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

[Infinitron]

https://www.evehor.com/toweroftime/




https://af.gog.com/game/tower_of_time?as=1649904300

Spoiler

Some sort of RPG thing released on Steam Early Access today:

For long ages past, Artara was a place of great peace and beauty. Then, a mysterious event took place. Within a few generations, the land was broken and the skies darkened. More than a thousand years of decline has passed since then.

As a young boy, you came upon the base of an immense Tower, uncovered by yet another violent earthquake. Deep below sleeps an ancient power. Since that day, you have been drawn inexorably to this place. Your task is to lead a group of champions and reach whatever resides in the depths of the Tower. There you will face the ultimate choice…

Tower of Time is a classic RPG with a few added novelties. It has hand-crafted levels filled with various enemies, challenging puzzles, and engaging story-lines. Its dynamic real-time combat with slow mode requires tactical awareness and careful preparation of the party.

Features:

• Engaging story – set in a world where technology met magic with devastating consequences. Hundreds of lore books and scattered pieces of information slowly reveal the history of Artara as the protagonist approaches his fate.
  
  
• Find secret locations, cleverly hidden in the environment. Travel through hand-crafted levels where every single place is carefully designed. Discover forgotten scrolls and guess their powers based on the cryptic description. Meet various NPCs, some native to the world and some coming from… strange places.
  
  
• Advanced combat system – unique real-time action with a slow-time feature, where each match is played on one of many separate tactical maps and where even most powerful champions can fail without refined tactics. Plan ahead and position your party accordingly. Use slow-time to react to new threats or negate enemy skills. Converse your magic energy and survive all enemy waves. No two encounters are ever the same.
  
  
• There are seven classes to choose from, and your party can be adjusted at will and anytime, depending on the challenges you face. Each champion has unique skills that can be upgraded and re-trained at will. Those upgrades often change the nature of the skills. For example, your Summon Elemental skill can either be a durable melee Ent with high health and armor or a fragile Water Elemental with devastating range attack. (In Early Access six champions are available, as the seventh joins your party at lower levels).
  
  
• New character progression system: there is no experience to gain. Instead, discover ancient knowledge to unlock new skills and carefully design your characters. Each character could be turned into a powerful and durable attacker or a skill-based champion.
  
  
• Defeat powerful elite enemies wielding diverse skills and spells. Assess their strengths and weaknesses carefully to succeed. Complete combat challenges for item rewards and unique enchanting recipes, or just to test your new party setup.
  
  
• Gather crafting crystals of various types to create items of different power. Discover ancient enchanting recipes that, while very expensive, can change the nature of the combat, granting regeneration aura or immunity to special effects.
  
  
• Upgrade your city as the main training/equipment hub and repository of all the lore you find.

Why Early Access?
“Simple: we have a completely novel combat system and it requires careful optimization. We want to gather the experience of a wider range of players to balance the combat to the most commonly played styles and reward those players who think outside the box.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“In Early Access, the game has four full levels and intro and offers approximately 13-15 hours of gameplay, excluding optional combat challenges.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“In the full game, all remaining levels will be added, with total gameplay time reaching between 25-30 hours, depending on how much time the player will want to spend to reading the lore, looking for hidden secrets, or solving optional puzzles.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“The game is polished, and levels 1-4 are complete. We will be adding further unique elements to the environment, new quests and difficult combat encounters, and changing some of the skills, depending on player feedback.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“Yes, for Early Access we would like to reward players who are willing to try the game and spend their valuable time to offer us feedback. Full release price will be higher.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“We want to create an unforgettable RPG experience and engage players emotionally. We will listen to the feedback and suggestions, either via in-built report tool or perhaps a dedicated Discord server as well. Top contributors can count on a special mention in the credits or even a dedicated statue within the game. We also have a plan for a multiplayer (pvp and co-op) in the future, as tactical combat with limited slow-time option could offer a lot of fun.”

Spotted by Goral

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Looks pretty good. Buying it today, probably will do one sentence review at a later time.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Refunded after 26 minutes of run time.
The game did no live up to my standarts.

