Tower of Time - party-based real-time isometric dungeon crawler

[Iskramor]

was watching gameplay video and this game looks and seems to play just like a Tower Defense game. ugh.

And you cant pause just slow down

There is an option to change it pause or slow down. It is in the settings menu.

Fuck me for not doing research i think im gonna buy it right away and play it until deadfire.

 

[Iskramor]

was watching gameplay video and this game looks and seems to play just like a Tower Defense game. ugh.

And you cant pause just slow down

There is an option to change it pause or slow down. It is in the settings menu.

And i must apologise if i ever insulted you its just shitposting nothing personal.

 

[fantadomat]

was watching gameplay video and this game looks and seems to play just like a Tower Defense game. ugh.

And you cant pause just slow down

There is an option to change it pause or slow down. It is in the settings menu.

And i must apologise if i ever insulted you its just shitposting nothing personal.

No need to mate,i to like to get passionate from time to time. I keep shit throwing and disagreeing only to the thread they are in,there is ton of different games and tastes on the codex. It is only natural to agree and disagree with the same person on a different things. Really don't get people that remember some small banter half a year ago,and see them self as your mortal enemy. Anyway, i am jaded asshole that couldn't be offended on the internet.

 

[Rpguy]

After viewing it a little this game looks really similar to Aarklash Legacy ( too much to be a coincidence ) , any relation?

 

[Solfear]

I reached the end of ToT last night, and this game is a true hidden gem. Great story, great mechanics. A dungeon-crawler point&click tactical/RPG with pause or slow motion, and a deep intriguing story spanning on 80 hours at least in Epic mode, what else? It needs to be better known, really!

 

[fantadomat]

I reached the end of ToT last night, and this game is a true hidden gem. Great story, great mechanics. A dungeon-crawler point&click tactical/RPG with pause or slow motion, and a deep intriguing story spanning on 80 hours at least in Epic mode, what else? It needs to be better known, really!

How many levels is ? I am just getting the will to finish it.

 

[Solfear]

11 levels. But the 11th is very short, 3 fights only. How far into the game are you?

 

[fantadomat]

11 levels. But the 11th is very short, 3 fights only. How far into the game are you?

On 9th or 10th. The one that is like a parliament.

 

[Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal]

How much did they pay you?

 

[Solfear]

The one you said is probably Floor 9. The 10th is quite long too, something like 16 fights if I remember well. But it would be a shame to stop here, you are not very far from the end.

Master Planetar > Did you try the game yet? It's an honest opinion.

 

[fantadomat]

How much did they pay you?

One chained planetar in my sex dungeon.

 

[toro]

How much did they pay you?

One chained planetar in my sex dungeon.

Why not beaten to death?

 

[fantadomat]

How much did they pay you?

One chained planetar in my sex dungeon.

Why not beaten to death?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Long post, there's been 4 patches so far.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/617480/announcements/detail/3277933988956323554

Patch #1 & Hotfix 19/4

Spoiler

April 18 - Event Horizon

Hello,

We hope most of you are enjoying the game. When we decided to break the copy/paste tradition on present gaming market and try something new, we were expecting that not everyone will like it. Judging by the reactions so far, most of you do like it. We are very happy about that.

When you play and finish the game, please leave us a review - your feedback is very important for us. This is our first project and we need your input to make sure that Tower of TIme is the game You want to play, and not only the pet project of “know-it-all developers”.

We received a lot of Report Issue logs or emails in the last week. Only thanks to them we were able to identify the problems that we could not otherwise reproduce. Big thanks for that !!


The patch notes are as follows:


Technical

• Crashes at start some experienced
  We couldn’t reproduce them but there seems to be a pattern between our compression codecs and players’ codecs. We did two things here - we added a timeout if video doesn’t play at all (that should not cause game to crash) and we rendered all cinematics again. We do hope it will solve the problem - if not - please let us know and we will try another solution with next week patch
  
• Performance should improve in several areas pointed out as problematic
  
• High GPU/CPU usage - if you are experiencing those, please try vsync option on and off. If that doesn’t help - please be so kind and Report Issue so we can nail this problem.
  
• Fixed Tutorial Tips scaling on 21:9 and higher ratios.
  (we also are looking into increasing text size for those of you that play on large screens - that would take a little longer)
  
• Fixed issue with black screen appearing sometimes when movie is skipped

Gameplay

• Selected unit will not move at all even if in aggressive stance mode. You can keep them all in healing totem range. Just deselect champion(s) again (or press “A”) to let him run towards enemies.
  
• Fixed issues with item upgrades that had values clamp to integer value
  
• Fixed teleporter problem ( teleports no longer block themselves after returning to city while teleportation was in progress )
  
• Floor 1 -- Fixed rare issue with Magic Barrier and Devron
  
• Floor 5 - Fixed issue with closed door / pinpad and Mech that was preventing access

Combat

We didn’t touch the champions yet, even if some builds are obviously steamrolling things on hard and even epic. Great creativity!

The only change was to the cost of Elemental Barrage - it was capped at 60 mana for level 3, 4, 5 of the skill. Now it is 60 mana for L3, 70 mana for L4 and 80 mana for L5.

