Infinite Tower RPG

Ever wanted a game that played itself?  Ever wanted to play a game that had several different classes to choose from, but only one that worked?

Congratulations: Infinite Tower is for you!

A game that is clearly a demo game for an iPhone app, the premise behind Infinite Tower is really simple: you are some sort of adventurer going up some tower teeming with monsters and the goal is to travel as many 'floors' of this tower as possible before developing a bad case of dead.

The game is a bit of a simulator, where you pick a character class, and watch him automatically go to battle with one of four monsters, a monster encounter representing a floor of the tower, until the character levels up, which you then go to a screen where you make adjustments to his stats, and sometimes buy him stuff that makes his stats more valueable in one of three areas: attack, defense, speed.  There is also a health stat that can have points assigned to it.

This should be awesome, except there is a major balance problem:  THERE IS ONLY ONE GOOD CLASS IN THE GAME!!!

Hint: this one

Now, in theory Ickabob could be any of four classes he wants to be.  Rogues hit really fast, Axemen hit really hard, Knights can take a lot of abuse, and Paladins can hit hard and take alot of abuse: though they can't hit as hard as Axemen and they can't take as much abuse as Knights.  In theory Ickabob could tweek himself and his stats according to which class he is.

In theory.

In practice however, I couldn't get a character of any class other than Paladin past the fiftieth floor.

Why, well, lets go into the battle mechanics for a sec.  You see, combat works with Ickabob swinging at the speed interval alloted by the speed stat, hitting them with the damage that the attack stat stats is about right onto on of four monsters that are doing the same thing, their damage being mitigated by whatever your defense stat feels right.

The monsters being the knight with a lot of defense, the skeleton who moves really fast and the orc that hits really hard.  Now, these monsters have a strong stat, a mediocre stat, and a shit stat.  Which is nice, as the selectable classes all have the same thing...

Oh... wait

From gameplay experience, the rogue was turned to chunky salsa by orcs really fast, the knight was getting their armor trashed by other knights and the axeman got swarmed by skeletons.  Now, the paladin is, well, well rounded compared to the rest of the herd, with speed being a shit stat but Attack and Defense both being awesome!

Ickabob vs Inakal: the paladin might actually die here

So, with less weakness than the other classes, Ickabob the Paladin was actually quite capable of making his way well past floor one hundred in the tower.

Now, as you progress, the game is paused whenever you level to up your stats.

Paladin stats: overpowered

During the progression I decided to divide my stat points between Attack and Defense, with speed as the dump stat.  You see, the paladin fears no one for any one of the monsters could do me in, it just depended on unleveled my stat assignments were.

To further the madness, every so often there is a shop that pops up that you can sink your arbitrarily gained gold into to boost the stat effects further.

We need to be even more powered

Course, the class you choose does give you bonuses to your stats as you progress, but these really help too, especially for those stats where you get no bonuses at all regarding your class.  Now, you get a bonus for health regardless of class, but you can't buy an upgrade to health (how would you do that?) but the other stats are more variant.  So, the paladin needs shoes, because that is the only stat they have that gets no bonus.  The over powered bastards.

Feel the power!

Ok, so I've established that if you want to waste your life to get on the leader board you should be selecting Paladin as your class, got it folks?

So, I was able to get Ickabob the Paladin to floor 216 before he met his gruesome demiss.

Pictures or it didn't happen

And when I went to submit the score, there is someone on machi.com that got to floor 10000!  I guess he wanted it more badly than I did... or he hacked it, I don't know.

Now, if there is ever going to be an Infinite Tower RPG 2, here are some things I would like the developers to consider for it.

One, give all classes a strong stat, a mediocore stat, and a shit stat.  What those stats are is what varies the classes.  I mean, the paladin was over powered because he had two strong stats while everyone else has only one strong stat.  This will add balance to the game.

Two, vary up the monsters already.  I was getting sick of Bones, Greenie and Tin-Emo at around floor seventy-five on my first paladin run.  Maybe vary up the floors while your at it, with, I don't know, themed rooms that cycle through periodically with like different music.

While on topic of the music, for heavens sake!  I'll give the credit that whomever pick/mixed the background music understood enough that there should be high change over in a tone that is planed to be looped over and over again, but this could be taken a step further.  It could be simple swapping of midi instruments every so often, or do what Gunz did and switch the background music periodically.

While still on the music, there is a fun thing you can do with it.  Play a game and come back and play another one!  The tone plays over itself!  It actually sounds kinda cool... developers, are you taking notes here!

Course, overall, I didn't expect this game to wow me, or give me a deep experience like The Day did, but as a low energy, simple, strategy title, it could stand to use some improvements... like nerfing the fucking Paladin!

Oh, and I know someone is going to dispute my "Paladins are overpowered" claim, and I don't know, claim they got to floor 300 with a rogue or something... for you out there, that's what the comments are for.  I am curious as to how you did it, but I think I found a First Order Optimal strategy with the Paladin... and those in a single player game are not a sign of good design.