Tower of the Sage

[code]For other game reviews, please [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40640212/]follow us at What The Game?[/url][/code] Tower Of The Sage (TOTS) is a deck building rogue-like game that borrows ideas from Slay the Spire and has combat that looks a bit like Darkest Dungeon. There are a pair of starting character types, and they come with their own abilities and upgrades during a play through. A play through is a path that is completed on each of three maps, with the final boss encounter on each map being hard. There are opportunities for rest, picking up treasure, and a few random events which can be positive, neutral, or detrimental. The combat is fairly simple to start, but as cards and abilities along with unique items are gained, it gets more and more complex. TOTS has a few graphics settings for things like the screen resolution and textures, but nothing that really changes the look of the game in a major way. Strangely, TOTS seems to activate Steam VR looking for an HMD for some reason. There is background music, which as usual, is something to turn down to a minimal level. Although there are some sound effects, there are not many. In fact, the game is fairly quiet with no background music. This is a problem with some actions, like button clicking. There is no positive feedback that a button was clicked during combat. Because of this it possible that a player might click twice thinking it was not registered. Due to a bug, this will not only end the current turn, it will also buffer and immediately end the following turn. Selecting cards is also glitchy becoming an almost schizophrenic select/deselect wrestling match to pick a card and play it. There is a no distinct save/load game, but progress is saved if the player exits and restarts the game. The existing run can be continued or dropped. TOTS is pretty nicely rendered, looking like hand drawn artwork in a style similar to Darkest Dungeon. TOTS comes with two starting characters, a magic wielding type and a warrior. There is a greyed-out portrait for a class called a Hunter that is "coming soon". The magic user starts with 75 health and 3 mana (for playing cards). The warrior starts with 90 health and also starts with 3 mana. The starting cards are unique for each class, but some are basically the same in effect. The acquired cards are a mix of unique and identical between the two characters. The progression for the magic user involves building up summoned minions and burn/poison effects, with some defensive cards. The progression for the warrior is based on using early rounds to build up armor (added as shielding at the end of every round), then go into rage mode to deal high amounts of damage. Most of the progression for any character is through spending XP on talents, which is easy to overlook between rounds. It is a good idea to visit the talents window as a matter of habit between rounds. At this time, TOTS is in early access and the roughness shows. Completing the final boss caused some giant text to appear on the screen that couldn't be read, probably a congratulations. Selection of cards during combat can be awkward. Double-clicking the end turn button will result in the current turn ending as well as the next turn, when it comes up. It's likely all of this will be fixed in time. There ought to be more sound effects and action sounds, particularly with actions like clicking 'end turn' to give the player more feedback. There probably needs to be some tougher bosses and a bit of balancing with some of the cards. A rarity system would be a nice addition. The special items/artifacts acquired as rewards are surprisingly well balanced; only a few need some rethinking as being a little too powerful. Tower Of The Sage is a great game in the making, well worth the asking price now. [b]With improvements and added length/complexity, it will be worth more in the future and is highly recommended.[/b]

After a stream & about 5 hours of playtesting.... Game is very heavily modeled after Slay the Spire as far as gameplay mechanics are concerned. Graphics are a bit cartooney but they're fine. Sounds & music are simple but decent. There are too many pop-up hint boxes and are mildly annoying; I don't need to be told after every battle I have unused experience points. Interface is straight-forward; it's drag and drop 99% of the time. There is minimal variety of gameplay options. I had only 2 options at the time I recorded my playthrough and it was a very fast game to play. I was able to play both characters (and win) in under an hour. It was very easy to get overpowered very quickly if you could survive the first 4-5 battles. By the end I was walking on even elite enemies due to the number of artifacts and somewhat broken attack cards you can gain. The game is very easy mode, even after updates. The Ascensions don't really help much, but after you get 2 or 3 it does actually have the chance to beat you (at the time I made this video I had played 15 times and died once on Ascension 2). Now bear in mind this is Early Access. The developer has been updating fairly regularly and even now it's a bit different from what I recorded. Still, if you are a fan of deck building games with the roguelike element, this might be something you want to put on your wishlist. Although the developer said they will make it more expensive as they update it, so getting it now at $4.99 might not be a bad idea if you think you'd like this game. The developer does have a discord where they are accepting feedback, so if you like to be part of Early Access that will definitely be your way to help them. I feel if the developer keeps up with improvements (and maybe eventually a graphical update to improve character models) this will be a game to recommend; as of right now I can only recommend it if you like helping with Early Access titles or just want a smaller-scale Slay the Spire style game. Check out my Youtube VOD for my playthrough and see if you like what you see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3ld4BtKzWE

Went to one of the first nodes and accepted the old man's gear. The game wouldn't exit the area and I got stuck. Restarted over and over and can't figure out how to leave it. I can't find any menu to leave it just stays in the screen without a menu. Unable to tell if it's freezing or if it's just taking long to load but it just stays there. Idk if this will be fixed or not so I refunded for now.

Если вы любите расслабляющие игры,которые не заставляют ваши мозги кипеть от кучи различных разветвлений в прокачке и подбирать сложны тактики против противников,то эта игра вам обязательно понравится. Она проста в освоении даже не зная английского языка (просто в ней нет русского). Просто заходите и наслаждаетесь неторопливым и не напрягающим геймплеем,проходя уровень за уровнем и прокачивая потихоньку своего героя. На данный момент в игре доступно всего 2 героя: Маг и Воин,которые имеют в своей коллекции различные наборы карт. В общем я могу вам только посоветовать ее,А играть или нет,решать вам. Но для убивания времени и отдыха после рабочего дня,самое то! Обзор на эту игру можете посмотреть по этой замечательной ссылочке: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMC5Dncsjfc

Honestly, I like it! It's a good game for if you want to just get ramped up and steamroll people. It's pretty easy at the moment, but hopefully when difficulties are unlocked, it clears that up. Beat both characters first try! Can't wait to see more!

It is simple, it is fun and foremost, it is cheap! Could use some more sound effects and some more QoL, like dragging the area with the mouse. Finished my first run, no bugs found. So, easy thumbs-up for me.

Text is way too small on the cards to read until after putting them in your deck

The game has very bad animations and sound. Graphics are cute. Gameplay is boring. Nothing to see it. There is a demo so check before buying.

I get a message every time I boot up the game that says "out of video memory trying to allocate a rendering resource. Make sure your video card has the minimum required memory, try lowering the resolution and/or closing other applications that are running". I've tried these steps, searching on the internet and spent over 3 hours trying to get this message to disappear and have had no success. I have a gaming laptop that can install other games which are 10+gb at the moment. I've never seen this message before. What a bummer I can't play this game due to this