 

[Goral]

What was wrong with it? It's clearly a Diablo clone so the target audience is pretty obvious Pretty.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

What was wrong with it? It's clearly a Diablo clone so the target audience is pretty obvious Pretty.

This game review is based on 20 minutes of gameplay.

While I indeed love diablo-like games (and dragon age 2&3 combat), battle system here is nothing like diablo.

Then battle is started you are transfered to a seperate arena (which for some reason have vomit-inducing lowres ground textures) where you have to fight enemies in real time (with abilty to slow down time to issue commands). There is a loading screen you have to endure every time you enter battle.

The battle engine is quite weak, with dumb enemies having an A.I. of tower defense creeps (follow path towards you), weak abilities and attack which don't have much weight and very limited amount of options available to player. It is nothing like visceral combat of Dragon Age 2.

The character development system is very barebones, with 4 stats and only 6 abilities available per character. The character screen doesn't seem inspiring at all.

Combat and UI makes the game feel like a rather bad mobile title (no comparison to prestigious mobile rpgs such as Vainglory which can rival crpgs of old times).

Presentation outside of combat&character system is surprisingly good and initially it gave me a lot of optimism during prologue. A short battle blew most of my optimism away, and after seeing character screen and entereing second battle I made a decision to refund the game.

 

[Jarmaro]

Some sort of RPG thing released on Steam Early Access today: http://store.steampowered.com/app/617480/Tower_of_Time/

How about merging this thread with http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ime-early-access-release.117131/#post-5207506

 

[Infinitron]

Huh: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/08/04/tower-of-time-review-early-access/

Tower Of Time is a splendid RPG with tactical real-time combat
John Walker on August 4th, 2017 at 7:00 pm.

You have to respect clever, and clever is oozing out of Tower Of Time [official site]. Not just an RPG with the guts to try its very own combat system far more intricate than us dungeon crawlers are used to, but also the use of Early Access in a way that makes it seem like an advantage to the player rather than the developer.

Tower Of Time is, at first glance, a traditional isometric-ish RPG, presented in beautiful swishy modern graphics. Click the mouse to move, click on things to interact, attribute skill points and skilfully assign attribute points, and worry about your armour. On top of that, and perhaps a touch crucially, it’s also good at these things. It takes place in a familiar fantasy setting featuring a rural human world where cataclysmic events leave almost no sunshine, in which societies are falling as food becomes scarce, and a hero whose childhood marking by a hidden magical throne might make him the one who can change the future. Soon you learn of other regulars, the elves, the orcs, and so on. The writing is a touch purple in places, and definitely leans heavily on the old “for it was to be”-type fantasy stodge, but the atmosphere is immediately established and the characters likable.

Set in a magical tower, buried upside down in the ground and forgotten by generations of humans, you play a character that – for plot reasons – you don’t actually see much. Instead you control a gang of his chums, who explore and descend, with the intention of finding and wielding these unknown and potentially dangerous powers in the hope of rescuing your dying world. But it’s during your first combat encounter when you realise that this is also rather different.

And, if I’m honest, at first a little disconcerting for me. Because I am not Mr RTS. In fact, Mr RTS is my sworn enemy, and the two of us rarely speak. While obviously multiple RPG games have attempted to implement RTS combat in the past, perhaps most famously the Spellforce series, I’ve not seen it done like this before. Far smaller scale than Spellforce’s fields of battle, this is more of an extension of the pause-based combat of latter BioWare games, taken to its natural strategic conclusion. Enemies move in real-time, and while you can slow time down to issue commands, you must think on the fly as you play your characters’ abilities and unique skills to deduce the correct methods of attack.

Spoiler

Borrowing the JRPG concept of having fights take place in a special playing field rather than on location in the main game affords the combat an almost sports-like set-up, where the pitch is pre-defined (albeit with semi-randomised layouts of walls, spawn points and so on so the fight is different each time), and how you use it up to you. Different enemy types have very different approaches to attacking you, and rather than simply choosing who to hit and with what, you’re asked to think slightly further and work out ways to manipulate enemy placement or movement. Maybe you’ll try to split them up to make them weaker while defending your more fragile ranged characters, or perhaps you’ll place too-temporary magical walls across the battlefield such that your tanks can rush in to absorb blows.