• Reaper Guard, Floor 1 - can be blinded again (stops drain life channel)
  
• Two fights, Floor 2 - in Library and end level portals - decreased difficulty
  
• Sewer fight, Floor 3 - decreased difficulty
  
• Air Elemental Boss - changed fight mechanics, increased difficulty
  
• Screamers - blind grenade duration reduced from 4 to 3 seconds

Item Forge
(edit)

There is a change to mana and health regeneration change per upgrade.
We had rounding error before.

• Mana - 1 upgrade granted 1 mana regen point - now it grants 0.1
  (as was always intended).
  
  
• Health - 1 upgrade granted 1 health point - now it grants 0.5
  (as was always intended).

It is a significant change in case you had invested into those statistics - and we apologize for this. If you have problem with your builds now - please let us know.


Next Patch

For the next week patch we plan to focus on the further performance improvement and few other quality of life features.

If you want to chat with us or other players - please join our Discord and share your thoughts.
https://discord.gg/8hpkCgD

Small Hotfix - 19 April

When in Save Game screen, sometimes the buttons where grayed out - implying they couldn't be used. They could - but now the color is back as well.
(did not do separate announcement for that since its minor change)

Thank you for playing Tower of Time!


Cheers,
Event Horizon Team


On the side note - you can download all our music tracks for free - there should be a DLC area. Since there is no price box, it is not so visible.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/617480/announcements/detail/1655513312032850146
Patch #2

Spoiler

April 27 - Event Horizon

Dear Players

This patch brings a lot of quality improvements requested by you as well as several balancing changes and bug fixes. The list is very long so apologies for a wall of text that follows.

We will appreciate your reviews on Steam and metacritic. It seems our game somehow is received as too hardcore and that scares a lot of people away. We have several difficulty settings, so it is accessible to anyone - if you come just for the story have no fear.

Please help us spread the word about the game.


New Features

• New steam cards, backgrounds, emoticons and badges.
  
  
• Minimap. You can turn it off and on with 'N' or by pressing compass icon.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Buff icons in combat that show the remaining time of the buff above skill tab.
  
  
  
  
  
• Pre-battle movement - initial positioning is very important when it comes to threat. Now you can move the champions within limited area.
  
  
  
  
  
• New enchanting icons. Not the most important update - but they look nicer now.
  
  
  
  
  
• When your champions are immobilized, there is an icon on character portrait (similar to when they are trapped).
  
• Hotkey "T" to change champion stances betwen Stand Ground and Move and Attack.
  
• Two new high-end practise dummies that simulate end-game bosses.
  
• Added achievements for epic - win 5 battles on epic for each floor.

Gameplay fixes and changes

• Issue with low cinematic sound on some configurations should be fixed now.
  
• 100% Progress fixed - mostly The battles that count towards progress are show on the map.
  
• 
  (if it happens that you don't see all progress bars, please enter this level and exit it.)
  
• Graphic improvements to both introduction levels.
  
• Journals necessary for quests are now more visible.
  
• 
  
• Bestiary not showing up sometimes has been fixed.
  
• Bestiary now opens on the current tower floor.
  
• 
  
• Frogs jumps up and down in merriment. Consider this if you want to The most critical update that will help us to get more attention.
  
• Lots of typos and syntax errors corrected (we are getting there).
  
• Lots of new SFX added in exploration and combat.
  
• Aura skills - visual upgrade.
  
• Item Forge - health regeneration upgrade - increased from 0.3 to 0.5/
  
• Some Unique Items (especially from Challenges) are upgraded - so they can be a competitive option for Item Forged Green items.

Combat

We spent a lot of time on improving combat and balancing the game based on tons of feedback and lots of end-game parties. Some of the "crazy" builds took us by surprise

Most important is a set of changes to animations, pathing and enemy behavior that should make everything much more responsive and smooth.

Also, we did some rebalancing - especially to champion's skills and mid-game floors (5-7) that were too easy.

Magic Penetration decreased slightly on higher end items.
Armor Penetration - increased across all weapons / tiers.
Physical-based party should be again viable on Hard and Epic.

Fights on the first floor have an easier learning curve now. You don’t have too many options yet to customize your party and you made a valid point. If you find some of them too easy now - please adjust your difficulty as needed. Level 2 is unchanged.

There are close to 300 individual changes made, so I will list only the most important ones below.

Mech companion has been buffed somewhat. He has a speed aura and can temporarily stun enemies around him. He remains the team mascot, but at least he does some confusion on the battlefield now. That is a small compensation that he just charges at closest portal without asking anyone.

Skills

Kane:

• Stone wall - mana cost reduced to flat 20 for each level, duration set at flat 16 seconds at each level [with max cd reduction the uptime on the wall is now 80%]

Maeve:

• Arrow Barrage - damage per arrow increased, at max level from 50 to 70
  
• Bear Traps - bleeding damage increased, at max level from 10 to 15 dmg per second.
  
• Rain of Arrows - damage per arrow increased, at max level from 40 to 48

Aeric:

• Earth Fury - damage per stone increased, at max level from 100 to 140. B2 poison damage increased, at max level from 9 to 12.

