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Tower of trials!

The Wizards Tower is a game made by Grindalf in 2013/2014 with Rpg Toolkit, and engine I do not know very well but since this game is 100% original assets and rather short I'd decided to try it.

Wasting little time in introductions, the game tells about an evil wizard living on the top of a magical tower (a wizards typical habitat!) and some people disappearing mysteriously... when the sister of a knight disappears, the brave brother decide to terminate the wizard. Uhm ok this is all, really.

So our alter ego is this hero in fullplate that walk rather slowly (you know, wearing iron does not make you faster at all!) and that boldly enter the tower unarmed (!!!)... but do not worry, the first room contains a magical talking sword that is also able to cast magical spells! Cool! And that's where the adventure begins.


Classical Indiana Jones moment...

The Wizards Tower is a short puzzle/adventure game in which you have to climb the five floors of the tower solving easy puzzles, avoiding traps, fighting monsters. The game has simple controls and is rather intuitive, combat is also explained very well:
In combat you have TWO actions: one is the knight action that means attacking with the sword or using an item, the other is the action of the talking sword, that can cast magic (using her a resource of mana) and insult enemies making them lose their turn (but unlike magic this isn't always successful!).
During the adventure the knight will find some new spells (besides the Fire/Attack spell and the Earth/Defense spell that the sword knows in the beginning).

Luckily there are chest with loot inside the tower, but this does not mean money, no.. you will just find various kind of potions, from health potions to mana potions and elixirs. Considering that there is also a healing spell, I guess that there is no shortage of means to heal our hero. (Oh and how the talking sword points out the knight drinks the mana potions but she recovers mana... maybe because he is a conductor?).

Yes, healing. The knight has a limited number of life points but combat isn't the only situation in which he can be wounded: there are spikea, boulders and other nasty traps that can lead to a bad ending and a game over (the first time I played I died on some fast moving spikes), luckily in most cases these traps are easily avoidable if you take your time and manage your resources well. This is the best strategy since I found NO way to save, so death means restarting from the beginning from what I noticed, but do not worry, the game is rather easy and short, and you can easily complete it in less than an hour. The game is largely linear, even if there are a couple of places in which you can choose between different paths.

Graphically the game is simple but pleasant, looks good and has a distinct style that make it stand out since it's not your typical RTP game. There are not so many animations, but it's not a case where it's required, what I'd have liked it's maybe a longer and more developed backstory and ending since the knight has to face the trials, look for the evil mage and kill him. That's it, not cool ending or any info, but I will not complain, this is a game about turn based combat and little puzzles.


This sword can cast magic and even insult opponents to make them angry!


Final Verdict
The Wizards Tower may look like a bare bones game, and while it could have benefit of more puzzles and dialogues (and a more articulated story), it's still a complete and enjoyable short adventure. I liked even the music (no idea about the author) and I am impressed by the use of the custom graphics and art. Good! Puzzles are well designed, a bit on the easy side, anyway I found no errors or bugs. I especially liked one of the final puzzle where you have to light all the tiles of a platform without stepping on them twice.

Combat is also pretty easy (even the final boss encouter) and still fun, because it's all about simple strategy and resource managament. I am pretty sure that some players may underestimate this game difficulty the first time, and complete it during the second run.

In the end this is a simple and short puzzle game with very few flaws. Made more than six years ago, I can sum the review of The Wizards Tower with "old but gold"! 4/5!

Posts

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Wow thanks for the great review :D
A little back story for you,
The Wizards Tower was made as the Demo Game for the then new version of the RPGToolkit(3.2 I think it was)
Its one of the reasons I made everything simple but also tried to include a little bit of everything that somebody might want to add to their game and in the original demo version you could access all the files and programs where I did try to explain what was going on with remarks.
also You may have noticed that at the end the Sword was called Frap and used to be Human until the wizard turned him into a sword, the older demo game that existed before 3.2 had a character called Frap as the hero so I thought that would be a gentle nod to that(but of course nobody here would know that)

Thanks for doing the review, I have always considered making a sequel and if I do I will keep all your points in mind :)
yep, a sequel or remake would be cool. Maybe a sequel is better, anyway it's a good demo game, unfortunately I wasn't really familiar with RPGToolking (I used just Rm2k3, Rm2k and Openbor), but it was nice to know. I also see that I am not the only one that liked this game, and I have to agree with what my predecessors wrote!
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