Enemies come in waves, and from a number of spawn points, which also dictates how you position your characters, and how you attempt to approach any battle. You can see what percentage of the attack you’ve countered so far, but you don’t know what’s coming next beyond the hint of the enemy types spied before the battle begins.

The complexity of this is designed to become more important the higher you set the difficulty, with a Story mode for those who don’t want to worry at all, Easy for breezing through it, Normal for me to struggle with because that’s the mode you’re supposed to play when reviewing, and then a couple of levels above for those who want to test themselves. According to the game, at the highest difficulty the developers say you’ll have to somehow work out the exact right set-up of your own fighters to match the attack and perfectly execute your moves. Eek

For me, on Normal, I’m managing! I’ve lost a couple, but won them on the next try, and felt bloody great about it. I guarantee this means that anyone who cares about real-time strategy, or even their advanced RPG tactics, is going to find Normal too easy. I know this from decades of reviewing RPGs, commenting, “Cor the combat’s tough on Normal!” and being met with varying degrees of “huh?” from harder types. The tougher levels are there for you, but for those like me, rest assured this is – so far as I’ve reached – manageable. And indeed you can switch the difficulty down at any point.

Which brings us to that other Clever. An RPG in early access is perhaps often to be avoided. Who wants to play an incomplete story-driven game, right? But in a Larian-like fashion, newbies Even Horizon have very smartly released with the first third of the game feature complete. The second third is due later this year, and the final portion on full release early next. The early access is being used to see how players respond to the combat system, to test it in fire, and to tweak accordingly, such that on the release of the complete game they should have the encounters neatly balanced. So sure, going in now might mean you hit combat spikes or plateaus, but you won’t be playing a game that’s still covered in scaffolding with half the rooms undecorated. It’s rough in places, absolutely, but it feels solidly playable.

There are, it shouldn’t be any surprise, areas that need a good deal of work. And it’s mostly in feedback, both major and subtle. After a while pootling around, completing the pleasing array of missions on the first floor of the dungeon, I experimentally took a trip back to the surface whereupon I discovered – by accident – that I could qualify for an upgrade. Upgrades are very unusual here, not reliant on gathering XP, but rather gold and blueprints. I didn’t notice the game alerting me that I had all I needed for this if it did, and then to be able to train my characters to a new level I had to visit the Armory to buy the ability, then visit the Barracks to spend even more gold training each character up to level 2. What a muddle. After this, more skill points are available, which is pretty essential for the ramping difficulty in the tower.

More subtle feedback issues come with the lack of any sense of impact of a job done. Make a new item in the Blacksmith and there’s no “clunk” or “tada” or anything. So much so that I accidentally made two identical breastplates because there was no sensible indication that it had been done. What a waste of crystals!

Combat, which is of course the reason it’s presently in early access, could do with some significant work too. Most immediately, with the addition of some AI scripting for your characters. Each has an array of abilities, but left to their own devices will just spam their most basic attack on the enemy nearest. It’d be splendid to be able to instruct your bowswoman Maeve to sling some fire arrows on occasion, or have druid Aeric think to plonk down a healing totem when another hero’s health is dangerously low. Micromanaging the crew is, of course, a big part of the point, but when you’re directing tank Kane to taunt a mob to distract it, and then having him throw up a magic wall to prevent attacks from another side, you physically can’t also be getting Maeve to place a Hunter’s Mark down on a busy spot of enemies. To be able to pre-program a few conditional attacks or defences would make a big difference.

Also, good gravy, it needs a quicksave. The game is heavily reliant on your saving to maintain progress – get into a battle you’re simply not capable of winning yet (and not all fights are player-initiated, there are ambushes), and you can either endlessly, pointlessly repeat it after every defeat, or go back to your last save. If that was a good while back, then oof. That to save involves Esc, Save, click slot, Save, Back, Back is perhaps a little much when there’s an F5 key sitting around doing nothing. Oh, and the other minor tweak I crave is a button to press to reveal interactive items. Not for treasure, as I get that this is a bonus gained by scraping the hidden corners with the cursor, but for important story items and the like, it’d be nice not to miss them.

