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Welcome to the Tower of Dogrock! This is a roguelike-JRPG hybrid that is a bit of an experiment as I try to combine different elements of both genres. The end result is a game that will hopefully appeal to fans of either.

Features:

  • Randomized rooms and events. No two playthroughs will be the same!
  • A finely tuned battle system that demands strategy and resourcefulness. Interesting abilities with different mechanics allow you to creatively build your character in different ways!
  • Choose from four playable classes for your main character! (Currently 2 are available)
  • Select an artifact to bring with you on your journey. Choose wisely! Each offers a unique bonus that will aid you in your quest.
  • A huge item table!

The Tower of Dogrock takes place in an enigmatic tower which is said to hold a treasure of great value at its peak. The story follows Rava, an adventurer who has come to this forsaken dungeon to find his missing girlfriend. With his partner Elenya, he bravely enters a place where no one has returned from. Together, they will uncover the terrible secrets and ancient horrors that lay hidden within the enigmatic Dogrock.

Latest Blog

Download is up!

Well, here it is. The first public release of The Tower of Dogrock. I'm interested in hearing peoples' thoughts and getting feedback. Hope you enjoy!
  • Production
  • Ocedic
  • RPG Maker VX Ace
  • RPG
  • 05/20/2013 10:02 PM
  • 03/08/2017 11:51 PM
  • N/A
  • 35843
  • 40
  • 722

Posts

Pages: 1
Is there no way to heal up the party? I'm to the first boss, but both characters are really low in HP and MP, and food heals kind of pitiful amounts, so I don't stand a chance against him.
I loved it up until now but the boss of the second floor is strong as f***(the false god or something). I guess if I train a lot I will be able to beat him.
Still, great game. I'll be watching you :D
Hey Ocedic - I started playing this and it really did hook me!
The noise that plays whenever text was displayed seemed to be annoying at first, but it sort of grew onto me. Similarly, I was annoyed at how slow the text was going, but after reading what each character has to say, I really did appreciate it. Every person says something incredibly interesting, where it's something to do with the back story as to why they got into the tower and I loved that mechanic. They each revealed new pieces of information on the tower and that definitely made me want to know more.
The tower is very mysterious in many ways such as it goes through several different dimensions for different parties and also has a different style for each floor; it sort of reminds of me of mystery dungeons (from pokemon). The idea is deliciously integrated into this RPG maker game.
You also seem to have a nice balance between story and gameplay. The options at the beginning where you can choose which artifact you can take into the game and what class the main character is will be the reason I will be replaying this game. I love the formula of dungeon -> boss -> story. For instance, the long cut scene that played between the second and first floor was truly interesting. It made me feel a tad sorry for Elenya.
The boss was also excellently designed as well. Elenya died at the right end of the first boss, while Rava survived by an inch. By the time I won, I felt WOW, that was a good boss. It was the sigh of relief, satisfaction, pride that I did it cause it was kind of tough (for my standards, anyway).
Things I didn't like were some of the lighting effects. In floor 1, the lights emitted a hideous yellow blob and the tint didn't look nice as well; it was like a thick dark glop covering my screen. But those are just minor nitpicks, really.
I'm currently at the start of floor 2 (a bunch of rats just killed me) and I'll pick this up again later!
I enjoyed game so far, but it would be nice to have at least one healing crystal on each floor, I found one on first and that's it.
BurningTyger
Hm i Wonder if i can pul somethi goff here/
1289
I assume the title's a pun on the Tower of Druaga.
edchuy
You the practice of self-promotion
1624
I got a chance to play the demo today. I agree with Lustermx's observation, plus I'll add the following:

