Demon Tower: The Old, Decrepit Version

The 47th Amateur Game Made by Craze - Doubles as Work of Genius

Prolific community member Craze has made somewhere between 40 and 900,000 games. Most of them have been unfinished and almost all of them have been produced with some version of RPGMaker. There are common threads running through all of his games: they are all eastern-style Role Playing Games, employ unusual gameplay systems, are profoundly but subversively crass, always feature homosexual characters, and are always pretty good. Demon Tower has all of these qualities, but with a key distinction: it is one of the most clever, well-designed, and fun amateur RPGs I have ever played.

Demon Tower has an extremely straight-forward setup: the party of intrepid adventurers is climbing a tower full of demons. The party has to kill these demons in order to advance. Battles are fought in a first-person, turn-based battle system with a minimum of animation. Traps are hidden everywhere around the tower, and have a variety of negative effects. Gamers over the age of 25 probably grew up playing games like this (Gold Box titles and Wizardry in particular) and gamers under the age of 25 have probably played tributes to games like this (Etrian Odyssey). Demon Tower is a dungeon crawler, through and through. It could be placed in any different setting – Demon Castle, Demon Forest, Demon Space Station – and it would still be the same game. Despite its hackneyed premise however, Demon Tower is an excellent game because it has exceptional mechanics, design, and a ton of personality.

In Demon Tower, the player does not create his own party, but he is offered so many different options that just about any play style is viable. There are 14 different characters in the player's battle party, and the player has access to every one of them all of the time. Each character is unique and has access to their own skillset (though they do fall into loose categories of Tank, Fighter, Magic, and Support). None of the characters are customizable beyond their equipment sets, but since there are so many to choose from, the player does feel some ownership for his customized battle party.

These characters aren't just specialized, interchangeable drones – they are characters with character. They have histories, objectives, and relationships with each other. The entire story of Demon Tower is revealed through short, five-sentence conversations between any of the 14 characters. Sometimes, this occurs in the middle of a battle, in response to triggering a trap, or completely randomly. The writing is concise and effective, and Craze tells a lot of story through short phrases like this. It's a surprisingly effective means of storytelling that provides context but does not break the game flow.

Demon Tower is a triumph because it takes advantage of its featureset and incorporates it into a wonderful design. The first floors of the tower are pretty straight-forward, but they quickly turn into winding mazes full of traps, options, and multiple paths to success. Every enemy encounter is challenging, but not too difficult as long as the player is able to effectively use the many options at their disposal. There is true strategy to dungeon crawling and monster slaying in Demon Tower.

One event that stands out in particular is the first major boss. This is a brutal battle against a foe who gets progressively more desperate and violent as the battle rages on. In this battle, I had to swap all 14 of my party members in and out of the front line, and by the end of the battle, all but two of them had been killed. It was as tense and visceral an experience as a battle system with almost no animation could possibly provide.

Demon Tower's aesthetics are fine but unexceptional. All resources are royalty-free RPGMaker graphics or public-domain cartoons. The interfaces are functional and well-programmed and provide ready access to the many new features Demon Tower provides.

Demon Tower is an excellent game that is recommended to everyone who likes dungeon crawlers. It has just enough new features to set it apart from other RPGs, with game design and writing that is good enough to maintain player interest.

This review is written for the initial release of Demon Tower featuring the first 1/4 of the game.