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Eons ago, the tower spewed forth beasts and monsters of many kinds. Adventurers set forth to end the invasions, sealing the tower with a magical artifact and hiding it away. However, rumors spread that the tower lead to Paradise - a land free from worries.

Longing for such a land, unlikely as it was, a fearsome battle raged between kings. Each sought to become the supreme ruler and claim the fabled paradise for their own. Many have challenged the secret of the tower, but no one knows what became of them.

Now there is another who will brave the adventure.


Concept


Tower of the Spirit World is an "oldschool" RPG modeled after the NES/GB era of games. It focuses around a group of player-created adventurers and their journey into the titular tower. You, the player, will create your group of adventurers from 3 races and 8 classes. A total of 12 classes are planned, with 8 of them being finished so far. Players may choose each hero's gender as well, but this has no real bearing on the game.

Despite being based off classic RPGs, I'm attempting to do things slightly different - Experience(and levels) aren't gained from merely fighting random battles. Instead, experience is gained by defeating bosses or completing quests(story related or otherwise). Upon earning enough experience, a single character of your choice can be leveled up.

Leveling up offers new abilities unique to each race/class, and in some cases improves older ones. Don't worry, though - Combat is generally focused around equipment and skills, not levels. The vast majority of character stats will come from equipment, allowing you to choose your own style of play without gimping your party. Want a healer that can literally cure anything? Sure. Maybe you'd prefer a high-damage character to lead the way, or focus on debilitating your foes so your other heroes can wreak havoc on them. Whatever way you choose, you won't be limited by something as petty as "levels".

Note: Original story and concept is based on the Makai Toushi SaGa/Final Fantasy Legend trilogy, by Square Co. The story has branched out quite a bit and become something of it's own, with few of the original plot elements remaining.



Races and Classes

Humans:

Humans start with more HP than any other race, and have the most equipment options. They can choose to be one of four classes:

Slasher: Specializes in high damage dealing skills. Can wield 2H swords.
Medic: Specializes in healing HP, fatigue and status effects.
Scout: Specializes in debuffing or disabling enemies. Can wield most 1h weapons.
Defender: Specializes in party defense and leadership. Can wield shields.

Mutants

Mutants have less HP than any other race. While they can wear most light armors, they benefit more from wearing no armor. Using their natural armor offers a decent defense and allows them to regenerate fatigue quicker. Mutants cannot use most weapons, instead relying on their claws or spells. Mutants can receive upgrades to their spells as they level. They can choose one of four classes:

Fire Element: Spells have moderate damage and damage over time effects
Water Element: Spells can cure wounds and status effects, with some minor damage.
Lightning Element: High damage spells that can stun.
Earth Element: Multi-target spells that can slow or stun enemies.

Monsters

Monsters have moderate HP, but cannot use weapons or armor. Instead, they rely on learning and imitating enemy skills. These can be learned by eating a monster's corpse, or being taught by someone. Having a monster in the party may open additional dialogue at some points in the game. Monsters have no classes of yet, but in the future I plan to have different types implemented.




The current target completion date is January of 2015. This project, however, already has many years of work put into it, and I won't hold myself to a set date if I feel it isn't yet complete or could be improved.

Latest Blog

March 2014, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Make the Game

I recently read an interview with Hironobu Sakaguchi, the godfather of the Final Fantasy series. On the subject of one of his latest games(The Last Story for the Wii) he expressed how he wanted to focus on creating a smaller more detailed area for the game to take place in, rather than the sprawling world most RPGs share. He had the entire game take place on a very detailed island, with a few events taking place outside of it. This appealed to me in a way, and I've adopted that idea.

On that note, I've adopted that idea and scaled the world down quite a bit. I'd love to make an RPG with a huge world and an epic 4-disc long story, but quite frankly that's more work than I can handle and would severely reduce the quality of the game. A smaller world will result in a much more vibrant and memorable experience. I want players to be familiar with every town they visit and not disregard it because the next town has shiny new equipment.