Rakhem:

The new theme at Event Horizon is "Love Thy Dwarf"

• Rakhem - Base Health increased from 160 to 180. Health per level increased from 18 to 20.
  
• Inner Fire - an upgrade for both B1 (tanking path) and significant upgrade for B2 (damage path) - so there is a more clear risk/reward for different playstyles.
  
• Path of Flames - increased length at all levels, B2 extended burning duration
  
• Blinding Flash - B2 now deals Air damage too.

Boron:

• Health per level increased from 20 to 22.
  
• Cleave - reduced cleave% by 10% for each level
  
• Axe Throw - increased damage per axe. For B2 - reduced weakness to 30% at each level

Whisper:

• Thunder Injection - reduced elemental weakness slightly at each level, at max level from 18% to 12% (dual wielding was too strong at higher levels / it still applies 2x debuff for dual wield)
  
• Elemental Barrage - no of base projectiles 5 to 4, Damage per projectile base - slight reduction. For B2 - increased Void dmg component - so B1 and B2 are now competitive. Overall - at max level the effective damage of this skill is reduced by approximately 20%. It is still very overpowered.
  
• Magic Tower -- B1 now deals splash damage of Base damage at the same speed

Kaela:

We made few interesing changes to Kaela as she was too difficult to master yet too overpowered when did so.

• Electric Cage - B1 - damage per second increase at all levels, at max from 20 to 24 Air dmg per second. B2 - Weakness reduced across all levels - at max level from 60% to 40% (it is a very long duration skill and it was too easy to stack with other skills for 100% weakness).
  
• Summon Mech - variable duration increased from 20-40 to 20-60 seconds. Number of mechs increased. At max level she can now create up to 12 mechs. (insane, yes - but it is so fun skill)
  
• Elemental Grenade name changed to Void Grenade. Explosion radius reduced from 5m to 4m. At B1 - resistance reduction decreased, at max level from 100% to 80%
  
• Tesla Cannon - as it is high risk / reward skill (requiring positioning), its damage output has been increased significantly. With B2 boost, at max level damage increased from 400 to 600
  
• Titan - a massive boost to everything. Now this is truly an ultimate ability.

Balancing

• Added new type of skill - magic reflect (similar to physical reflect) - some enemies on floors 5-7 received this upgrade, tired of being shredded by Whisper's Elemental Barrage.
  
• Shade - was too easy, Voidspawns now should be more than a nuisance (new skills added)
  
• Titan Boss - major overhaul - he is no longer just a target dummy
  
• Floors 5-7 - enemies and combat encounters rebalanced as they were too easy. That includes their statistics, damage output and skills. Now there should no longer be such a difficulty spike between 7 and 8 - as you will need to take care of your party always.
  
• Both Exo-ME 10 and Exo-RA560 bosses - rebalanced to offer better challenge.
  
• Warleader - throws 2 axes and now and the skill description is clear for axes and his leap. He should be much easier to deal with now.
  
• Tower Avatar - health increased
  
• Francisco Pizzaro - his skills are more dangerous now
  
• Ferdinan Magellan - combat overhauled to make it more challenging
  
• Irradiated Elemental Lord - he wasn't enough irradiating - now he should be. (he is an optional boss, so yes, he should be very fun now)
  
• Void Horror - he wasn't enough horrifying - now he should be.

We will continue to work on further improvements.

Please share your feedback via Report Issue or join our Discord to talk with us directly.

Thanks for playing Tower of Time


Cheers,
Event Horizon Team

https://steamcommunity.com/games/617480/announcements/detail/1653263415651465207
Patch #3 + German lang.

Spoiler

May 16 - Event Horizon

Dear Players,

Another big update that implements few quality of life features and corrects bugs based on your feedback.

German Language
We have added German language option. It should automatically detect your operating system language, if not - you can switch it from Settings. Many thanks to all players that helped us with some missing texts and did overall language proofing. If you spot anything amiss, please be so kind and let us know.

Other Languages Update
We should be ready with Polish language within few days. Russian language is at about 80% done and should be released in 2-3 weeks’ time. We are also working on Turkish, French, Chinese Simplified, Spanish and Japanese – although here we cannot give you time estimate yet.

Quality of life changes

• Reworked dusty scroll mechanics. Now they always show the effect of the scroll. They are split into Lesser and Greater scrolls. Lesser Scroll grants a small positive effect while Greater Scroll grants a powerful positive effect but also a small negative one.
  
  
  
  
  
• Added auto-cast option for buffs. New checkbox is added to the skill button.
  
  
  
  
  
• New battle unit tooltip with more information.
  
  
  
  
  
• Added health and mana regeneration stats to hero portraits.
  
  
  
  
  
• Combat loot is now scaling with difficulty. If there is a unique item as a reward, it has slightly better stats on hard (+) and epic (++). Gold amount is slightly increased and additional crafting crystal can be looted.
  
  
  
  
  
• Added crafting for Jewelry (from Blacksmith level 1) and Pistols (from Blacksmith level 3).
  
• Unique items have one item forge slot so their life should now be longer.
  
• Each resistance on Armor is now shown separately.
  
• Daze and Stun effects are now shown on champion’s portrait.
  
• When battle starts, first champion is always selected.
  
