[Release] Tower Blaze: A DungeonCrawler, with a sprinkle of MonsterCatcher

[Sunfished]

Download Current Alpha: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fniegoormp7wr9w/TowerBlazeUpdate4.1.zip?dl=0
​

Welcome! This is a little game I've been working on, which is a continuation of a project I submitted to my computer science class a while ago. The game is essentially a dungeon-crawler at its heart, becoming gruelingly difficult the longer you progress. Currently, there is no story, so it's basically a "Do whatever you want" alpha. You can choose to climb the tower, recruit monsters, goof around, etc. There is no limit on the time either, so just have fun seeing how high you can go without dieing!

Of course, this isn't really a good description of what it is, so here's a very quick video to demonstrate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u83JKVsR7DI

To play, all you simple need to do is choose a class, and walk to the top right of town. There, you will see a portal that will get you started with the dungeon.

ScreenShots

Spoiler:

The select screen. Along the left you can see the stats attributed to each character.

An example of talking to some townsfolk. Even the ones that aren't exactly human.

Beating up some Slimes.

Fighting against the King Slime boss. He summons slimes whenever taking damage!

The next area I'm working on. Floors 11-20 have a cave theme!
​

Story:

Spoiler:

​

Once upon a time, there existed a large and grandiose tower, a tower so tall that it watched over all the lands of Earth. On top of its crown lived the highly-regarded Sungod, a being capable of producing and manipulating light. His power was not gone to waste, as his sole duty of living amongst humans was to make sure their lives were happy and full of life.

...Which was the usual, anyway. For some unexplained reason, the Sungod had awoken at the base of his majestic tower, given bewildered looks by the townspeople that reside at the entrance. "No worries, my friends! I just need to climb up my tower. Nothing to be afraid of!" But no matter how many times the tower was climbed by the Sungod, he would always crash-land back to earth, appearing to be exhausted by the amount of monsters that have inhabited the many floors. This was not the only thing that seemed to be exhausting, however. Only after a few days after the Sungod's unfortunate arrival, many of the crops began to fail, and the world was growing dimmer by the day. It seems that without the Sungod atop his tower, his powers were not only failing to work, but it may eventually bring the end of the world.

But the Sungod proposed an idea. "My merry townsfolk! If you wish to save yourselves, I have an ingenious idea, that only a fool would deny. As I do not have the willpower to fend off against the vast monsters in the way, I require escorts to aid me along the path! And to those that successfully adventure with me and reach the very top, will be granted a single wish!" As much as the townspeople talked about the riches or lives they can live with the single token of a wish, many remembered that "heroes" were very much nonexistent. To recall, they have been living in a perfect world watched over by the Sungod for many centuries. The needs of a hero have died off long ago, along with many generations of heroes to come. As rumors of the world ending became more fact than fiction, tales of the Sungod's descent began to reach places that were reclusive to the world...

Plot:

Spoiler:

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As the story unfolds, it is revealed that the player's party are one of the last few remaining heroes. As such, it is the player's goal in order to escort the Sungod up the tower. Unlike a static tower that is normally associated with large buildings, the Sun's Tower is everchanging, which means that every single run through the tower will be different from the last. As such, monsters inhabit these strange floors, and will fight any human that enters its territory.
The player is given 42 weeks to climb to the 100th floor, otherwise the Sungod's power will have become drained, leaving the Earth perpetually dark. Many actions will alter this time, either for better or for worse. For example, successfully returning from the tower will only pass by a week, while dieing inside of it will cost 3 weeks. There are also ways to stall, stop, and even reverse the doom, but it is majorly up to the party to make a decision for what's best to do.
Every 10th floor, the player will initiate battle against a boss, usually pertaining to the type of dungeon they were at. Bosses have unique attack patterns and events, so it's best to prepare a few floors beforehand!

Classes

Each specific class has a set of specialized stats, and later, skills which will prove useful in certain situations.
From the Archer's great range to the Berzerker's heavy-duty damage, it's up to you to decide who makes it into your team!
​

But how does it relate to monster-catching?