It’s very pretty, too. The tower, upside down as it is, is also very magical, and the gaps between the floors are great dangerous stretches – that’s something neatly displayed as you walk the sometimes-impossible ceilings. Battles are often extremely lovely to look at too, especially the neat colour choices for slowed time, versus the traditionally ARPG bright purples and greens of full-speed battle.

There’s an airy arcadey quality to the exploration, but the depth pours in via both the details and the combat. Where it sorely lacks is in establishing the characters you control. An extended opening sequence sees you play as a young boy, then that guy as an adult, and then suddenly he’s just sat in a chair unseen while some friends it doesn’t even vaguely introduce are the ones you play. You get to know them a bit as they chat, but it desperately needs to make the player care about them at all from the off.

But more than anything else, I’m constantly bowled over by just how complete and solid this feels. At one point, nosing around a library, I chanced upon a book that when clicked on offered a few minutes-long animated, voice-overed cutscene! There’s piles and piles of lore here for those who want to read it, and for those who don’t there’s still a decent surface story with intriguing themes of magic being an alien property to this fantasy world, and its impact on society.

I’m totally sold. I love this. It’s a superb mix of easy-going exploration and smart-but-possible combat mechanics. And I’m loving it in a “right now” way, rather than in a “I can see how this will be great when…” way. I think some will find it too light, but honestly, there’s enough games for those some, and goodness knows how hard it is when you ramp up the difficulty – I’ve no desire to find out. I think there’s no greater accolade I could afford it than to credit it with exciting me about combat tactics – something that usually sees me running from a game with my arms flailing above my head.

This is a huge, deeply developed, beautifully crafted RPG, novel in all the right ways, and it’s not even finished.

Tower Of Time is out on Early Access for Windows for £11/$15/15€ via Steam.

 

[Iznaliu]

Borrowing the JRPG concept of having fights take place in a special playing field rather than on location in the main game

This is a total copout in terms of encounter design.

 

[Infinitron]

John Walker REALLY likes this game: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/08/10/tower-of-time-interview/

Interview: Tower Of Time developers talk ambition, player feedback, and the ancient real-time wars
John Walker on August 10th, 2017 at 5:00 pm.

Tower Of Time [official site] was a tremendous surprise – an early access RPG, from first-time developers, with a unique real-time combat system. That’s all three strikes, surely? Except no, it’s really fantastic. Having finished the first floor of the tower, what’s available for now, I wanted to find out more about how an unknown team from Poland were so audacious as to try (so successfully) at such a project. So I spoke to Krzysztof Monkiewicz, the project’s lead, to find out how they got started, and where they’re going next.

RPS: Can you tell us a bit about the team behind Tower Of Time? How many of you are there, and what have people worked on before?

Krzysztof Monkiewicz: At the moment we include ten full-time people. During development we contracted a few other freelancers for music, SFX and modelling of characters and environment. The team had experience with several games before, but there were not really any AAA titles. For me, more important than proven experience with large productions was the personality. I was looking for people who are creative, willing to take an active part in the development and not afraid of thinking outside the box. Whether it was a good call – only time will tell, but so far I am very happy with the initial feedback.

RPS: Tower Of Time seems an enormous project for a debut game. Making an RPG is a big enough task, but making one with a new approach to combat – well, that’s crazy. How did you decide to start trying?

Monkiewicz: That is utterly crazy, I fully agree. When I announced to my friends that I wanted to leave my previous job (completely different industry) and start in game development, they questioned my mental integrity. However, that was always my dream – to find a way to share my ideas and create games that players will actually want to finish.

As for the scope of the game and genre – I realized we could either start small, create a game that would be a clone of another successful game and hope that it will somehow stand out from the swarm of other indie games, or take a risk and do something large and new. It wasn’t a tough decision for me – I took the risk.

Spoiler

RPS: So what other types of combat did you consider when you were developing? How did you arrive on this hybrid of real-time strategy and BioWare-style fights?