• Reflect damage icon is changed.
  
• Buff graphical effects are now toned down, so the visibility of the effects (if there are many) is improved.
  
• Added subtle animated environment elements (e.g. moving machines or swaying chandeliers).
  
• Improved graphics on few floors (e.g. intro floor).
  
• Four new battlemaps added.

 
Bug Fixes

• Few English typos were fixed. It should be now 100% correct.
  
• 100% Completion is always possible now – even .
  
• Fixed buff timers sometimes duplicating.
  
• Fixed hero stats sometimes not updating in inventory.
  
• Fixed Main Damage getting replaced with Additional Damage after Item Forge (it caused problems when using Sunpower enchant).
  
• Fixed Khan battle – now killing portal first and boss after does not result in a long waiting time before the battle is concluded.
  
• Fixed some enemy summons which had 1 Health.
  
• Towers and Portals now highlight properly when skill casting.
  
• Fixed auto-save icon now showing all the time.
  
• Elemental Barrage does not block movement now before projectiles hit the targets.
  
• 
  
• The nasty chest on floor 5 at fountain can now be accessed.
  
• Kelsier’s Unique items now work properly and do stack armor reduction.
  
• Fixed chest on floor 5 (near the fountain) that was difficult to pick up.
  
• Fixed enchant names.

Combat balancing

With the help of few players we made tons of small and bigger changes. Most notably – due to reward scaling and received feedback – we increased overall difficulty on hard and epic. It would be impossible to list every single change we made (over 1000), so here is a recap of the most important ones:

• 
  
• Fixed: Push and Pull skill effects no longer break the channel skills. One problem with difficulty was that lots of mid- and end- game enemies use channel skills that were not a big threat due to pull/push.
  
• Thorns Enchant – it was too powerful early especially when Armor was added in Item Forge. We did a lot of testing and rebalanced it to make it still very good early game and scaling well into late game. Also radius of Thorns has been increased from 3m to 4m so you are not forced to micromanage so much.
  
• Boss fights were rebalanced – lots of them got new (sometimes unique) skills.
  
• Rakhem’s skills: Acid Splash increased poison damage. Blinding Flash increased air damage.
  
• Boron’s Cleave increased cleave damage at all levels, to 100% at maximum level.
  
• 
  
• Few combats rebalanced – number of enemies changed, portal timers adjusted, trap positions adjusted.
  
  
  We hope you are enjoying Tower of Time. Please share with us your feedback so we can continue to improve the game – via Discord server or forums.
  
  https://discord.gg/c8Wd46s
  
  Thank you.
  
  Cheers,
  Event Horizon team.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/617480/announcements/detail/1655516030150417160
Patch #4 + Polski jęz.

Spoiler

May 27 - Event Horizon

Dear Players,

We are happy to release another update with few quality of life features requested by you and few important fixed. We are also adding Polish to the list of supported languages.

Język Polski
Język polski został dodany do listy wspieranych języków. Gra powinna automatycznie wykryć język na podstawie języka systemu - aby przełączyć język ręcznie, wystarczy wejść do Settings/General i zmienić Language na polski.

Other languages update
We are entering testing phase for Russian language now. We should be ready to release it within next two weeks. We are also working on Turkish, French, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Japanese – although here we cannot give you time estimate yet.


Graphics improvements
We made some significant changes to few areas, adding a lot of “depth”. We also have continued to optimize the graphics, reducing the load in few places indicated by the players

Quality of life features

• New Map with Points of Interests
  We have changed the maps - they are now rotated towards camera view, can be zoomed in / out and also contain all points of interests that count towards progress. It will make hunting for this “last chest” much easier now.
  
  
  
  
  
• Fast mode in combat
  You can now accelerate time in combat to 3x normal speed - for those who want to resolve the combat quickly.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Pre-battle screen information
  Information about number of enemies - indicated by the number of skulls from 1-4. It should be now easier to prepare for encounters.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Mana Orbs fights
  When the last mana orb is destroyed, it does not end the fight abruptly anymore. Instead, it does explode and releases highly toxic gas that is damaging your champions. You can continue to fight and eliminate last remaining enemies, if only few remained.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Portal and Tower Icons - we have reworked them a bit, so they present information in more transparent way.
  
• Added animations when your champions are idle - not the most important feature, but it adds some life to your party when you are exploring.

Combat balance
This time we made only very small changes - mostly to few boss fights. It seems we are done with balancing phase for hard and epic now - with your support we managed to create a game which should remain challenging until the very end. Cheers!

If we continue to work on the difficulty it would be to add another level - one step above epic or add a mode when you can have maximum three champions in your party.

We have also reduced a bit RNG for loot and crafting. Sometimes you could get a very powerful (2% chance) or very weak item (8% chance), which was either temporarily game breaking or truly annoying - we removed those outliers now.

Fixes

• Fixed key in water sector on level 4 - where sometimes it disappeared after going to the city and returning from it. If you go to this place - it will be waiting there.
  
• Fixed fountain on floor 6 giving 10% mana - instead of +10 mana

Thank you for your support so far. Your feedback is extremely important to us - as you can see we do listen to your suggestions.

Please leave a review for us here on Steam, if you feel that we deserve it.