Spoiler:

In the most-likely event that you are only playing single-player, or would rather play by your lonesome, I have mediated the difficulty by allowing enemies to become "caught".
In order to do so, the player simply needs to hunt monsters. Whenever a monster is defeated, they have a small chance to drop their contracts, which you can then use to have a monster contracted under you to fight! You can't see your monsters health/mana, but they're relatively much stronger than their wild counterparts. The chance to recruit monsters halves every 10 floors, so it's best to catch some when you're still early on. In the alpha I have provided, there is no way to get rid of contracted monsters, which means once your slots are filled up you can't get rid of them!
You'll know when a monster drops his contract when it announces it. This is what it looks like:

Other Features

Spoiler:

This NPC will allow you to increase your damage at the cost of some money. Great when you need a little more boost to your damage!

Options

Spoiler:

"Computers" refers to whether players 2, 3, and 4 should be controlled by computers. Otherwise, they will be controlled with WASD, IJKL, and TFGH respectively.

"EXPShare" refers to whether exp is shared among all players, or whoever dealt the finishing blow will receive the exp.

"Sounds" is currently not available, but will let the user turn off music, sounds, or both.

"Difficulty" refers to health modifier that enemies spawn with, with 5 being the default number.

Bugs

Spoiler:

-There is a VERY small chance that you will spawn in a hallway that is blocked at both ends. In order to get out without restarting, first press the "0" key on the keyboard. This will prompt a code to type in. Enter "reset" without the "" and the floor should regenerate itself.

-When using party member's controlled by the computer, moving through hallways will always make them do weird things, such as going the full-length of the hallway in the opposite direction.

-When having a party of monsters, the particularly larger ones will have a hard time fitting into hallways. This is a problem that might as well be a feature, since it technically should behave this way.

And thanks for reading! It'd be great if I could get some feedback, most noticeably concerning the difficulty of the game!

Some of the graphics tiles and music are not owned by me.
The music for the first 10 floors and the select screen were made by a friend of mine!
Everything else was completely made from scratch.

 

[Florio]

This game seems pretty cool, I would like to see more of it. Can we see a video of it? It would give us a better idea of what the game is like.

 

[Sunfished]

Maybe I should make the links a different color...

There's a video link near the top :P
Here it is again just for convenience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u83JKVsR7DI

And thanks! It's taken me about 2 months for what I have right now :D

 

[Sunfished]

Update 2 is finally finished. This update brings about an item system, complete with a new gui.
https://www.mediafire.com/download/d4j83upt5lqumzj/TowerBlazeUpdate2.zip

Fighting
- Monsters, both contracted and wild, have slightly less health.
- Contracted monsters will deal more damage.
- Contracted monsters will have levels scaled on the floor they are on. Higher floors will have them deal more damage as opposed to the same monster at lower floors.
- When attacked, the one being attacked will launch backwards relative to the attacker.
- Ranged classes have a slightly faster attack speed, but weaker damage.
- Melee classes have a slightly longer attack range.
- Weapons will graphically change depending on what weapon tier it is.
- Mimics can actually be contracted, but the chance is so tiny there is barely any point to do so.

Exploration
- Dark Water now slows down the player when in Aqualogica.
- The treasure chest spawning algorithm has been adjusted, allowing better rewards at higher floors.

Items
- Use Shift to open up your inventory. When hovering over an item, players can use their Attack Button to use it. Items can be tossed by pressing the End Key.
- There are now a whopping 64 weapons to pick up and find, which are tiered by the amount of stars it possesses. Currently, equipping a weapon will overwrite the one currently equipped, making the player lose their old one.
--Weapons have a color coded outline to distinguish the type of weapon it is: Red is for Melee, Blue is for Magic, Green is for Ranged, and Yellow is for Support.
- Potions can now be collected through chests. Red Potions heal health, while blue potions heal mana.
- A rare item that can be collected is called the "Fox Fire", allowing the players to teleport back to town without any penalty.
- Along with the Heal Chest, there are new chests that players can find while exploring.
--Red Chests give out an assortment of weapons.
--Blue Chests give out Potions.
--Yellow Chests give out Gold.
--Heal Chests are now colored Green.

Fixed Bugs
- Monsters no longer stick into each other
- Walking Armor no longer explodes

Current Bugs
- Since the Item Screen is new, expect problems.

