Down without an elevator. Tower of Time Review

Perhaps the main thing is for what the games of independent developers love is that they often put a desire to make a memorable game above the desire to earn money. Especially if this is the first project, which, being not successful enough in a financial sense, can still create a new studio reputation. The reputation of the creators of niche games who will find a response in the hearts of gamers who missed genres marked by a sign of non -being. While large studios are only doing that they have been developing a verified formula for years, afraid to retreat at least a step, beginners are not shy about confidently stepping to where they want. Let sometimes select the selected road leads straight to the abyss.

The ability to find pearls among a boring pebble on a rocky beach is an important skill on the Val Games Val Each year. Some discoveries are truly entertaining, in the end, when it will still be possible to see a real-time strategy, a smart quest or the classic Dungeon Crawler from companies, whose names are tightly connected with the same brands? It is all the more offensive that indie projects, no matter how interesting they are, often go unnoticed: the struggle for attention in the game industry has turned into a real confrontation between marketing departments, reviewers and target audience-players. It is doubly more offensive to read other people’s reviews, in which the advantages of a good game are presented in a negative light due to unwillingness to plunge deep enough in its system or hostility to the genre as a whole.

This, unfortunately, happened to Tower of Time.

Therefore, I am here to tell you my story, the story of the game, our story. What is the reason, you ask? The story should be told, the game deserves attention, and if no one tells about it, the very meaning of the existence of this game and this review will be lost. Why right now, when it has passed since the release? Yes … you are right … But as players, we are often in a situation where one game ends and the other should begin in return. So this story can still live in this world. I am a player and I am a reviewer, I want you to listen to me, look at the game with my eyes and be able to condemn it just like me. I want you to also be a verdict to the debut project of the Polish studio Event Horizon, the classic RPG subspecies “The study of the dungeons”, the same time tower.

An amazingly simple and extremely addictive formula for the dungeon filled with monsters in equal proportions with treasures, old, like the genre of role -playing games. Lee alone, as part of a group or an entire army, the player descends into darkness in order to pull out the maximum of values ​​from there, to defeat the villains that they belong to the city to improve the equipment and next time go deeper deeper. Obviously, in order to hide even more, kill the monsters stronger, as well as strengthen the equipment and heroes in order to repeat this again and again. This gameplay cycle is extremely effective, it is easy to add to the process, it’s like a pack of chips is not too useful food, but it is impossible to stop until it ends.

Careless handling of this cycle is easily overshadowed by mediocre realization, which includes many inconveniences that cause a loss of interest in the first iterations. This does not happen with Tower of Time, because its game design does not try to distract from what is happening, but rather, with each new introduced element, the player into the process, as it should be, more and more deeply. The game does a lot correctly and this is the best assessment that it deserves.

An important role is played by the plot, revealed by quite standard means. Rollers collected from static pictures, united by beautiful smoky transitions, are accompanied by a penetrating low voice, which tells about the dying world of Artara. Magic appeared once here and forever changed the direction of development of civilization. The inhabitants of the world, representatives of classical fantasy races, abandoned technology in favor of newfound power, but alas, side effects of the use of magic and irreversible distortions of the very essence of the world. At the time of the beginning of the story, the inhabitants of Artara have already forgotten how sunlight looks, agriculture does not bring enough food, and the boundaries of the once great empires are narrowed every day due to internal political conflicts and natural cataclysms. There are no hopes for salvation, but the player is in the role of a little boy who accidentally discovered the entrance to the tower that appeared from nowhere, which seemed to turn the monstrous power and stuck into the ground. A mysterious voice from the crystal throne inside the first floor promised the boy strength and power, greatly frightening him, but forever leaving in his soul the desire and desire to reveal the secrets of the mysterious tower. Years later, the boy grows up, becomes the king’s adviser and, with his support, gathering a small detachment, returns to the tower. Having discovered the throne again and sitting on it, he gains the power to look at the world through the eyes of his associates, control them in battle and influence their decisions during the dispute.

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This begins the descent down. Many battles and treasures, new allies, restoration of the lost technologies of the past, are waiting ahead, and of course the main thing: the explanation of what the tower is actually hiding the gift of magic and to whom the mysterious voice belongs. The player personifies this particular boyfriend and this makes the story of the game a little more personal.

Contrary to your usual desire to tell you the maximum of the plot of the game, imprinting it with an unsatisfactory assessment of excessive use of cliches and the beatenness of the characters, this time I want to refrain from such epithets. The game presents a setting of typical fantasy, with a mixture of magic and mechanics, but with a claim to additional originality, expressed in copyright, unique races. Together with people, wise and elf connected with nature, a typical dwarf dwarf in the group of adventurers, say, a frosty giant, whose feature is a memory stored in the form of stones. A special emphasis is on the characters and their culture, they constantly refer to their origin, enter into dialogs and the clash of ideologies expands the images of the heroes, giving them livelihoods. Given that you are a passive observer and control over the negotiations, you, like a player, in most cases, no, the seizure of interest here is extremely important and the work of the scriptwriters can only be praised, since their task is done perfectly.

