Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Tactical, Adventure, Indie
Tower of Time
Update - Item Forge
As we are nearing a release date, we would like to share with you some of the more exciting new features that are coming.
Item Forge
One of the features most requested by Players is related to items and RNG mechanics. While we are quite happy with the amount of combinations that can roll on the items, we agree that if you want to go a specific build, it can be quite hard.
Therefore, we are implementing Item Forge, an ability to increase selected statistics of an item, depending on the number of available upgrade counters -- for an increasing cost. Whether you want to boost the main damage component of a weapon multiple times -- or go for multiple stats for balanced item, it is up to you.
Statistics that can be upgraded will be different for each item type - a combination of currently rolled stats and few "default" ones.
So you want to see if you can reach 2000 Health on Boron? Who knows?
You will face a new type of dilemma:
1. You rolled an excellent item, do you want spend all your crystals to boost this item to a maximum?
2. Do you want to use your crystals for some enchants and wait for higher tier item?
3. Or go mid way - spend only green crystals / blue crystals for 1-2 upgrades?
Whatever you decide, Tower of Time will offer you incredible build flexibility.
What do you think about having such an option?
One of the new locations, in all its dark glory.
Next update on: Party Alignment, another novel feature that can change the way how you manage your party. Your gameplay choices will now have a critical impact.
Cheers,
EH Team
Kane Spotlight
We have added a clip presenting Kane and his abilities to store page. Can you imagine your party without him?
Kane's background
“If man is to survive this world, it will be by courage and duty alone.”
When I first joined King Daedric, his soldiers fled from me as if I carried the sickness. Only one guard seemed at ease around my unusual nature, Kane.
For over 15 years, the steely haired warrior has been my closest and most trusted companion. We each owe our lives to the other, many times over. Saved from certain death in battles with brigands, rebellious tribes and dangerous creatures from remote parts of the world.
Kane is intellectually sharp and a sound tactician. His list of faults is short, far outweighed by his exemplary measure, but if pressed to speak on his greatest weakness, I would confess an ease at which he becomes flustered and impatient. Such headstrong inclinations make him prone to attack problems with brute force, even when a more delicate solution is called for. Faults and shortcomings aside, Kane is the benchmark of a solider and friend, to which I measure all others. I value my second-in-command’s advice more than any other.
No discussion of Kane would be complete without mention that there is no record, written or oral, of the shieldguard ever withdrawing from combat first. He is valiant and heroic to a fault. While he values his life greatly, I’ve seen him risk it firsthand, without second thought, to protect those under his charge. Bound by the seven virtues of his title, King’s Champion, Kane lives by a strict code of conduct, offering mercy to his most fearsome enemies and aid to any who openly request it.
After his wife and adolescent son were taken in a storm of fire and ash, Kane turned away from women. For seventeen years he has been without serious relationship. Though if my eyes serve me, I would swear the shieldguard has developed a fondness for Maeve. A bond forged over the five-year duration of their friendship as fellow soldiers, no doubt. How deeply he cares for her, I dare not guess… One thing I know for certain, his dedication to duty would never allow him to openly express his feelings.
Hotfix 0.6.2.1334 and Linux Patch (big)
Hello All,
We just released a hotfix 0.6.2.1334. The following issues are fixed:
Issues
Daeva Trials - Maeve and Boron issue when game sometimes froze between sequences. Your saves will work as intended.
Some Beast challenges did not trigger combat.
Beast group in the sewers - upon entering combat player was returned to the city instead
Achievements will properly unlock
Linux
We also updated Linux build. We have tested it on Ubuntu 17.04. If you have a different distro and run into troubles with cinematics, please let us know. Thanks.
Thanks for your feedback and reviews.
Cheers,
KM
P.S. One of the Primal Beasts (in the screenshots above) is also very excited about this hotfix, since you will finally be able to test your skills against him in the final Beast Challenge
Update, Pause and Price
A short update about few things here, as we are working towards the final release.
Difficulty levels
We continue to balance difficulty levels and are testing a new way of setting them. On Hard and Epic difficulty enemies will not only scale in health and damage, but also in defense stats and skills (how they use them and how often). We are committed to create a super challenge for veteran players, where winning a battle will be very satisfying experience.