- I found several things to be quite sluggish with the demo: the default text speed (I set it to Instant to make it bearable, although it was still painful through some cutscenes), the speed at which cutscenes occur, battle animations (more on this below), walking speed (couldn't run pressing SHIFT)
- I was a bit irritated by the font: those "y"s and "l"s look weird to me
- In several of the barrels in the first floor, when I searched them, I got a series of items including a weapon that I already had equipped on one of my party members; when I checked my inventory after that, the weapon I had just found was not there; same thing happened with the silver chest next to the king in the second floor, where I supposedly got another copy of the crafting recipes
- In the second floor, where you enter the rooms with the boulders you can push, I'm not sure if I did something wrong, but I ended up with the boulders from both sides blocking me from finding out what was further in; you should consider having some sort of reset mechanism such as the boulders resetting if you leave the room, for example.
- I thought the help tips were useful, although, in some cases could have been introduced earlier in the game.
- I liked the crafting, skills and passive acquisition systems; it would be better, though, if acquiring some of the more advanced skills cost more money.
- I found the skills that have effects that last several turns to be the most useful compared to the ones having a one turn effect; I think their MP cost should be slightly higher especially for those multiturn ones affecting all enemies
- I didn't realize, at first, that you had to press another button during the turn to activate the chain attacks for the third party member.
- For the second boss, I only got some coins as a material reward.
- I would have liked for there to be a bit more money from beating the enemies in the second floor, since it made it hard to balance buying items or skills or passives
- I would have been nice to have a couple of intermediate save points on the first floor; for the second one, I found having save points in so many rooms to be a little too much.
- For battle animations of skills affecting several enemies or party members, I would have preferred to have only one animation showing the effect on those affected, all at the same time, instead having repeated animations showing the effect on one at a time
- I found the first boss to be quite challenging, although I found the key to beating it was using those multiturn effect skills, having some healing items available that could be used during the battle if the HP or MP of a party member got low, plus defending at the right time; it would definitely be very hard to beat if one of the party members died relatively early in the fight because there's no way to revive them.
- The second boss I didn't find as hard, since my two main party members had all of their skills, plus a couple of the passives activated. The only reason I had trouble at the beginning was not realizing how the chain attacks worked.
- I found finding items either from fights or searching was a question of luck. Especially, getting things you can equip on your party members.
- I liked the writing, dialogue and plot.
- Finding some dead people along the way made the tower feel dangerous.
- I guess some of the books you find in the bookcases in the second floor were supposed to prepare you for the second boss ...
- I managed to play through the demo without getting anyone killed. It took me just over 2 hours to be finish the demo (except for what I forgot to do, see below!)

I really enjoyed the demo except for those nitpicky details that I mentioned that I feel can be improved upon.

BTW, I just realized I forgot go back to face the King's trials before facing the second boss. I'll do so and let you know if there are any new comments about that part.
I finished the two floor demo with a Shaman/Fortune Cat combination on Hardcore. All rooms cleared, King's Trials completed, second floor boss completed. Thoughts, in no particular order:

I learned Rejuvenation and Mind Drinker at the end of the first floor, and from then I pretty much stacked +Int and rolled the game with those two skills alone. He did workable physical damage, his active healing was okay in a pinch and his starting thunder spell was great for when things really needed to die, but regeneration outpaced enemy damage quite quickly and he could restore his MP faster than he used it.

Mindstrike was theoretically useful for its ability to proc Mind Drinker, but despite his high intelligence, I had no interest in his purchasable elemental spells -- his thunder spell fulfilled most of my burst damage needs and any turn where he wasn't using Rejuvenation or attacking was a turn he wasn't restoring MP to fuel the perpetual motion machine. Even if they were free to purchase, I probably wouldn't have used them much.

Elenya's Shadowpriest class was pretty cool. Mortify's instant-cast ability makes her an incredible damage dealer even before her other spells are considered. Two problems: 1) I don't think I ever saw her "chance to refresh duration" ability actually activate on Mortify. 2) She had great burst damage, but she had no way to refill her MP. That meant that she spent most random battles as an accessory, tapping enemies with her wand while the Shaman did all the actual work. Sure, she was great for boss battles, but giving her something to do in randoms would be nice.

Two of her skills should be replaced, though. Mind over Matter is actively detrimental and should be replaced. Consuming Dream is a bad idea. If MP is easy to restore, it's overpowered; if it's difficult to restore, then it's useless. There's no in-between, and that's a bad sign. I'd replace it with a damage spell that restores MP when it kills -- that makes her much more useful for random battles. The other four are great.

