Tribute the game (not to be confused with developer Tribute Games) is a very intriguing and dark looking game that is heavily inspired by top down RPG/adventure games from the 80’s and 90’s. In case you were getting an old school Zelda vibe, this is precisely what the team at Bad Kittens is going after.

The goal of Tribute is to craft a “heavily melancholic experience” from those games from yesteryear that many of us grew up playing and loving. The game was originally a final project for creator Jose Dorado’s bachelor degree, and it was a simple pixelated arena game where you fought to the death.

He grew fond of it and later developed some background stories to some of the character sprites, until finally he later decided to develop it up into a more ambitious project, which we’ve come to know as Tribute. All of the previous work he had developed (combat, pixel art, etc) was transported to the Unity engine, and now he’s developing the game for PC, Mac, Linux, and Playstation Vita.

Tribute is already looking pretty robust, and the small team at Bad Kittens has a lot of plans for the game. In the final build, the story will see you exploring six main temples where you’ll utilize five different kinds of tools. Their mission is to implement fun and rewarding game mechanics that are made possible with these yet to be revealed tools.

There is currently no release date for Tribute, but the final game is being poised as a fun, interesting, and variant experience. In the meantime, you can check out more information for Tribute on the game’s official dev blog, which can be viewed here. We’ll keep you guys posted.