Tower of Time answers positively to the question of how excitingly and emotionally the story of a simple, seemingly study of the dungeons about the destruction of enemies and the collection of treasures can be written. The laconic lines of the local plot surprisingly organically introduce characters, both you controlled and episodic NPC. Their characters are thought out, and a slight unobtrusive humor, woven into quests and dialogs, brightens the atmosphere of hopelessness of the dying world. Yes, of course, you can complain about the behavior of the heroes, linear narrative, standard elements in the form of secrets, pseudo-awaited betrayals, a number of climaxes and sudden turns that turn the meaning of the collected information inside out. But, I don’t want to do this. Because the overall layout of the pieces catches. To ensure that with conventional means like notes, minimally animated videos and dialogs against the background of static scenes, situations were created that I want to say with a smile “Well, how cool!” – the insanely expensive is worth. And these scenes are here on every floor.

The authors really love their project and this is felt not only in the approach to the plot.

Let’s turn to the structure of the game and draw some unexpected parallels with Heroes of Might and Magic, Disciples, or King’s Bounty more suitable in this regard. Like these projects, Tower of Time divides gameplay activity into a number of components: free research of the world, battle and macro level, where I will relate the development of the city and the management of the detachment.

The study of the world takes place in real time and really, a similar process in King’s Bounty is very much like a similar process. Treasures in the form of piles of gold or chests with artifacts are scattered everywhere. You have to choose a route, carefully bypassing too strong opponents. The plot is revealed through notes, dialogs and quests, the narrative is actively used through the environment: the design of each floor reflects the intended purpose of the region, traces of the battles or other events of the past are constantly visible. Part of the environment is highlighted as key points that participate in the plot or give permanent bonuses – statues, fountains, scrolls.

As you travel around the tower, the heroes become pub-casino.uk stronger. Their development is limited by the presence of non -experience, but collected on floors with money, as well as the level of buildings, which must be built according to the drawings found in the tower. The plot of this approach is explained by the fact that controlled characters are already the best warriors from this world who do not need training, but the tower technology is so surprised that they literally open new forces and opportunities for them, and therefore require money for embodiment and training. The gameplay reason is more prosaic, so it is necessary to consider the combat and role parts of the game to understand why it was decided to abandon the concept of experience.

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I am a little incomprehensible to the positioning of the game, which is promoted by the developers on their website and pages of the game in Steam and Gog. The description finds such words as “Innovative battles in real time”, “New type of RPG” and even the newly-sounded term “Arrow-Time”. Excessively loud words that are perplexed by everyone who is minimally familiar with the concept of the combat system in real time with a tactical pause – RTWP (and I like this abbreviation!). Examples of games with a similar approach will include classic Infinity Engine projects, such as Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, with the reservations that there was no real time in them, a system of rounds was masked, within the framework of which the following character could be changed. Another example is the neoclassical Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny, which also used the real time with low dynamics, expressed in complex processes that implement the battle: the game operates with the terms “activation time” and “rollback time”, which again does the fight for somewhat not what is “ordinary” real time. Therefore, the best analogue of how the fights in Tower of Time will be the game Aarklash Legacy, also a very worthy and undeservedly little -known project.

Since I am almost sure that no one is particularly aware of Aarklash Legacy, I’ll give a more understandable analogy – the battles in Tower of Time resemble the battles from Mmorpg as much as possible, where the role of the role system is the role of tank, fighter and support.

Each time, bumping into the opponents in the tower, you will be moved to a separate arena where you should withstand the attacks of the waves of opponents, whose appearance stretched in time. Less often – the task is changing to the destruction of spawn points or the defense of fragile objects, but this happens much less often.

The battle process is tied to microcontrol and the use of a pause. Each of the seven heroes is hidden under one of the archetypes so that equipment and choice of abilities allow him to play the corresponding role. Adepts of the sword or ax are required to tie the enemy with a near battle, hold the groups of enemies on themselves and prevent them from getting to the rest. Mages use attacks on the area to weaken groups and massacres. The arrows should quickly destroy the most dangerous goals and finish off those who survived from the mass attacks of magicians. Support causes creatures as an additional distracting meat, heals and imposes other effects that do not cause direct damage.

Each of the characters Tower of Time has at least two development options. The choice of abilities in the compilation of the build is wide and is not limited to multi -colored special effects that knock out the numbers from allies or opponents. A wide set of creatures is presented, several ways to control the crowd, even combat abilities differ in the form and principle of action. The most important thing is that all this is required to be actively used in order to stay alive and manage to exterminate new and new waves of enemies. Different abilities are suitable for different situations and the composition and capabilities of the team have to regularly.

