewood by Hawkin

You are an evil wizard capable of summoning armies of minions, but you'll need resources. The nearby village is a good source of souls and bones and armor!

Take everything that they are willing to donate to the cause >:) but don’t get too close to the danger or you might join the dead!

Controls
- WASD or Arrow Keys to move
- Click toolbar (or number keys) to summon your minions!
Known Issues
- On the first browser load, WASD/Arrow Keys for movement may not work. Please reload the window!
Version Updates
- 1.0.1 - Increased volume of sounds
| Browser | https://hawkinberry.itch.io/tremblewood |
| Download | https://hawkinberry.itch.io/tremblewood |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/tremblewood |
Ratings
| Overall | 105th | 4.097⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 49th | 4.194⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 484th | 3.468⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 52th | 4.403⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 260th | 4.177⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 267th | 3.732⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 609th | 2.98⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 270th | 3.917⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 42🗨️ |
I agree the sounds might become a bit much when you have a big army. Perhaps I could implement a filter to limit maximum requests at once.
I made it to the big cannons, but I had trouble making my army move there since the old buildings kept respawning
Maybe having some way to give an objective to the units could be used to solve this?
Overall I had a great time with the game, really well done! :D
We actually just pushed a minor fix for the audio levels, since many people were saying they could not hear it at all. I'm sure some people didn't even realize there was audio to hear. Thank you for mentioning it!


The starting menu graphic felt a little jarring to me with 3D behind 2D, and the music gets repetitive if I wait on the start screen, but I'm not sure how I would change it, especially because it communicates the controls well and is representative of the 2D over 3D to come. Zooming in on the characters and the skeleton crowd is a fun touch.
The shadows and unused gold resource nodes are a nice touch to make the game feel retro and immersive. How was it like programming the triggers and logic for units?
The villagers rebuilding certain structures while the city is under siege was a nice touch. The game was a bit too easy after the first barracks fell, but I still had fun watching the carnage.
The game itself was a bit easier than I would have liked but I rlly enjoyed causing all the destruction and it felt satisfying collecting all the resources in order to summon more troops. Experience was polished and it was to understand what to do. This could be he base for a pretty nice game if you consider expanding on the concept
Good entry!
Glad you enjoyed the game! You mentioned some good ideas for summon control, like a traditional RTS. That was some scope that we knew would be hard to fit in, and we kind of liked the idea of a zombie horde not always doing what you wanted. We found some strategy in getting close to your target and summoning them. But the system could definitely use more tuning and development to be even better!
I was similar to @NBumgardner and others: summoning a huge army and letting them rip through town felt fun in a different way than micromanaging.
Our lead dev @tempest-smh can talk more about the AI implementation. It comes down to available targets within a distance. We actually weren't sure why they were running back to retarget the barracks when they were at the castle. It's something to look into!
Thank you for playing and giving feedback! You all mentioned the level of difficulty, which was the subject of many discussions during the jam for our team. A bit too hard, and some people won't make it to the final challenge. A bit too easy, some people might feel bored.
We had a good system for balancing, and it even supports multiple levels of difficulty, but we found out it still actually takes a bit of time to tune everything! I think if we had been able to provide a button to turn on a "hard" mode, that would have been awesome!
We'd love to put one in for the post-jam update so that you can really test your stuff!
Thank you all for your feedback about the art style! The team is loving those comments. The vision from the get-go was for a retro RTS, and that drove the audio and visual style. There was a redesign on the scene textures once the 2D sprites were dropped in, to make sure it all felt cohesive enough. And for audio, I applied an amount of bit crunch where it was effective.
@NBumgardner noticed a lot of details on the start menu, which I always enjoy making to setup the mood of the game. The 3D assets in the back were actually the same as the level, but I'll need to take another look. It's possible that I wasn't applying the same pixel shader, or because the camera was much closer, everything was crisper and clashed more.
Art and music are both very nice. I had fun playing it. Overall, well done! :clap:
@itsboats thanks dude! We experimented with letting the player pass through mobs, but there was some reason we didn't like that either. I agree that a timer would have been a good idea! Listing the resources as a score doesn't actually mean much after all, since I could just sit there and farm the town for a long time >:) and I don't know HOW the guy did it with 6. Our game must be broken XD
I didn't really get the strategy other than spam all summons close together and try and hide from the arrows
Most of the strategy I have found is accommodate for the lack of control of the mobs. For example, if I want them to attack a particular building, I'll spawn them near that building.
With our stretch goals to increase the capabilities of the town build system, we imagined the need for more strategy to emerge!
Love how that's something you noticed as well :) Thanks for playing!
One design decision we made was to make the player mobile and the summoning portals appear nearby. This forces the player to move (possibly into danger). Calling your mobs back toward you (another type of "summon") might reinforce that risk/reward!