Cheers,
Event Horizon Team

 

[eggdogg]

Picked up the game last night. Played a bit still on first level, I had fun playing which is always a good thing.

 

[Galdred]

After viewing it a little this game looks really similar to Aarklash Legacy ( too much to be a coincidence ) , any relation?

So, how does it compare to Arklash Legacy for someone who played both?
I really liked AL in the beginning, but I got burnt out mid game, maybe because of the lack of variety in combat, or the lack of anything else to do at all.

 

[fantadomat]

After viewing it a little this game looks really similar to Aarklash Legacy ( too much to be a coincidence ) , any relation?

So, how does it compare to Arklash Legacy for someone who played both?
I really liked AL in the beginning, but I got burnt out mid game, maybe because of the lack of variety in combat, or the lack of anything else to do at all.

AL did burned me fast too,i am near the end of Tower of Time but i can't just finish it. It is better game and it have some decent writing in it. Would recommend trying it out.

 

[Rpguy]

After viewing it a little this game looks really similar to Aarklash Legacy ( too much to be a coincidence ) , any relation?

So, how does it compare to Arklash Legacy for someone who played both?
I really liked AL in the beginning, but I got burnt out mid game, maybe because of the lack of variety in combat, or the lack of anything else to do at all.

I finished them both and liked them both, ToT is better and longer but I still recommend both, there is no doubt in my mind ToT was heavy influenced by AL if not made by the same people.

 

[Swampy_Merkin]

I was really high on this game for a couple of weeks. But, eventually, the incessant waves of enemies just made it a drag. It's not that the combat was so challenging, although it could be at times, it just took so fucking long that the sub-par story and characters didn't do nearly enough to carry me to the end. I quit, I think, on the 8th floor.

 

[Rahdulan]

Oh shit, they're playing for real.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/617480/announcements/detail/1700574043407112160

Dear Players.

We bring you something different this time.

We have implemented two new games modes. If you want to replay Tower of Time or if you (a New Player) don’t really like cRPGs so much and prefer fast paced games like Darkest Dungeon – you might find this enjoyable. Several other improvements were also made based on your feedback and are listed below.

All in all – this is quite an exciting update, which far exceeds typical updates we have done before. Apologies for the wall of text below, but there are really a lot of changes.

RPGlite and Permadeath game modes

This mode has the following features:

• You start in the city.
  
• All 7 champions are available in the beginning.
  
• Blacksmith (Tier I gear), Transmute and Enchanting is enabled.
  
• All class buildings are upgraded to the max, so you can level up whatever champions you wish, providing you have the resources.
  
• First 4 floors of the Tower are immediately unlocked, so you can move down whenever you are ready. Remaining parts are unlocked when you descend through the stairs at the end of the given floor.
  
• You can skip Dialogues and temporarily unlock doors and remove barriers, that usually require doing a quest (via the means of “skip content lever”.
  
• Party alignment is changed to Party Boost and depends on the level of the champion.
  
• Some starting resources, so you can customize your starting party a bit.
  
• Save games are now in separate categories: Normal, RPGlite, Permadeath.
  
  --- PERMADEATH mode ---
  
• Permadeath mode is for those truly wishing to test themselves. When your champion die in battle, he/she cannot re-enter the tower (unless you resurrect him in combat) and you continue with remaining party.
  
• New difficulty setting for Permadeath - Blood - which is the only one available for this mode. It starts relatively easy, so you get the resources to build up your party and then ramps up to half way between Hard and Epic.
  
• Game ends when you loose all your champions OR when you reach the end of floor 11 with at least a single one.

If you played ToT before and descended to 2nd level, this mode should unlock automatically. If you are a new player - you need to kill end level 1 boss (and get familiar with game mechanics in the process).

So now you will be able to pick Whisper and Kaela as the starting party and build them as pure glass cannons or Boron and Rakhem that will rush into the swarms of enemies to cleave them, laughing all the way.

Spoiler

Leaderboards and Game Score

We have also implemented game score for RPGlite and Permadeath, which tells you how well you did overall. You can compare this score with other Players on the new Leaderboard. The score gives you positive points for first three fights on a given level and then deducts a small number after the third battle. The objective is to descend to the last floor as efficiently as possible, without grinding – so your tactical skills and party building abilities are tested here.

Score also takes into account difficulty level – giving you more points for Hard and Epic for the first three battles on the level and also deducting less points for each subsequent battle.

Challenges do not count into the score, so you can do them at your leisure.

We have also implemented DPS Race Leaderboards for several bosses, which sum up DPS of all party members.


To check Leaderboards – click on

And then select:

Please note that this score only records in RPGlite and Permadeath modes.


Items and Attributes

Based on your feedback, we have also made some significant changes to the items as well and strengthened weapon damage overall (so Skills / Mastery does not trump everything).

• Reduced RNG on base stats. Each Weapon sub-type is now different. Each Armor, Ring and Amulet type is also different, you can check it when you go to our new crafting panel.
  
• Removed some of the “weak” combinations of pre-fixes and suffixes that immediately were dismantled.
  
