Source
r/patientgamers•
GameDesignerMan

Tower of the Sorcerer is a game you've probably never heard of. And it spawned a genre.

Tower of the Sorcerer was made in 1998 and is widely available for free (so you should play it too). I played it some time as a kid and it got burned into my brain forever. Yesterday I completed it for the first time, and by Lucifer's beard is it good.

The game is simple in concept. You're presented with top down rooms of enemies, keys, potions and stat boosting items. Every creature in the game (including you) has attack, defense and health. Combat is a fight to the death with both parties taking turns dealing damage (attack minus defense) to one-another until someone dies. Health is uncapped but doesn't regenerate on its own, so each combat is a calculation between how much damage you'll take vs the reward your enemy is guarding. This is all made easier by the ability to view the stats of each enemy on your current floor and how much damage it will deal to you without having to bust open a calculator.

If it sounds "Like Rogue," it's not. Nothing in TotS is randomly generated. Every enemy has been carefully placed, each potion or stat booster or key is behind some obstacle that you have to spend precious health in order to reach. TotS is a giant resource management puzzle, not an RPG. And it's SO GOOD.

I could keep going on for a while about how I think the design holds up after 20+ years (look it's my job okay), but I have to tell you about the Magic Tower genre. Because TotS has spawned hundreds of games. Games that I'd never heard of because I don't speak Chinese.

While the West was making "I Wanna be the Guy" clones, the East was making Magic Tower games. I never knew these existed but there are hundreds of them. Possibly thousands. And yes, there's even an "I Wanna be the Sorcerer." It's nuts that an entire genre like this never penetrated the language barrier. As far as I know the only two TotS tributes that stood out here are Deadly Rooms of Death and Desktop Dungeons, and even they didn't cause much of a stir (despite DD getting another reboot this year wow).

So there you have it, an obscure game that has spawned an even more obscure genre. Go play the original, there are a lot of twists and turns that I didn't want to spoil and the developers deserve a few visits to their website after keeping it operational long enough that it can legally drink.

Posted Jul 5, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

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AnteaterIll9658•

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GameDesignerManOP•

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Niborius•

Tower of the Sorcerer was so much fun, one of (if not THE) most addicting game I've ever played. I always look for games in the same genre (in English) but it's so rare, despite being such a good concept. I've played: TotS, DROD: RPG, DungeonUp, Deep Rune and Overburdened, I recommend checking them out if you haven't yet :)

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GameDesignerManOP•

I've played... Some of those. Someone else recommended Soulestination and it's pretty good. I'm still not sure about Deep Rune or DungeonUp.

Oh and between you and me I was playing around making my own, which lets face it probably won't see the light of day.

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Niborius•

Thanks for telling me about Soulestination! Might try that, I hadn't heard of it before.

I hope your game will in fact see the light of day! I'd totally buy it, it looks good already.

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GameDesignerManOP•

Thanks! It's a side-project at the moment so I can't make any commitments to it until my main project is finished, but most of the basic systems are in place (damage, collectables, different floors etc). If I was going to finish it I'd pretty much make it a spiritual successor to TotS with a few small mechanical additions (like doors that you can only open with gold).

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Niborius•

That sounds good, I liked the simplicity of how few mechanics TotS had, some clones try to add too much to their game which would make it unnecessary complex, but just adding a few, like that door locked by gold would be good imo.

Well either way, if you do ever get to release it or even need a beta tester I hope you'll think of me and shoot me a message 😋 I'd definitely play it.

Good to meet another TotS fan, I always feel like I'm the only one lol

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jctwizard•

I have really enjoyed tower of the sorcerer and excited to check out some of the games it inspired. Your game is looking really cool! Hope to see more of it at some point. :)

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