Assessing the importance of role-playing components of the game, one can quickly come to the conclusion that the success of the confrontation of enemies is determined by the priority of the ability-gearbox. The importance of abilities has already been said, but this is only one part of three.

Things are closely related to the characteristics and reveal a simple, but effective system. There are only 4 attributes and are not useless for some characters among them, which is very pleasant. Strength determines the damage from weapons and breaking through the armor. The speed is responsible for the frequency of attacks and the time of restoration of abilities. Skill enhances the ability and restoration of mana. Finally, health is associated with a margin of damage that the hero can withstand and additionally increases the resistance of magic. Things strengthen all the listed properties to a much greater extent than make characteristics, and therefore it is more important.

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The variability of the role system, various tools for equipment production, as well as tuning this very equipment with their nuances – all this creates a small paradise for fans of dressing heroes in computer games. So, abilities can be modified by giving the main effect additional properties. As for example, to reduce the height of the wall created by Paladin Kayne so that your fighters continue to shoot – of course, in this case, the wall will cease to protect the heroes from opponents’ shooters. A random factor associated with obtaining equipment on floors and chests is not a problem, since the developed craft system allows you to disassemble objectionable items for crystals to create the necessary object of the desired type and the right orientation (damage or protection in the simplest case). Then the created thing can be strengthened using an anvil and, finally, apply a spell, turning some ordinary sword into a Uber artifact of noticeable power. The equipment is divided into levels and is additionally divided into quality categories, and “low”, “green” and “blue” categories are not useless due to greater potential when crossing. And on the floors you can find special forges that improve the quality of the subject.

Similarly arranged and the creatures opposing your detachment. The variety of enemies is great, they are combined into groups, within which approximately the same archetypes of close combat fighters, shooters and support magicians are used. The battle with them is formed in the operational response and the system of measures and the countermeasures. Despite the fact that characters can allow you to move around the arena and update the buffs on their own, you should not abuse this. The player needs to constantly control the course of the battle. At a minimum, at the beginning, temporary effects are too expensive in mana to leave them on the machine. It is also necessary to withdraw heroes from the zones created by opponents, maneuver, collect enemies together and follow the tactics under which your detachment was imprisoned – whether it is a damage in the face, the use of healing abilities or a beautiful filling of the crowd with fire.

The game has a very good balance of complexity, what is worth expecting from the game, whose passage is so controlled. Thanks to the removal of fights to a separate arena, the abandonment of experience towards money and limiting the levels of characters with special items, which are found only at a certain stage, the game designer is easy to adjust the complexity of the battle for a specific level of group development. The negative side of this approach is a markedly reduced reiglable, in the light of the fact that you will always come to key battles with approximately the same resources, and by getting used to the mechanics of the game, it will be perceived more and easier.

This despite the fact that at the first acquaintance, I appreciated the game as difficult from the first floors. There are constantly not enough resources in the form of mana, even the most durable character does not withstand the blows of strong opponents, the heroes inflicted by the heroes are damaged and the battles have to be replayed again and again. However, the overall graph of the complexity, which I compiled as it passes, shows a very strong failure of the severity of the battles in the fifth floor and a sluggish rise back until the 8th exit, where each battle again becomes a test until the very end.

An explanation of this interesting phenomenon, which, incidentally, is in real time listed in this review in this review with a tactical pause (that is, very high difficulty at the beginning, then a sharp drawdown in the middle and new peak is closer to the end) in the very nature of RTWP. This nature lies in a kind of “law of small numbers”, the essence of which is that even a small increase in secondary characteristics during a long battle can have a significant impact on its outcome. Moreover, even the result of the use of powerful abilities may not be visible immediately.

If you are opposed by Tower of Time with any game with a step -by -step combat system, for example, Divinity: Original Sin 2 and compare the amount of actions and their weight within the framework of a certain conditional period of time, then it is easy to see how significant the instant effect of the abilities of each discrete move and how hard to evaluate the extended result of your continuous actions. This is, first of all, the issue of clarity, even a person who is not too familiar with the rules, with a cursory look at the game situation, can evaluate how the events will develop and what can be done – you need to throw a ball of fire, this character to treat, this monster is first killed. But the assessment of a similar situation in the game, where the ongoing continuous processes are already much more complicated. It seems that the character, who is acting, can calmly stand under the blows of opponents, but what if there are more – how quickly you notice that he has been slowly dying for the last minute? What is more important – to deliver an instant blow to the same fire ball or change it by transferring most of the damage to the effect of the time, which will cause a total of more damage? Or will not apply if you cannot survive during this time. Assessment of the effectiveness of the battle can be sufficiently non -trivial. Two tenths of mana regeneration per second at first glance seem small and insignificant bonus, but in 5 minutes of battle they mean additional application of the ability that may not be enough for victory.