• You will be able to select which item sub-type you wish to craft. Some items are more powerful or special so they also cost more. When you click on the question mark, you can see exactly what stats those items have.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Possible magical stats for crafted items and looted items are now separated. Only looted items can give you a rare and powerful stat such as Spectral (which restores your mana for each weapon hit) or Chaotic (which has a small chance to Stun, Daze or Slow enemies). So now you should never disregard looted items – and consider them turning into Epic and Enchanted gear using the forges.
  
• Items have much more distinctive characteristics – e.g. each of the three 2-handed Swords have a very different stats and unique characteristics now. If you want to have a high stun chance for your melee champions, then you will be able to do so.
  
• Might and Speed attributes are now more powerful, making Weapon-based builds on par with Mastery. At 50 attribute points they now grant 150% boost to Weapon Damage and Attack Speed vs. 100% boost to Skill Damage from Mastery.
  
• Melee weapons are now scaling much better than Range weapons, so melee-focused party is certainly viable now.
  
• Enchanting panel is reworked, not resetting anymore when you switch champions and also showing all possible enchants for the item (Locked), so you can see whether you have missed any enchantment.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Cost of enchantments is generally reduced, so you should not be afraid to use them.
  
• Likewise, cost of item forge upgrade has been reduced, as the last slots were far too expensive and rarely anyone used them.

Champions, Skills, Enemies

We have spent a lot of time also re-balancing and re-working some of the skills and enemies as well. One -- because we always wanted to do so based on received feedback and two -- because we had to level the starting point for all champions - to ensure that any starting combination of champions is viable, even if some of the combinations are more difficult than the others.

We have reduced Health scaling for the enemies on Hard and Epic and instead improved their skills and resistances.

We have changed some of the end-game bosses, modifying their abilities to ensure that on Hard and Epic the fights do not drag long but instead are quicker and more intense.

We have re-tuned some of the fights, creating quite interesting scenarios – e.g. a group of only construct crossbowmen that cast their frostbite bolts frequently, effectively immobilizing your party if you don’t counter them.

Another thing changed was mana availability – at the end-game mana regeneration was so high that no one had to care about it, spamming skills as soon as they went off cooldown. So we made several adjustments here as well – mana regeneration is generally decreased, while maximum mana on items plays a bigger role now. Now items and enchantments that generate mana on hit should be essential.

Finally, Boron now starts the combat with 25 rage. So he can jump into the group of those pesky Wraiths instantly. Yeah!

Other changes

Having worked on this update for a long time, we also took an opportunity to make several general improvements as well. Here is a list of most important ones.

• Anti-aliasing now works correctly (it is called FXAA)
  
• Few Battlegrounds were improved or even changed significantly, such as Titan Battleground.
  
• Added voice confirmations for champions in combat, so the combat is more lively now.
  
• Several skill SFX were improved, all range projectiles and a lot of skills.
  
• UI was optimized, improving FPS, especially for low-end configurations.

Turkish language added

Lastly, but very important – we have added Turkish language thanks to the efforts of community translators: Gökhan Halil Düzgün and Arda Can Coşkun. Big thanks!

--------------------------------------------------------

If we see that RPGlite and Permadeath modes are popular, we would consider organizing regular competitions for the highest Permadeath SCORE and the highest DPS on specific bosses.

We hope you will enjoy playing Tower of Time’s new game modes. As always – if you have a feedback or an issue, please let us know via an in-game Report Issue tool or hop on our Discord to chat with us directly. As you can see - we listen to your voice very closely - and even if we are busy working on a new project, we will not forget about Tower of Time.

Cheers,
Event Horizon team

 

[Infinitron]

GameBanshee review: http://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/122264-tower-of-time-review/all-pages.html

Introduction

Whenever someone mentions dungeon crawlers, my mind immediately jumps to games like Might and Magic and Wizardry. First person, party-based, likely to be set on a grid of some kind. And while Event Horizon's Tower of Time is described as a dungeon crawler, it doesn't follow a similar formula. Instead, it's closer to something like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale with their isometric camera and real time with pause combat.

You have a dungeon, represented by a vast multi-level tower, and you have a party of daring adventurers slowly making their way through said dungeon while uncovering its secrets, learning to work together, and fighting plenty of monsters along the way.

Story and Exploration

Initially, I expected Tower of Time to resemble a real-time version of something like Blackguards where story existed mostly to get you from combat A to combat B. This ended up not being the case, and having finished the game, I can safely say that Tower of Time's story is its main attraction.

The game starts as this fairly run of the mill fantasy fare with abundant humans, tree-loving elves, and Scottish dwarves coming together to explore an ancient ruin that may hold a secret to saving their world. But then, as your party keeps descending the seemingly endless stairways of the eponymous Tower of Time and the story gets a chance to unfold, you first start getting clues that everything may not be as it seems, then you get hit with plenty of shocking revelations confirming this fact, and by the time you're done with the game, you're left with a story about ancient aliens, galaxy-spanning conflicts, and the nature of artificial intelligence, all within the span of eleven expansive floors.

I'm a big fan of stories that combine fantasy and sci-fi elements. RPGs used to do this sort of thing fairly often back in the day, but lately it's been a bit of a lost art. As such I greatly appreciated Tower of Time's return to form, so to speak.

