Town of Night Reviews

Just another RPG game that you should probably avoid.

Okay, it might be good as a demo. But as a game? Pffff..... atrocious.

Who am I? What's my story? Why am I here? The game doesn't bother to answer anything as it just shoves your character into an inn and just throws its hands up while also not bothering to explain any of the controls at all. So you wander around a poorly constructed, stock asset inn with load times between rooms for some reason, where you can enter a door to your south and end up in a room with the door you just came into... to the south of you. One of the three NPCs in the place explains that you got beaten up and dragged to the inn. Well finally, something! But that something is quickly dropped when you're just told to go look around town to find people to party up with. No reason why, just because. Then, when I finally left the inn... my frame rate shot down faster than my ability to come up with anything amusing to compare it to. In no universe should my system have any kind of struggles with this game, but there I sat with a frame rate below 10, watching as my hopes for this game vanished completely. I could not keep going after that. I refuse to. The game gave me exactly nothing to work with, nothing to keep me interested when it decided to start running like the fattest man in the world in a foot race. Even if I don't get my refund, at least I only spent 49 cents on this travesty and gained yet another lesson; never trust anything with Back to Basics Gaming involved, even if they’re just a publisher.

I am a fan of RPG games like this I love the challenge you get from bosses and I also love the animation of the game.

not the best start and set up to a game'lack of story or explanation of how things work. after a bit of grinding and pursaverence i guess it gets better later on also its a good idea wish there were more locations but you get what you pay for ' worth its price

This has a lot of glaring problems right from the start; I suggest that if you think this game looks decent, then it's cheap enough to buy it just to try out, and I can almost guarantee you'll see just how bad it is within 15 minutes of playtime. I know I did, and am getting a refund even for a discounted price of 50 cents. And now, a quote from the developer: "Its not Beta, the chosen party just cant be changed. Its like in those old school crpgs, you messed up, you need to restart. I wanted to emulate that formula." This reflects an abysmally stupid philosophy of game design. Being unwilling to throw out bad ideas just because they're "how the old ones did it" is a good way to make a bad game.

I'm less than an hour into this game, and I can already say I definitely don't regret the $1.59 I spent to buy it. I REALLY love the style of this game. The overworld works like Pokemon, you walk around, enter buildings, talk to people, it's 3D. Then in the dungeons it changes to a Legend of Grimrock first-person point of view. You can't see the monsters, they just spawn randomly when you walk around and you fight, similar to walking in bushes in Pokemon. If this game had voiced characters and slightly better combat graphics, along with an actual plot (there doesn't seem to be one yet), I'd easily pay $10-20 for it with no regrets. I can't say enough how much I love this style of game with the turn-based old school combat and exploration. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep making more! Some side notes: -Loot ALL the pots! -Treasure chests are mean :( -I really dig the music even though it's a low priced, low budget game. -Dude it's $1.50 just buy it already. -Seriously that's like the same price as a double cheeseburger at McDonald's, and we both know you don't need another one. I wish there was more games like this one! I'm such a sucker for old school dungeon delving turn-based games. Overall Rating: 7.5/10

So let's start with what I THOUGHT this game would be. It's labeled as a first person, dungeon crawler, turn based combat hybrid which is very interesting and I'll admit in the begining, in my naivety, it was really fun but dear sweet gaben....... PROS: Interesting Ideas for an RPGmaker That's it... CONS: - 0 sense of where to go or what to do other then "Dungeon Crawl... GO FORTH!" - 50g dagger sure sure, 500g sword? I'll save up! *clicks next page* 3 swords for 500,000g each.... I too would like to wield his broken GM weapons. - Most unsensible party system I've ever seen... you pick 3 people to join your team but OOPS you pick a trash person compared to the very clearly broken other choices but you can't swap em out. You start 1 room over from a shit character to party up with, which WOULD be fantastic if I could swap her out but nope. - Complete lack of any character development in any of the characters at all ever. it's an RPG no? - I run through each area mindlessly spamming Enter to kill the nothing mobs only to kill 3 lesser bosses (I think??) and running around a seemingly endless dungeon and stumble upon an Ice Dragon.... AN dragon that took 45 minutes to kill because ONLY MY MAGE COULD ACTUALLY HIT IT!! - And the best part is? If I never picked the mage for my team, then oopsy f*cking doodly doo, sorry it's my fault, I have to start over.... - Then after wasting my time doing this I run around to find the next little boss only to phase into a new area on the wall on the outside of the map... meaning I can't get down, I couldnt progress in the game any more because the dev couldn't spawn me in correctly. Fun Idea, it had promise BUT I couldn't even progress if I wanted to cause I'll just get stuck on a wall. Game needs more then just a Loli mage.