 

[ImmuneSquirtle]

Downloading. Looks pretty good and I love the art style.

 

[Sunfished]

Downloading. Looks pretty good and I love the art style.

Thanks! I've attuned to that style after I felt lazy to make them more "professional" looking. This was the style it was originally:

Spoiler:

Anyway, I've updated with some more gimmicks, and a focus on balance!

Download V3 --> https://www.dropbox.com/s/olehsjmngv2ylk0/TowerBlazeUpdate3.zip?dl=0

Changes!

Dungeons:

• Monsters will now only spawn if there are no more than 20 within the room.
• Monsters will now only spawn in groups of up to 5.
• Upped the rate for rarer weapons to spawn. This rate increases when at higher floors.
• Removed Snow and Sky dungeons, as they were incomplete. Instead, everything after the floor 30 will be a "technical" dungeon, called "White Space". White Space will only spawn one type of monster, aptly named "Error" that is unique: Its stats will always be randomized.
• Fixed a bug where boulders in Terralogica weren't breaking, leading to floors being unbeatable.
• Fixed a bug where Puddle Fiends weren't flooding the floor properly.

Players/Monsters

• Players have reworked stats, which total to 600 total points.
• Melee classes now display a graphic to determine where their attack actually lands.
• The Tome weapon can now be used. Its attack spawns a large spinning wheel, which grows larger the farther it goes.
• The Star weapon now changes its graphic to match its weapon rank.
• The Whip weapon has been nerfed. Instead of hitting multiple enemies at once, it will now retract towards the user after hitting one enemy.
• Wild Monsters now scale their levels based on the floor. The highest level they can naturally be is 60.
• Tamed Monsters are now always 5-10 levels higher than their wild counterparts. They also do not level, but instead have stats being based on the floor number.
• Tames Monsters will now have a GUI depicting their Health and Mana.

Other:

• Made the titlescreen super snazzy!
• Added a screen that shows information, such as controls.
• Updated a bit of graphics.

 

[esperance]

Wow, I love your art style! Not the biggest fan of the trees, but the characters look great.
I'll have to try this soon.

 

[DarkDoom3000]

What a cool artstyle.

Although it's early on, you got the skeleton for a really great game.
Trees could do with a touchup, but I assume you're focusing on mechanics right now rather than the graphics.

keep it up!

 

[Sunfished]

Wow, I love your art style! Not the biggest fan of the trees, but the characters look great.
I'll have to try this soon.

What a cool artstyle.

Although it's early on, you got the skeleton for a really great game.
Trees could do with a touchup, but I assume you're focusing on mechanics right now rather than the graphics.

keep it up!

Thank you both! I've been getting quite a few complaints about the trees, so I'll see what I can do about it. Also, by the trees needing a touch-up, are you talking about the sprite itself, or the way it was rendered? The current sprite is a placeholder sprite from Black and White, just for referece ;)

Also, I might as well add in the current version I have available, which was skipped here twice ;P
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fniegoormp7wr9w/TowerBlazeUpdate4.1.zip?dl=0

I'll only post the most notable changes:
Changelog:

Spoiler:

Dungeons

• Dungeons have been reworked completely, now running on a very neat generator algorithm that I wrote. This means that dead-ends are almost nonexistent, rooms are more interesting to explore, and overall the whole floor is much, much bigger.
• Things that spawn in the dungeons, such as the portal to the next floor and the chests, now only spawn within rooms, in the event that they would spawn in hallways and make things frustrating.
• Monsters now spawn much more frequently, and more-so around the area you're in rather than around the floor. Also, monsters will no longer spawn within walls.

Characters/Monsters

• All stats of the classes and monsters have been altered drastically for balance purposes. Players now deal far less damage, and monsters have much more health. Monsters will also have more health if there are more party members in the party.
• Monsters now have a chance to drop their contracts, which slowly increases when more monsters are defeated.
• Monsters now spawn in groups related to how many party members their are.
• Party members that are controlled by the computer are less barbaric when fighting, now giving themselves a break after a few successful hits on the enemy they were fighting.
• Weapons have been buffed to deal more damage at later tiers.

Etc

• There are now more buttons in the info screen that gives the player information on things
• There is now a running system in place. Just double tap a directional key twice in order to start running!