Character creation has been tweaked and after getting a bit of feedback I've toned down the saturation a bit. Here's a look at the new creation menu:



As you may have noticed from the above screenshot, there are only three races now. I'd originally planned to have a fourth(Robots) in the style of FFL's World of Ruins robots, but I've decided they just don't fit in. I have far too much work to do with balancing the current races as it is, so it'll be for the best. On that note, combat has been rebalanced again, because logic. Magic has been tweaked so it does a proper amount of damage for the cost. If you choose to level up a mutant, they'll improve the power of their spells, and some spells may gain new traits or the ability to target more than one enemy. Mutants can now regain a small amount of stamina(essentially mana for all races) per turn(or over time when out of battle), while other races need to rest to restore their stamina. Mutant and Monster attack and defense changed considerably. Equipment costs and stats have been adjusted as well. Mutants and Monsters steamrolled the early game with high attack and defense, while Humans needed a lot of equipment to keep up. I've also adjusted each race's HP to better balance them.



Additionally, Monsters have finally received a much needed update. Monsters now have the ability to use three Absorb skills: Absorb HP, Absorb SP and Absorb Soul. Absorbing HP does a small amount of damage, but heals the character. Absorbing SP restores stamina, allowing the monster to use more skills. Absorbing an enemy's soul(or part of it) does significantly more damage, but provides no immediate benefit to the monster. Using any of the above skills has a (high) chance of allowing the monster to absorb said enemy's soul after the battle ends, assuming the enemy is killed quickly. If you take too long the opportunity will be lost and you'll have to try again. Instead of the original equip system I had going, Monsters will immediately equip a soul upon absorbing it. Souls provide various stat boosts. The previously mentioned "Land, air and sea" classes for monsters have been scrapped in favor of this new system.

To compliment this new system, I'm planning on adding a new NPC that deals with souls. This NPC will be able to take a monster's absorbed soul and use it to provide them with more permanent boosts. The soul will be permanently destroyed, but the monster may receive permanent stat boosts, new skills or even various mutations. I have other possible plans - I've been considering putting monsters on a separate leveling system that requires absorbing a certain amount of souls, but that's still heavily in progress.

One last system has been implemented: Party wipes. Should your entire party fall in battle, all party members except the leader will perish. At this time you'll keep any equipment they had, but will have to recruit 3 new party members. The idea behind this is to give death an actual meaning instead of a simple game over, but I didn't want to be as harsh about it as FFL was(when a character died they were gone for good, with the exception of your first character). This is still undergoing some testing and feedback, though, so it's subject to change at a moment's notice.

That's all for now, but I'll have more updates at a later date as well as some new screenshots.
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  • 10/24/2013 06:29 AM
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Pages: 1
You didn't notice it because I don't advertise it or post around much :D
How come I didn't notice this gamepage??? <3
*subscribes* this is one awesome project, buddy! =D
It originally was - Enemies dropped stupidly low amounts of money while items and inns were expensive, which led to it being easy to run out of money and have no way to heal. It was sort of a forced grind filled with fake difficultyand I don't think anyone would've enjoyed that.
Like the style. Look a bit like Zelda II. Hopefully this one isn't that hard.
Weapons won't have limited uses anymore. Stat-boosting items aren't available at the moment, though I'm planning on adding HP boosting items. Not sure if I'll have the others, as the damage algorithms are a bit funky and it'd be hard to properly balance that. There's also no character permadeath of yet, though I'm working on it. I was thinking of a more toned-down version where you'd lose everyone but your main character(the first one you created) in the event of a party wipe.


The game currently has the World of Continent arc and the tower from FFL, but I don't think I'll follow the story exactly after that. I'm trying to keep the important plot elements in while eventually turning it into a (somewhat) original story.
Will items have limited use?
I want to buy 66 Butt like I used to.
Nice to see the game getting a bit more attention. Big cheers for old school!
No, I'm an entirely different Rast. I have stumbled across him on some other forums I'm active on - He goes by Rast Blackwing on RPG Revolution, for example.

Back to the game - I've been pretty friggin inactive, had a sudden burst of 6-day work weeks, but I'm slowly making some progress. Considering doing a completely original soundtrack as opposed to 8-bit styled arrangements of Final Fantasy Legend/Adventure themes. It'd certainly help the game out, I think.
This looks so awesomely retro! Very nice!

Also I'm curious, are you the Rast from the old days of RPG Maker?
Looks interesting. I was a fan of the Game Boy's SaGa series. You've put a lot of thought into the game design, too.

Best of luck.
Pages: 1