I don't think I ever found any parts very difficult. The first King battle was slightly problematic, largely because I went into it without knowing the plants had Bad Breath, but I had a stockpile of items. If the third battle was any indication, then knowing that would have made it pretty easy. (If I'd checked their Shift description, for example.)

I didn't use Rhox much. I didn't realize the trigger for recruiting him was stopping right in front of the boss, so I beat the King's Trials and cleared the floor without recruiting him. He got no skills and no additional equipment, but he seemed okay. I managed to kill the boss without ever figuring out chain skills. If his 100 gold Conviction skill is "if TP is below 50 after battle, then TP=50," then he's much more useful.

From a purely theory-crafting perspective, Fortune Cat beats the pants off of the other two items. Money is incredibly important in this game, especially early on; getting more money means more skills, better equipment, and more items. The first two compound the third advantage, since greater combat strength means better resource efficiency.

From a story-telling perspective, you should probably be more subtle about Elenya's thing for Rava. Or, alternatively, go the complete opposite direction and have Elenya and Rava address her interest more openly. The problem is that Elenya is a controllable ally, has a much larger screen presence than Sarah, and is in a more sympathetic position. I don't know about anyone else, but it sort of immediately deinvests me in actually rescuing Sarah. I'd rather the character I know and who produces big damage numbers be happy over a character I haven't really seen.

You should probably look into whether you can make the game autosave when you close the window, or at least pop up a warning window before it lets you. I opened the completed save file to check some things, closed it when I wasn't paying attention, and lost the data. I was trapped inside a room anyway, so it doesn't make much difference, but that'd be painful if I was further into a more complete version.


I'll probably try the game with the other class and see what the game is like when you're not invincible. However that turns out, I've already subscribed and I look forward to more! If you want someone to bounce ideas off of, I'd be happy to do so; I've played enough dungeon crawlers and RPGs that I think I'm pretty decent at breaking games.
edchuy
You the practice of self-promotion
1624
OK. So I went back and did the King's Trials. The first one was straightforward. The other two, I found harder than even the second boss battle. In the second one, the problem I ran into is that enemy that heals itself and whatever other enemies are still alive by relatively large amounts (compared to the damage done by my party's attacks). In the third, the nasty effect of Miasma caused so serious problems at the beginning of the fight.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that I played using the Shaman class in the normal mode, if that helps.
Bastard is finding of the third member so the end demo. Money won is very little in the battles. I managed to get to the end of the demo with 2:40. I spent a lot of money buying mp. I missed a way to recover hp and mp without having to spend scarce money. Greatly limits the development of the characters and their abilities.
considering its just a demo so far, not bad.

i did however find rhox to be rather useless for the 2nd boss fight since his "chain system" didn't do a thing and left him with only 2-3 usable skills once i bought them all. used a chain initiator after building up the TP (red?) bar and it still only let me use that 1 skill per turn so no chain skills for rhox yet, unless i missed something >.>

also, loved the combat music btw.
shayoko
We do not condone harassing other members by PM.
515
im gonna check this one out just from the screen shots i know he put a reasonable amount of work into this
nice work man
i dont know when ill get back with my thoughts tho so many games to go thru and some days i just dont feel like it :(
still nice work!
edchuy
You the practice of self-promotion
1624
author=shayoko
im gonna check this one out just from the screen shots i know he put a reasonable amount of work into this
nice work man
i dont know when ill get back with my thoughts tho so many games to go thru and some days i just dont feel like it :(
still nice work!


Seems I am following several games you've looked into (make that 5).
shayoko
We do not condone harassing other members by PM.
515
all the spotlights :D
This plays like a roguelike survival game like 'dont starve' rather than an RPG. Resources are extremely limited and random, and enemies don't respawn. This means that how well you're doing depends only on your strats and the RNG. And given the limited resources, your strats would probabbly have to focus on survival...

AFter clearing the entire 2nd floor, I went in for the boss, got wiped in a bout 2-3 turns since he goes two times and can spam a high damage fire spell that hits the entire party. And does it twice per turn. gg
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