Monkiewicz: I’ve played a lot of RPGs in my life. I started very early with Dungeon Master, Might and Magic and the Wizardry series and have been through (I think) every single RPG that was noteworthy since then. One thing that always bothered me was combat mechanics. Usually, from mid-game you already have a party that can handle every challenge easily, turning combat into more of a chore rather than keeping it fun.

My goal was to create combat mechanics which would challenge the player until the very end and where the tactics and party preparation are far more important than the equipment. The only way I could think of to achieve that goal was to make it a dynamic real-time combat system with a certain degree of randomness. I love turn-based RPGs, don’t get me wrong – my favorite RPG game of all time is Divinity: Original Sin – but I think that turn-based games put too much of a constraint on the developer, as each encounter needs to be carefully pre-defined to make it both winnable and yet still challenging. Since players’ skillsets cover a broad range, it is difficult to balance it in a way that accommodates everyone’s expectations.

RPS: You say your primary reason for using Early Access is to test and tweak the combat. How is that going so far? Have you had much useful feedback?

Monkiewicz: This is going great. Honestly, we did not expect that players would be so engaged with the game already at this stage. Whenever I have the time, I am observing how players play – to see how they approach certain challenges we throw at them – this is an invaluable input for me. We also have gotten a massive amount feedback so far (and it is still coming), both on game discussion boards and via email. What surprised me is how well structured the feedback we get is. It is not a single comment here and there – but instead we receive carefully constructed analyses, pinpointing issues and giving suggestions on how to improve them. Adding an in-game option to report issues and offer suggestion was also a great idea coming from the team. We get save data and game logs, which allow us to pinpoint the issue immediately and fix it very quickly. We are continuing to work on the next part of the game, but our development pipeline for the next month concerning combat and ‘quality of life’ features is mostly about how to incorporate players’ feedback.

RPS: But were you worried at all, did you see the risks with using Early Access for an RPG?

Monkiewicz: Yes, Early Access for RPG is quite risky. Who would want to buy an RPG game that is not finished? However, about three months ago when we finished our core combat mechanics and started testing it with friends and family, to my horror, I saw that out of ten non-project people playing, each played the combat differently. We designed the mechanics behind the system following the principle that on harder difficulties you should think outside of the box – but such creativity surprised me to be honest. So, I decided to package what we had finished into Book One – which is polished, has a contained story and can offer a decent amount of gameplay and then release it – hoping that players would not frown upon this approach.

RPS: Even in response to our own coverage of the game, there’s been a bit of hostility from some readers to the real-time combat, as if it’s breaking some sort of rule to do RPG combat without a pause. Has that response surprised you?

Monkiewicz: Yes, it has surprised me greatly. We have unwittingly stumbled into a hidden war that apparently has been raging since the dawn of time – between the advocates of Turn-Based Combat and of Real-Time with Pause – that I knew nothing about. RPS is one example, and there are some quite heated discussions on few other forums as well. I can understand that, for some players, replacing pause with slow time would be seen as an attempt to come up with something new at any cost, or an attempt to cover up flaws in the combat AI.

For us, it is the opposite – we want to enhance the experience. In my opinion, slow time does not kill the dynamism as much as pause does. When you see a raging fireball of doom flying very slowly towards your party and you manage to move them just in time, it is a good feeling. As for our AI, this is an entirely different topic. We have the core of a system that we are quite happy with and will continue to develop it further. We have some of it already implemented in the latest build. One simple example perhaps: when your champion faces range enemies, if you move him/her behind a wall (or create one), the enemies do not walk the shortest path to your champion, usually putting them in melee range, but instead look for the tactically optimum position, ideally trying to keep as long range as possible.

In any case, creating a game which is controversial (and rides a wave of notoriety as a marketing trick) was not my goal. We added a section to our Steam page, “Before You Buy”, where we advise the players to take a look at our combat mechanics first, to make sure they will not be unhappy with the combat portion of the game.

RPS: What’s your ambition for the game? Do you see it as an experiment, or perhaps the start of a series?

Monkiewicz: My main ambition for this game is to create a brand for Event Horizon – as a developer who is not afraid to try something fresh and that also will deliver on its promises. We are coming from nowhere and do not have any good references behind us. Whether we succeed or not, only time will tell.