So no - soloing challenges on epic difficulty with cleverly build Boron will no longer be possible ( ...unless you find a different way)
Item Forge
We will add Item Forge - an ability to increase various stats on an item, for an increasing cost. Thanks to that, you will be able to create your ultimate party easier, not relying so much on RNG loot and having a great way to spend any surplus crystals that Maeve is carrying in her loot bag.
Skill adjustments
Observing many players in combat, we are making final (hopefully) adjustment to various skills. The list would be too long to present here, but we have some exciting new mechanics in testing, some of them factor in combat length too. One example can be Headshot - new Maeve's ultimate ability, that deals tons of damage to a single target and if that target is killed, the cooldown of this skill resets and its mana cost is decreased.
Party Alignment
Sometimes you face difficult choice and your champions disagree on how to proceed. In those crucial moments, you (as a Lord sitting in the throne room) will need to decide if you want to let party decide or impose your will, forcing one or the other option. How the party reacts to you and each other, will also affect
Price change
With the recent release of Book Two, we will be increasing the price a little - as announced before - just after current promotion ends.
Feedback
We have received tons of detailed feedback after we released Book Two. Some suggestions are really excellent. Thanks a lot to all who found the time to send us an email or post in the forums! If you find the time to review the game, that also would be great.
If you want to chat with us directly about anything, please join on Discord:
https://discord.gg/swuxMSV
Pause Time
One of the suggestions received was to implement pause, next to slow time. We will do so in short future. We still will recommend to use slow time, as it is more fun in our opinion - but if you wish so, you will be able to pause the game in combat, taking all the time you need.
Cheers,
KM
P.S. The screenshots above are from one of the challenges - where you face four Elemental Lords in sequence.
Hotfix 0.6.1.1281
We just released a small hotfix - addressing random crashes and fixing few other small issues:
Added support for 64bit systems - it should eliminate most crashes in recent build, that were caused by memory limitations
Fixed cursor flickering for some rotatable objects
Shade quest / Level 4 -- Water Essence can now be interacted with / picked-up
Arachnya - Primal Boss / Level 3 - now she can be attacked by melee units
Six Sons quest / Level 4 -- all beacons now display being lit as they should
Other minor fixes.
Thanks for your support and for sending your logs to us. They helped us to identify the source and fix it quickly.
Cheers,
KM
As for the screenshot above - this is a battle summary from one of the challenges (Epic difficulty). As you can see - Aeric/Druid - is not here. This is to prove that once you get more than four champions, you can really build your party as you want. Even without a healing powers of wood-clad Druid. Also, that Rakhem is far from being useless in combat.
Please share with us your post-battle screenshots here in Steam (upload screenshot) - it would be quite interesting to see what party composition you have and how you build your champions - so other players can compare themselves to you.
Update, Hotfix and Difficulty (0.6.1.1277)
We just released a small update and hotfix to Book Two. Here is a short summary:
Update
Added description to Battle Challenges.
Added relative "power" of Battle Challenges, giving the idea about difficulty of each challenge.
Titan - added autoattacks, as was always intended.
Few Melee bosses - they complained that Players were kiting them too much. They received an upgrade in a form of various "I catch you" skills.
Skill changes
Kane, Dash - Enhancement 2 decreases mana and cooldown, making it a useful utility skill.
Rakhem, Fire Power - Enhancement 1 - adds armor and resistances, making him a durable tank.
Hotfix
Fixed a bug with some interactive elements not being "active" - that could case game freezes.
Fixed few places where crash could occur.
That said, we have found two other small isues, which are not game-breaking.
Flickering cursor over some rotate-able element (but they do work).
Small delay when moving between inventory and skill tree.
We will address them in a next hotfix coming soon:
Difficulty Levels
The best RPG is the one that keeps the player engaged until the very last. Party advancement, item progression and challenging combat is essential in that. Once you build a party than can handle anything with ease, the game looses charm for some. We are putting a lot of effort to avoid that - that's the reason why we spend a lot of time balancing combat and thinking about new tactical challenges.
We have 5 difficulty levels in game. When you start New Game you can select one of them. You can also change difficulty at any point later on.
