Tower of Doom:Reviews:Jeff Lait
This review of Tower of Doom was based on version 001.
It was tested under Windows XP.
I really hope copx keeps this feel together, as this is a playable game out of the box!
It is, however, newbie unfriendly:
1) There is an alphabet soup at character creation. WS? BS? WTF? There is more than enough room to write things out in full here, with perhaps the abbreviation beside it. Manual reading should be optional.
2) Where are the hitpoints? The Wound counter is hidden somewhere on the status line, looking no different from WS. Please move Wounds to either the left most or right most spot.
It is, however, newbie friendly:
1) Making choices at random and not knowing where the hit points are, it is still fun.
Infinite ammo is a brilliant concept. Resist the temptation to remove this!
Your choice of graphics is interesting. I really don't know if I have ever seen it proper. I think hte @ is supposed to be a little upside down L, right? That's what I get with a US code page. With the Japanese codepage on my laptop, all the characters are random. Further, ones to the left affect those to the right, leading to much hilarity. Please investigate code pages and figure out how to enforce the one you want.
Note: This was a problem of using non-portable characters, which was fixed in later versions.
We all know the real reason why you only save your own stats, and not current level. STOP BEING LAZY! I don't want to have to wait to finish a fight to save. The advantage of roguelikes should be that I can get up and leave them at any time. Being able to quit and save at any point is part of this. You should change this [now: create], as it will only get harder to save your level state later.
Note: Later versions of Tower of Doom did correct this
All in all, a very fun hack and slash. The prompts on stairs annoy me, but not unduly (Stairs are rare). I always find it odd when I see a corpse (%) but don't get a "You see an orc corpse here." when you stand on it. You also don't seem to see that a weapon drops other than by standing on the corpse. (Which prompts that annoying pickup message)
Note: The "annoying pickup message" was removed in later version.