As for the future plans – Tower of Time’s story, although it might start with a typical fantasy genre, is definitely not that, as we will hopefully prove later on. The ending of the game should create a good ground for Tower of Time 2, which will take place a few hundred years later.

I also have two other ideas, which of course will depend on availability of resources. One is a separate Tower of Time Arena – where we will further enhance our party-based real-time combat with fog of war and slow-time to offer a PVP experience. The second idea is something entirely different. One of the best games I ever played is Master of Magic. I dream about creating something similar in the future, set in the world of Artara, where magic meets technology with devastating consequences.

RPS: Thank you for your time.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

John Walker REALLY likes this game

Shit, that's the opposite of a ringing endorsement.

 

[Iznaliu]

Shit, that's the opposite of a ringing endorsement.

Can somebody explain why?

 

[Cnaiur]

Because Sir Walker is a corpulent liberal who, after entering a post-child-lack-of-time era, resorts to low effort casual games to desperately cling on to his hobby from bygone times.

If he recommends a game, you know it's easy, lacking complex combat mechanics and as a cherry on top probably features a contrived diversity checklist that will be rewarded with a post release 'interview'.

 

[Iznaliu]

Because Sir Walker is a corpulent liberal who, after entering a post-child-lack-of-time era, resorts to low effort casual games to desperately cling on to his hobby from bygone times.

Does that mean he should kill his child?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/617480/announcements/detail/1657761307130887834

Pre-release Update
March 15 - Event Horizon

Version 0.9.1.1759

Final release 12 April 2018

As Tower of Time is nearing its final release date we have published a major update that makes the game Feature Complete. The only thing missing now are the final four levels of the tower and completion of the story which is in the final polishing state.

What comes in the Pre-release build:


Combat state and Pause added

We have further refined combat system and we have perhaps the most complex tactical system ever done in RPGs.

We added Pause. You can change between slow time and pause anytime, even during combat.

There are several new effects in game, for example freeze – if your champion is frozen you can either wait until it thaws (relatively long) or break the ice, sending other champions to attack it.

Enemies also have few nasty surprises, some elite enemies can sense the weakness of one of your champions and order all other enemies to focus on him/her, much as any player would do.

New combat mode: Defense Towers can show up in certain encounters. Towers attack your champions in range and thus limit your movement options. You can either avoid them or destroy them, the choice is yours.

Finally, we expanded Battle Report screen significantly, so you can check in details how your champions performed. This is very critical for the Ultimate Tactical Experience (Epic difficulty).

Spoiler

Party Alignment

At certain moments in game, your party will face an important choice. Your champions’ personalities are different and they have (perhaps) their own hidden agendas. As you progress deeper, your champions will diverge.
In such critical moments you can let your champions decide for themselves or impose your will by the power of the crystal throne. Careful though, no one likes to feel like a puppet.

These choices are not only dialogue options – party alignment will have an impact on combat as well. If your champions support you, they will support each other in combat too, granting powerful buffs. If not, then they will reduce everyone’s combat effectiveness.

Skills and Skill Tree

Skill tree and individual skills are adjusted, based on intense balancing efforts. There are too many changes to list here, but we followed this idea in principal – each of your champion is unique and his skillset has to be unique as well.

Each skill has two different enhancement paths, one which strengthens the effect of the skill and second which might change its nature.

We added few new skill mechanics, e.g. damage reflection. If you miss this and don’t adjust your tactics, your champions can literally kill themselves now. Similarly, apply this enchant on your champions and see enemies’ health goes down.

Finally, we still have only one fireball in the entire skill tree. Mission accomplished.

Itemization and Item Forge

We further expanded on our itemization and added new statistics. When we did the counting, we now have over one million possible combinations of weapons, base statistics and additional statistics.

Very important addition is Item Forge. It allows you to selectively upgrade an item and its certain statistics – as long as the item has unused upgrade counters. The cost increases with each upgrade – so if you want to create an item worthy of a song, it will cost you dearly.