What is our aim behind them:
Story - for those who came just for the story. Set your champions to Move & Attack and go get coffee (almost).
Easy - very light challenge, you will have to use skills occasionally but no-one should die.
Normal - a challenge. You will need to use the skills a lot and perhaps go to slow time 2-3 times per combat. Boss encounters will require even more attention.
Hard- very hard challenge. Your performance in combat might not be enough. Clever champion builds, skill and skill enhancement, using enchantments will also be required. You will probably use slow time a lot, especially for boss fights and more challenging encounters
Epic - for those who enjoy nightmarish challenge. Here you need to think outside of the box and really experiment a lot - e.g. try building Kane as a caster tank. You will spend a lot of time in slow time, you will need to be smart about crowd control and use the map to your advantage - e.g. "gather" enemies in tight spots for maximum aoe damage or use walls to break line of sight for channel skills. You might die even in the first fight.
Difficulty level is not only about increasing damage and health of the enemies. The combat system in Tower of Time is quite complex and it changes depending on the combat mode, but unless you play and experiment, it is not easy to explain.
Recommendation
When you get to Tower proper (past intro) - we recommend that you play game on normal for the first 2-3 fights and then decide how to adjust the difficulty.
Alternatively - start a game on Epic, assign attributes and skill points and see if you can win the first combat. (Yes, it is do-able :)
That being said, the game is still in EA - we are doing what we can to balance it well, but it just requires time and feedback, a lot of feedback. If you are willing to share it with us, we will be very grateful. If you find some enemies too easy, then it means that probably you are geared up for higher level or you are a very good tactician. Tower of Time is not about button-mashing, slow time gives everyone an equal chance.
Challenges
Challenges are optional fights you unlock during the progress of the game. They are meant to test yourself against different, sometimes crazy setups - for a reward. For example - you fought four elemental lords in different battles. Well, can you handle ALL four of them in the same battle?
Also, each enemy group consists of 6 challenges. Challenges 1-4 are defined to be beatable immediately after you unlock them. However, challenges 5-6 are much different and sometimes require more champions, higher levels or stronger items.
In the coming small update, we will add proper description of each challenge as well as an "indication" of the challenge power (difficulty). Here is the example for challenges 1 and 6 from Risen.
As you can see, Challenge 6 is much (much) more difficult than Challenge 1.
So don't be discouraged if you cannot beat the last two challenges. They are not meant to be beatable immediately. Come back to them later.
Thanks for playing Tower of Time. Please let us know if you encounter anything new.
We also appreciate Your feedback, especially on the improved combat.
Cheers,
KM
(Our Titan is also very happy that he got those autoattacks...)
Book Two Released
We have released additional content for Tower of Time, together with major improvements to every aspect of the game. The full list would be too long, so here is a short summary.
Book Two
There are three new levels in the game. Journey deeper into the tower, discover technological marvels of the ancients, meet new enemies, follow the story, meet a mysterious hero, that will join your party as the seventh companion.
New levels should take about 10 hours to complete - or longer, depending on chosen difficulty level and the amount of side content and combat challenges.
Story
We made few changes to the story and generally accelerated it. We have improved personality of all characters and added choices, that will have an increasing impact later on. This change also impacts previous levels. We heartily recommend to replay the game, if you already reached end of level four (it will not be a disappointing time)
Combat
We added new combat modes, such as Defend Mana Orbs, It’s a Trap, Portals. All of them require completely different tactical approach. For example - in Portals - you do not defend yourself against the enemy, you need to take the fight to them and destroy three or more portals through which they arrive, else you will be overrun when they finally advance on your position.
We added new skills - for example movement skills and gravity skills. Use dash, jump, teleport to move around the battlefield in a blink of an eye. Use skills that distort gravity to pull or push enemies away.
Each champion now have 8 skills at his/her disposal.
We also added a skill tree where each skill has a main effect and one of the two optional enhancements, often changing the nature of the skill.
Finally, we created Elite Enemies, a new category that is like a mini-boss and brings a lot of flavor to combat. They can have multiple skills, that often can be quite surprising.
We improved combat mechanics for melee classes, they now can hold enemies with their presence (body). We also added unit avoidance, so the fight is more natural now. You can hold narrow passage and no enemy will pass through as long as your tanking champion is alive (unless they jump over him to reach high-damage dealing marksman in the back).