Thus, in real time, you actually play with the computer in tug of the rope, trying to move the balance of balance in your direction. Some abilities still allow you to make full-fledged jerks, such as the opportunity to make the team invulnerable, others, on the contrary, complicate the situation, for example, endowing the weapons of the Allies with additional breakdown of the armor. Here lies the root of the unpopularity of real time compared to the step -by -step system, not everyone is ready to understand the processes of the interaction of allied and enemy units on the battlefield, and the start of the battle on the gingle usually pours out into misunderstanding, which is why you lose again. Approximately there is also the definition of a cunning complexity curve specifically adjusted for you to evaluate and learn to use basic tools, so that you will then have to introduce new mechanics that you will have to look for answers that are different from Rutina. This is the main concept of development of the RPG mechanic, but it is important to understand what lies in the foundations of real time and step -by -step battle, and I tried to touch on these differences.

So, being a rare representative of the genre, this is the tactics in real time Tower of Time does a lot correctly. But do not forget that we still have the first project of a young independent studio, who has where to strive.

Yes, as I already mentioned, the authors love their game very much and endowed it with cute features, which add pleasant strokes to various aspects of her image. For example, each battle is preceded by a small text description that carefully explains with whom and in what conditions your heroes will fight. The micro -study outside the battle is minimized – it is not necessary to treat and resurrect the characters after the battle, the inventory is common to all, for craft things do not need to move to the city. The choice of music is successful both for the fight and for research, it is calm and a little melancholy, interesting choice, creating a special atmosphere on each of the floors of the tower.

However, a number of shortcomings nevertheless spoil the impression and it is not always possible to say that of them relates to conscious decisions, and what is mistakes.

Here, for example, unique relics found on floors. As a rule, they are slightly different from ordinary craft purple things, but for some reason they come with terrible fines. For example, a ring with a fine of regeneration as much as 20 points per second or pants with minuses to resistance. The fate of these objects is a foregone conclusion – they are useless and go to spray, becoming a source of crystals.

Or fountains giving permanent bonuses, both positive and negative. However, why are fountains with negative effects are needed? They are easy to distinguish from good ones, they are always red or unhealthy yellow, in addition, loading is always available if the bonus is bad. It is pointless.

The so -called “key solutions” are also upset when you have to influence the controlled heroes in their dispute. Whatever the decision you make – you will always improve the meaning of the reputation in some and ruin the other. This affects small bonuses and fines that operate on the whole team in battle. Needless to say, very often you have to make a choice not in favor of the role -playing waging – and the solution may not be plot not simple – but towards the usefulness of specific numbers? And even so, without a guide or conservation-loading, it can be difficult to evaluate how your heroes will react to the chosen “key solution”.

There are also many shortcomings in the interface. For example, you can’t see what they make the ability before they become available in level. The composition of the group is allowed to be changed only before the battle or when leaving the city, but it cannot be changed just like that. Perhaps this is my inattention, but I never found how to do it. The interface during the battle receives an assessment of “satisfactory”, and this is at best. It is displayed who attacks your characters, but is not displayed who they are attacking. The active effects of the heroes are separated between their portraits, the right part of the screen and a pop -up clue when entering. At the same time, active positive effects on enemies are not displayed at all – you will be very unpleasantly surprised when you first encounter damage. This, coupled with the inability to stop the attack with standard means.

And, unfortunately, bugs and low performance. The game may die immediately after loading the conservation. There is clearly something even less critical, the point “Report the error” in the main menu is very confusing. You have to put up with poor performance. FPS constantly sags, especially in a battle, where many moving and doing something are participating, and when maintaining and loading, the sound twitches. The interface is also not in order, the windows and even the tabs inside them open with a delay, and the number of lines in the Tultip Debafs of the opponents is not limited and may go beyond the screen.

But even in this form, the game receives my hot recommendations. If you are a fan of the genre, the Infinity Engine games have long passed, the new creations from Obsidian, perhaps they managed to penetrate the Dungeon Siege series and even found and appreciated Aarklash Legacy, you should not pass by!

Yes, of course, Tower of Time is not a game for everyone. She is a representative of the unpopular genre, it may seem protracted and monotonous, and the positive aspects of its combat unit are revealed mainly on the highest complexity or in hardcore modes. In addition, like any representative of copyright projects, she has features with which you have to put up. However, the potential is huge, and is already perfectly disclosed both from the side of the created world and in relation to gameplay solutions.

My story is of an important meaning: at least it is worth taking the Polish studio Event Horizon on a pencil and wait for its next project. Correction of designer miscalculations and technical problems – the issue of experience and practice. I want to see how they will develop the strong features of their debut.