Guns and 1-handed crossbows

Physical range classes got two new weapon types – 1-handed crossbows and 1-handed pistols. Yeah!

Map Markers and Quests

Map markers and better quest tracking – a feature that was in the top 3 requests from the players. We added that, so you can find NPCs and important locations easier now.

We improved quest descriptions and also added information where the quest did originate, so if you take a break for few days, you should have no problem getting back.

New Enemies, New Bosses, New Unique Items

We have added new enemies, new bosses and lots of unique items. As per request – we added more ”unique” unique that have both positive and negative effects. Encase Kane in nigh-impenetrable Titan Armor but it is so heavy that he moves very slowly -- so have his Dash skill on a short cooldown or just bring the fight to him. Or use powerful Staff of Winds but be ready that each attack will drain your mana.

Optimization and Loading Times

We did optimize the game heavily, going area by area and we will continue to do so until the full release. Game runs quicker overall and there should be no more areas that would tax your CPU and GPU over the usual performance.

Also, we implemented a system of loading part of the scenes into memory. When you enter the new location first time - the loading time will be as before, but then every time you save/load or move between the tower, combat maps and the city – the loading time should be very short.

Music and SFX

We have added new music tracks and hundreds of new sound effects.


Linux version

We are testing a new video player and new movie formats - the problem we have since day 1 of our adventures with Linux. We are on a good track but we need to run a lot of tests on different distributions since we are committed to release 100% working version. Should take few more days.


Balancing

We will balance the game until the very end. At the moment Epic difficulty is midly challenging on level 1 but then from level 2 you really need to think outside the box and find the best synergies between champions' abilities be good at tactical-side of the combat (team positioning, threat management, effective tanking, learning your enemies and what they can do, understanding their weaknesses, etc..).

If you would like to help us, please join our discord channel:

https://discord.gg/8hpkCgD


We hope you will enjoy Tower of Time in its final state.

Cheers,
Event Horizon team

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I played(and finished) the early access sometime last year when it only had Act 1, it was pretty fun. They've done a lot since then, the dev team moves really fast.

Very combat heavy dungeon crawling with difficult combat.

Steam says I have 29 hours played, so I assume that's about the length of act 1.

 

[vazha]

that itemisation tho... Quick wood wand of crap

 

[Jimmious]

that itemisation tho... Quick wood wand of crap

 

[Heretic]

It's out, how is it?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Hey, this looks good.

The scenes if it ends up stealing all the PoE's thunder.

 

[Jimmious]

Hey this looks interesting. Anyone giving it a go?

“A title that could redefine the CRPG genre”
Game Skinny

....Ok

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Pirating it right now.

 

[Drowed]

The users seems to like it (95% positive). It looks fun.

 

[Anomander]

I started playing it (I'm finishing level 2) and so far it's ok. Nothing special, but not bad either. On higher difficulties fights qucikly become tedious. Each battle is like 50 mobs - few different kinds in waves. It quckly gets boring. I had to lower difficulty to normal because of it.
There are no XP so more enemies means nothing. On normal it's unfortunately pretty easy.
Every fight brings some gold and trash (one or two items).
You buy levels for characters so gold is most important stat.
I can say more when I played more.

 

[Villagkouras]

It has some bugs from what I see, not something really bad, but things like when you click on an object and shows its description, it sometimes forgets to remove the text. Or in some instance when rotating some statues, it was really hard to click the buttons.
Also quicksaving is really quick, but you don't get a notice that the game is saved which is weird? I had to check that it works.
I'm extremely early but the combat seems to have many influences from MOBA games, I agree with Anomander, the game is ok.
Also the music is annoying.

 

[tet666]

It has some bugs from what I see, not something really bad, but things like when you click on an object and shows its description, it sometimes forgets to remove the text. Or in some instance when rotating some statues, it was really hard to click the buttons.
Also quicksaving is really quick, but you don't get a notice that the game is saved which is weird? I had to check that it works.
I'm extremely early but the combat seems to have many influences from MOBA games, I agree with Anomander, the game is ok.
Also the music is annoying.

it says saving in the upper left corner when you quick save but it's pretty small and fast so it's easy to overlook i guess.