Save Games - conversion
Due to so many changes, the previous save games are no longer compatible. We recommend to start a new playthrough, however, if you wish to continue from your current place, your save games will be automatically converted (as close as possible to your previous location).
We sincerely apologize for this. We did our best to keep the saves compatible, but the game became so complex, that it just became impossible.
Other improvements
- New cinematics
- Enhancements to various UI elements
- New music and lots of new SFX added
- New unique items added
- New enemies and bosses
- New character models
- New challenges
- Combat summary for your champions
We hope you enjoy playing Tower of Time. As always, please send us the feedback and suggestions. We are now gearing up for the last mile here - Book Three and conclusion to the story.
Cheers,
KM and EH Team
New class in Book Two
In Book Two Your party will extend to the final number - seven.
Will it be a lucky number for Artara?
We will not disclose what this class will be, care to guess based on the concept art above?
Book Two - coming soon.
Over last few weeks we have been very busy, working on almost every aspect of the game. We are about to start testing phase for Book Two - about 12 hour of new content will be added - but also lots of changes to the existing levels and mechanics. You can see the highlights below:
Lore
Characters have more distinctive personalities - almost all dialogues are re-written.
New cinematics
Skills and Combat
As announced before, we have added new combat modes - with different objectives - such as defend objects, destroy portals or free one or more champions from traps / distant locations.
We have added elite enemies. They are mini-bosses that might appear at any moment (or might decide not to bother you.. yet). When they approach, they usually mean trouble.
We have added new skill mechanics and extended number of skills for each champion. We have also added full skill tree. All those changes have significant impact on the flow of combat - especially movement skills and gravity skills.
There are also a lot of changes and new things requested by the community.
New Combat Modes - Upcoming
There had been few posts about our combat mechanics lately. We agree with them 100%. So here is a short update on what we have been working on for the last two months, to improve the variety and challenge players more in the terms of the tactics and builds.
We are implementing New Combat Modes, where objectives will be different. Here are the main examples - they will be combined as well. We are setting them up and balancing, so we need perhaps two more weeks before adding them to the current content.
Trap
Your party will be ambushed and one or even two champions will be locked in a destructible trap.
Objective: split damage between trap and incoming enemies / decide if you want to spam all the possible skills first to free your locked comrades, risking that your party will be mana-starved -- or take more balanced approach.
Defend
There will be a number (1-3) of objects on the map, each giving your party certain buffs within the range like hp/regen per second in range, armor aura, damage boost. Or giving global debuffs to enemies - weakness, slow, armor sunder, etc.. Enemies will target objects first, only sustained damage or threat-skills will force them to fight your champions.
Objective: defend objects (as many as possible) and survive the combat. If all objects will be destroyed, a very strong elite enemy or large group of enemies can spawn / or all enemies can receive a global buff. So decide - choose one priority object and defend it at all costs / intercept strongest enemies / or try to split the forces.
Destroy
Finally, the most complex battle mode. Here your champions do not defend themselves, they ATTACK. There will be certain number of spawning portal (2-3) - each GUARDED by a group of enemies, with new enemies joining over time. Once you enter their defend range, they will all attack at once. Also - once they decide that they have sufficient forces, they will also move towards your party and attack. With each portal destroyed, enemies at other portals will become stronger or portal themselves can get a nasty range attack.
Objective: destroy all portals. Time your attacks well, so you don't fight the guards of your chosen portal AND the enemies that will move from another one. Split the forces OR take portals one by one. If the portals have nasty debuffs in range - lure the enemies away first or take them head-on. Use AOE smartly. Channel enemies into narrow pathways so you maximize AOE dmg.
Large Maps
We are also implementing large and X-large maps - especially for Destroy mode. Here is the example of one of the new large maps. You will get a big playground now to play around.
We are also working on new cool skills and new skill tree. An update on that one will come in a few days.
All in all - we don't want to jinx it :) but it actually plays quite cool now. Hope you will appreciate our attempts to bring something fresh to the gaming world.
Cheers,
KM
P.S. The Enemies are equally excited about all those changes....
