This feels too good to be true! How can it probably be that I’m about to be the individual to inform you there’s a brand new contender for the Legend of Grimrock throne? How is that this not already the discuss of the gaming city? Significantly, Tower of Masks is a unbelievable Dungeon Grasp-like with unimaginable fight, and one which deserves to turn into very huge.
I say “Dungeon Grasp-like” as a result of as ever, folks’s lack of ability to make use of style names accurately has rendered “dungeon crawler” to imply any recreation of any style that’s set in a dungeon, and “blobber” is simply too obscure to be helpful (and apparently solely applies when there’s a celebration of characters). What I imply is, a tile-based, first-person RPG, with runic writing on the partitions, trapdoors within the flooring, and cubes of sparkly lights that’ll teleport you someplace. That’s what we’ve acquired right here, and whereas the written phrases (few and much between) are near gibberish, every part else is totally splendid and I adore it. (I ought to add, this can be a Japanese recreation by developer Papertip Studio, and Japan has its personal wealthy custom of this style about which I’m wildly ignorant, so forgive me for my fully Western perspective on this all through.)
Tower of Masks is a single-character recreation, and there’s no magic nor potion mixing. And yeah, I miss having a crew and I miss making well being potions, nevertheless it seems, I completely don’t miss the panic of making an attempt to stammer out runes to craft a spell within the insanity of battle. And that’s as a result of what Tower of Masks does so splendidly nicely is make fight really feel alive and real-time, in a tile-based recreation.
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Since you’re a celebration of 1, your weapon is visibly held in entrance of you, swung in accordance with its personal properties and the talents of your character, and may make contact if in attain of an enemy. Which means that in the event you’re holding a prolonged employees (none of that, thanks), you’ll be able to poke enemies from two tiles away, and it additionally means you’ll be able to catch baddies on the diagonal. This makes the tile-dodging fight of the style a lot extra energetic, actually embracing the way in which most individuals recreation the style’s battles by sidestepping from assaults, then sidestepping once more to ship blows.
Every enemy sort has a special ghastly masks that determines their talents, and every requires a novel strategy to struggle safely. There are those that can use ranged fireplace assaults, those who swish little swords at a fast tempo, and–oh god–those that can ghoulishly vanish, then jump-scare seem proper in entrance of you as they scream and hit. Eek! These final ones are good, and fortuitously, fairly straightforward to kill. Others take a correct beating, and given your weapons degrade with use, this all requires a number of cautious balancing.
It’s additionally all made simpler by the wonderful motion. You have got a very free mouse-look, letting you go searching as if in an FPS—it’s solely motion the place you might be tile-bound. However that is all so easy you can whizz round and barely really feel such as you’re laboriously turning 90 levels on the spot in that stilted vogue, despite the fact that you might be. Belief me, it simply works, and it’s how each blobber needs to be to any extent further. And speaking of recent guidelines for the style, the way in which you’ll be able to throw gadgets should be instantly adopted too! While you maintain to toss something, an arched dotted line seems displaying you the place it can land, adjusting as you purpose. So sure, finally, a Dungeon Grasp-like the place you’ll be able to precisely throw a stone onto a distant stress plate! Recreation altering.
You have got three merchandise slots and three weapon slots that may be chosen from on the fly, then three armour spots and 6 accent slots for bonus gadgets. Past that, at the beginning of the sport your stock is teeny, your areas for carrying spares of torches, weapons, well being potions and the like very restricted. However this expands with each new bag you discover in your travels. Typically these are rewards for locating secret passages, or exploring out of the way in which, and every one seems like such a win, instantly supplying you with two extra stock areas for lugging about every part you may want.
To steadiness this limitation (and naturally it’s even much less house than regular, given you’ve just one character), the save fountains present in ranges are accompanied by magic chests which have a great deal of storage, and work like a Diablo stash or a Resident Evil merchandise field, the place your spare tools seems in all of them.
The puzzles are nice, there are hidden switches all around the partitions, and all of it feels so snug to play. Sure, I with that ranged fight have been an even bigger function (you get magic weapons, however within the first 4 ranges there’s no signal of a bow or arrow). Well being potions are completely distributed, rare sufficient to drive you to fret and squeak round on low well being, then discover one simply within the nick of time—however I do miss with the ability to combine my very own. But that is such a stable, glorious instance of the style, full with its personal sensibilities, concepts, and such good motion, that I’m delighted that it exists in any respect, slightly than being particularly bothered by something lacking.
Should you’re not fully positive, there’s a demo out there that’ll offer you a style of its slick tile-based motion, nifty fight, and distinctive strategy to stock juggling. However I’d strongly counsel grabbing this and leaping proper in. It’s been a bewildering 10 years since Legend of Grimrock 2 was launched, and till now nothing else has stepped in to satisfactorily decide up its mantle. Tower of Masks might not be fairly at Grimrock’s stage of mastery, nevertheless it’s a correctly good time in a a lot underserved style.
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