It helps that the game is generally well-written. The typos are few and far between, all seven of the playable characters are oozing personality and get plenty of opportunities to grow and develop, the story is packed with twists that keep you guessing until the very last moment, the ending is anything but cliché, and the limited voice acting we get during cutscenes hits all the right notes.

Now, granted, while the story is fun, well-crafted, and most definitely competent, I wouldn't exactly call it a timeless masterpiece. In my opinion, it really could have used a diligent editing pass or two. If you stop and think about things, you may notice some minor inconsistencies here and there. The aforementioned character development can happen a bit too suddenly. The lack of communication trope is a touch overused. And in general, the game's tone can be all over the place.

To expand a bit on the last point, Tower of Time is absolutely riddled with not-so-subtle pop culture references, and depending on how you feel about those, you can see them as either cute or infuriatingly eye-rolling. From Star Trek and Doctor Who to Warcraft and Knight Rider, the references are pretty much everywhere, and in my opinion, they tend to clash with the game's overall atmosphere and take you out of the story. But if you can get over that, you'll probably enjoy that story quite a bit.

When it comes to actually playing the game, the majority of your time will be spent exploring the expansive caverns and narrow corridors of a mysterious tower. Your main goal will always be reaching the tower's lowest floor, but along the way you'll get a chance to deal with an undead crisis, solve a series of magical trials, and even visit another dimension. All of this is very well represented by the game's visuals that go from dimly lit caves and medieval halls to futuristic golem factories and shiny metal walls.

Each floor has a theme and a series of quests associated with that theme. And while the game progresses in a more or less linear fashion, each floor has numerous side activities you may wish to undertake, a simplistic puzzle or two for you to solve, and quite a few secret passages to uncover. Overall, this combination of activities creates a satisfying dungeon-crawling experience, though it does have its share of issues.

The biggest one is the fact that whenever you open your map screen, you get a handy checklist of things to do. At any moment you can see exactly how many battles, quests, treasure chests, upgrade materials, and secret passages each level holds. And that kills all the mystery that comes with not knowing what to expect as well as the satisfaction of discovering something off the beaten path.

Many of the quests also require quite a bit of backtracking, and even though you can increase your characters' running speed in the settings and there are plenty of handy teleporters scattered throughout the levels, you'll still be doing quite a bit of legwork. And seeing how all the battles happen in predetermined locations, after you're done with them, you're not even in any danger during those prolonged jogging sessions.

When not exploring the tower, you'll be able to take a break on the town screen. There, you will upgrade and enchant your equipment, level up your characters, and restore a series of neglected utility buildings.

All in all, experiencing the story bit by bit, collecting notes and ancient journal entries, following side quests across multiple floors - that's where the game shines. While running from room to room, and clicking on chests and various lootable items is simply the price you have to pay for getting to the good parts. Mostly because, as I've mentioned, there's no mystery and the loot is not that exciting. But more on that in the next section.

Spoiler

Combat and Crafting

You don't create a character in Tower of Time. Instead, there's a roster of seven unique heroes. Each of these heroes comes with a personality, weapon and armor preferences, and up to eight active skills. Each of those skills that range from buffs and area of effect attacks to summoning spells and arena-manipulating abilities has alternative upgrade paths. But on the flip side, you can only select four of them at a time. The developers seem to be fond of that number, and as such, your combat group has enough room for up to four heroes.

Now, while I definitely prefer turn-based combat systems, I have nothing against real time with pause battles of pen and paper-inspired RPGs. But the thing about those games is that you usually have so many options that combat becomes more of a test of your character-building skills than anything else. When you only have four characters with four skills each, things can get real stale real fast. And in Tower of Time they unfortunately do.

Whenever your heroes stumble onto a group of enemies, you get teleported to a battle arena that has very little to do with the map you were exploring. The game has only a handful of those arenas per floor, and even so, they never really impress you with their clever designs and tactical challenges.

What usually happens is you place your heroes, start the battle, and wait for the enemies to spawn. They do, you defeat them, and then the next wave of enemies spawns. Rinse and repeat. Sure, the developers try to spice things up a bit by providing you with various added challenges, like having to protect a couple of points or destroy a series of enemy-spawning portals, but at the end of the day you will still be fighting waves of enemies while being armed with a very limited arsenal of skills.

On top of that, continuing the game's trend of discarding any semblance of mystery, before a battle starts you can see exactly who you'll be fighting along with their stats, skills, and weaknesses. And even though the game has a fairly wide selection of enemies, after a while they all blur together into an indistinguishable mess. Protect your ranged characters, don't stand in red circles, don't run out of mana. Doesn't matter who you're fighting. If you follow these three easy steps, you'll come out on top. Playing on the fourth out of the game's five difficulty levels, I had to redo only a couple of battles over the course of its campaign that can take you around 30-40 hours to complete.

Pretty much the only thing I liked about the game's combat is how it handles pausing. By default, instead of a time stop, pressing space slows the action down to a crawl, shows you which enemy targets which of your party members, and allows you to consider your next step. But because the battle is still happening, albeit very slowly, you still feel some tension, even if it's all just a clever trick. Now, if you don't enjoy this approach, there's an option to switch to the traditional pause, but I wouldn't recommend it. The default way of doing things is quite neat.