I bought this game for 49 cents during the Steam Winter Sale. I haven't finished yet but I have played 6 hours of it. I'm a first person dungeon crawler enthusiast, and I was excited to see this game so cheap in a genre that is so starved of games. Some background information, first. This game is produced in Smile Game Builder, and it uses mostly stock assets and music from what I've seen of Smile Game Builder, so it feels kind of like a tech demo for the software (I do not think the developer is affiliated with the producers of that software, however). Town of Night is like most Wizardry-like games in that there is a homebase town that has an inn, church, shops, etc, and dungeons you can go into. Unlike most Wizardry-like games, however, you can actually explore this town in a top-down 16-bit RPG style (press Y while you're in town to switch to and from first-person mode! Not only does it show off the engine, but it's necessary to find some of the doors.) The dungeons are spread around the town and when you enter them you are locked in first-person view. The switch from top-down to first person view is reminiscent of the first Phantasy Star. At the beginning of the game, you are thrust right into action, no cutscenes or anything like that. You start with one party member, but can quickly recruit three others by asking about town. I got a Blood Priestess, a Mage, and a Healer. There's also a Warrior. There may be other party members, but that's all I know of. Be careful when recruiting your party, as once characters are in, they're in. There's no switching party members as of this review. The character designs are cute, but once again, stock assets. In the dungeons, there isn't a mini-map, however, unlike most games of this type, you will hardly miss it, nor feel the need to construct a map of your own. There is enough field of view and distinguishing landmarks, and the dungeons are short and linear enough that you can find your way without a map. Progression is mostly by keys and bosses, defeat the bosses, get the keys, dungeons are locked until you can get the keys. The focus is on combat, there haven't been any puzzles or other quests in the six hours I've played so far. Battles are initiated by random encounters, which occur at a slightly annoying rate, however, the godsend is that you seem to have 100% chance to run away from (non-mandatory) battles. There also do not seem to be back attacks or pre-emptive attacks. The battles seem to be of padded sumo nature, After the beginning of the game, enemies hardly threaten you, and it takes a while for you kill enemies, especially bosses. There are some enemies where some of your attacks are strangely incredibly effective, and the characters feel unbalanced. The main character sucks (although he's gotten a bit better since he got the axe of 20% auto-KO on hit, although the axe seems to proc a lot more than 20% of the time), the Blood Priestess isn't good unless her Blood Suck deals hundreds of damage against the enemy you're fighting, the Mage seems to get poor value for her MP, and the Healer is very effective (you'll rely on her in these drawn-out battles). I know I sound pretty negative about the game, but I do not believe it is bad, and I'm also grading on a curve for it being a 49 cent game (it's regular price is $1.99, still pretty cheap. You also get 3 trading card drops, so you get some of it back), and I've loved the time I put into it so far. The developer also seems to be committed to adding new content to the game, and I hope I can also point out other things that could be worked on. Sometimes it isn't clear as to what to do next, although I haven't been stuck for too long each time. The developer also commits the mortal sin of placing items that seem to be important, but are merely decorative (such as the blue orbs in some of the dungeons, and the jail cells/cages). The game lacks polish, the title screen is kind of a mess, and some of the graphics don't seem to be optimized. In town, some of the shadows flicker, especially the ones under benches. One of the rooms in the haunted house slows the game down immensely, even in the transition to the battles it is slow, making the game pretty unbearable. Speaking of the haunted house, I am not sure if it is intended or not, but you can switch between the camera angles despite it being a dungeon. The script also needs some proofreading, with spelling and capitalization issues at times (such as the "sabre", which is lower case, when other items' names are capitalized.). There isn't much of a story, although some of the better games in this genre have only had an excuse plot. Still, it would have been nice to know more about these characters, or have some in-party banter. Who is Corr? Why is Charlotte so eager for blood and torturing her enemies? and so on. In conclusion, it's a pretty good first effort from a solo developer, and a fun way to kill some time for a low price. I can't wait to see what the developer does next with the lessons they learned from this.

+Nice graphics +Cheap -Skills missing descriptions -Party management -No healthbars (including bosses that you have to battle for 45 minutes) -De-/Buffs last the entire battle -Offensive Magic attacks don't scale well compared to physical damage -No automatic mana regeneration (while this is not a must criteria, it encourages the players to use) -No sense where to go (no quest logs) -Battles are just spaming the basic attack and using a heal spell every couple of turns (add 1-2 turns of casting buffs for the bosses)