After a battle is won you usually get some gold, a handful of crafting crystals and some loot. Most of the game's items are randomized through a series of suffixes and prefixes, with an occasional unique item thrown in for good measure. Each item has a series of stats, like armor penetration and critical chance, associated with it. During your journey, you'll be getting plenty of loot. So, if you're someone who can muster even the slightest bit of enthusiasm for stopping every three minutes in order to decide whether you prefer to have 5% more movement speed or 2 additional points of mana regeneration on your Something Shoes of Something, then you may enjoy Tower of Time's itemization. Personally, I found it unbelievably boring.

This was further worsened by the fact that the game has a robust crafting system. If you've read any of my reviews, you may know that I absolutely can't stand crafting in video games. And in Tower of Time, crafting is king. You can create items from different materials using various presets. Then, you can also add some bonus properties to these items, and then enchant them with a wide variety of powerful effects.

It's extremely easy to craft very powerful items and more often than not, those items are better than anything you can find while exploring. So, not only is the game's loot extremely boring, you can usually craft better gear yourself, which kills any possibility of excitement when discovering new stuff.

And if you thought that maybe you can buy some cool gear while in town with the gold you get, you'll be surprised to find out that gold actually acts as Tower of Time's experience points. In order to raise your heroes' levels you will need to build and upgrade a series of class-specific buildings and then spend some gold to train your heroes.

When going up a level, you'll get some skill points, that you can freely redistribute at will, and some attribute points that make your heroes stronger, tougher, faster or better at magic. In order to respec those, you will have to spend some crafting materials, but the price is very much affordable.

Aside from skills and attributes, the game has an alignment system that reacts to your choices during certain story moments. These choices, cosmetic as they may be, give you some roleplaying opportunities and in return can grant your heroes certain combat bonuses or penalties depending on what they think about your actions.

Now, while I definitely prefer the game's story to its battles, if you enjoy Tower of Time's combat, while in town, you can also participate in a series of optional challenges and earn additional gold, items and enchantments for your gear. And if you simply can't get enough of combat, you can play the game in a couple of so-called RPG-lite modes that make things tougher while also removing some of the usual story-based restrictions.

Technical Information

Tower of Time's visuals are quite decent. While the models are nothing to write home about, the game's environments are rich and detailed with no shortage of impressive vistas and cluttered hallways illuminated by both magic and technological contraptions.

The game's audio, on the other hand is not quite on the level. The music is far from memorable, but I have no complaints there. The sound design, though, is quite shoddy. The sound effects lack any sort of punch and impact, audio levels seem to be oddly mixed, and there's an annoying bug where if your character shoots a gun and tries to move at the same time, you get to hear the shot even though it gets canceled by movement.

Other than that, however, I didn't encounter a single bug in the game. It didn't crash on me once and generally ran pretty well. Some of the more open areas had frame dips here and there, but they were barely noticeable.

The game saves and loads almost instantly. It has manual saves, quick saves, and autosaves, so you shouldn't have any issues there.

Conclusion

When playing a video game, I need something to look forward to. Some clear goal, a promise of cool gear, new levels that unlock new powerful skills, exciting fresh challenges. With its lack of mystery and interesting items, Tower of Time became old for me a little too soon. If not for the story, I would have probably struggled to even finish it.

Overall, though, I think Tower of Time is a competent game. It works. It runs well. It has an engaging story and a series of systems that are immediately familiar but still have some unique personality. If you can appreciate a decent story, or really like crafting, you will probably find something to your liking there. Otherwise, it may not be a game for you.

 

[Fenix]

OK guys, playing this game right now - good stuff!
Have a few questions -what is the second stat for mage party members?
At first I though about Might because of armor-magresist penetration and weapon damage, now - Speed because of cd reductions.
How sagnificant it is?

Best crossbows you can craft? 1h or 2h? Bow?
Craft puzzled me a little honestly.

Spoiler

Wisp quest - "free" him or wait for another solution? Killed void golem without weakening it before fight, so I don't think I need that amulet???

 

[Fenix]

Yeah, that dude had 90% allres and 30k health on Epic, and hit for like 200 Void-Damage every 2 seconds. Was a tough one, but doable. Whisper provides 50% elemental resistance reduction at level 10, and you can easily get like 30-40% magic pen on her too, and just spam the living shit out of any boss with her elemental barrage. Meanwhile Kane does like 100 damage per second just by standing close to the boss with thorns aura, just needed to keep him alive somehow. Switched in Rakhem for Boron since he has much better self-healing, and alternated tanking if Kane ever got too low on health with no healing totem/treant to get aggro off of him. Was a really fun fight, took me like 9 or 10 attempts until I got the strategy right. Level 5 here I come!

Did it from first try hehe, shadow died once and was resurrected.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Started this and kinda having fun. At least I have to use some of my brain in combat.

 

[Lacrymas]

So, I recently ...came into possession of some disposable income and I'm thinking of buying this since it's on discount and ATOM RPG. Is it worth it? I've read that it has linear maps, but that doesn't really matter in a pure dungeon crawler. Is the combat good?