An Humble Pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Goddess of Primal Darkness
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Type of game:
A transformation-heavy roguelike dungeon crawler with over 40 achievements that give persistent rewards, Tower of Triumph is a game that will keep you coming back for more! Fight monsters, change sex, grow and lose limbs, and have all sorts of voluntary and involuntary sexy times with a whole host of tower and forest monsters. Catgirls, wolf-men, goblins, naga, minotaurs, you name it! If it's in the game, you can fight it, and you can become it! Transformations are gradual, with individual body parts changing one at a time, so the possibilities aren't limited to merely what you see. Become a spider-taur with eight legs with horse hooves and a fox-girl head on a slime body with a snake tail if you want. Or sometimes...if the tower monsters want.
Play now!
Premise
Legends claim that in times long forgotten, when the Goddess of Primal Darkness gave birth to world, the Tower of Triumph was left as the point of contact forever connecting the mortal world with that of the divine.
A monumental behemoth of stone forever scraping the sky, those brave adventurers who enter the tower don't always return, but those who do are always changed by their experience. Some become rich beyond measure, others become learned wielders of arcane power, while still others escape as twisted wretches with their mind barely intact. But all agree that it is a place wherein great change, whether for good or bad, is possible. It is a place where the hopeful can meet with their dreams, the heroic can prove their worthiness, and the desperate can meet with salvation, or death.
You have journeyed far from your home to at last reach the fabled town of Crescentheart, at the tower's base. And so begins your journey to the penultimate point at the tower's apex: the Shrine of the Goddess, the granter of all wishes, the fountain of immortality...even to path to godhood. And yet also, the bringer of death and tragedy to all who fail to master its beautiful and treacherous mysteries.
Links:
* Discord
Tower of Triumph March 18, 2024 "Bugfixes and misc" update!
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Misc changes:
Bug fixes
Tower of Triumph February 18, 2024 Graphics update!
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* New map icon customization
* 96 new character avatars, and you can now use external images as custom avatars
* 53 new monster portraits
* Inventory items can now be sorted
* ToT now has a browser tab favicon
* Several new sex scenes
* 22 bugfixes
Full changelog available in game!
Tower of Triumph December 1, 2023 Major Update: Preganancy, parties, tower updates and more!
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* Pregnancy and childbirth: give birth to monster babies!
* New party system: use your monster babies as meat shields!
* New lighting system (Lantern light radius stacks. Enable hardware acceleration on your browser if it's slow)
* Lots of UI enhancements, infinite inventory, menu changes
* Tower redesign: larger levels, better loot
* New buildings, new perks, new quests, new achievements!
* Roughly 20 written pages worth of new dialogue
* Lots and lots of bugfixes
Tower of Triumph July 11, 2023 Update: Bugfixes Is Magic
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New content:
* The desert now has music
* 1 new tower event: statue
* Bridge and pressure plate graphics
Mobile compatibility
* Compatibility mode now hides upper-right images
Magic system revisions:
* Spell levels from books have been removed from the game. No more 750+ damage firebolts.
* New spell: Dart
* Mage level 7 ability now regenerates mana on kills
* Mages start with dart, not firebolt
* Black Mage perk now grants firebolt
* Portal now costs 5 plus current Tower level mana, and it can be cast in combat
* Spells can no longer be learned directly from bookcases
Rule changes:
* The chest unlock/trap code has been completely rewritten, both fixing some bugs and changing the math. Rogues are more valuable now.
* Encounters now show monster type before combat begins
* Reptile morphs now grant optional chance to avoid battle before it begins
* All transformation consumables except slime and demon have been standardized so that their name matches their morph. What it says is what you get. Slime are an exception because they only have one fluid: goo, not semen or milk. And demons are an exception because the demon type has unique names per sex: succubus, incubus and omnibus are all demons, and will drop "demon meat." Otherwise, the exceptions follow the standardization. No more "wolf quad," no more cow meat from minotaur, etc. What it says is what you will become. Sex handling for consumables remains the name: milk makes you female, semen makes you male, meat (usually) applies no sex change. Non-consumable-sex-based transformation may occasionally continue to behave in unintuitive ways in cases where certain monster types have no members of a certain sex. For example, there are currently no male ants, there are no female wolves, etc. Note that the standardization may also result in outcomes that favor clarity of player experience over biological accuracy. "Snake milk," for example.
* As part of the above change, several monster types have been renamed for clarity. For example, "wolf" is now "wolf-morph" to distinguish anthropomorphic wolf-men from actual wolves.
* Mining requirements have been increased
Bug fixes:
* A whole massive pile of problems relating to transformations and body parts have been fixed
* Catgirl vaginal now logs virginity
* Best Guardian level is no longer applied as a spell bonus
* Fixed level 10 event pressure plate
* Best Lumberjack bonus is counted properly again
* Fixed a problem that could cause nav controls to disappear after using the magic circle to return to the tower
* Greedy now unlocks from piggybank deposits not gold drops
* Sex organ growth/shrink rates have been made slightly more sane
* Fixed some problems relating to fire breath vs magic attacks and fire vs magic resistence
Build 23-7-05 (July 5) is now live: Say no to bugs!
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New content:
* As requested: ArcDragon Games now has a discord server
Bug fixes:
* A problem relating to scorpion body parts has been fixed
* Added a body part checker to remove irrecoverably broken body parts (scorpion *cough cough*)
* Harpies have been removed from the spawn table (they're not ready)
* Fixed a problem that caused update to not correctly update breast equippability for some characters
* Fixed a problem that could break the desert for some players
* Sex part potions should now be able to grow entirely new parts
* Fixed graveyard reporting
* Avatars no longer appear on gravestones
* Starving to death in the tower works again
* Fixed some problems with monk dodging
* Dungeon bedrooms now prompt you to sleep again rather than auto-healing you
* Fixed a problem with slime damage
* Fixed a problem that prevented stairs from generating on level 5 for some people
Build 23-7-02 (July 2) is now live: Classes and deserts and new boss, oh my!
This is a huge update, with lots of new content and mechanics. There may be bugs.
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New content:
* Tower level 6-10 have been unlocked
* New boss: Neris the Cursed
* The bridge can now be built
* New zone: southern desert
* 7 new monsters: ant, scorpion, ratkin, hellhound, hydra, troll, drider! (verify all)
* 5 new sex scenes: wolfquad blowjob, antgirl vaginal, hydra cock, ratkin defeat, hellhound defeat
* (Experimental) new equipment enchantment mechanic to prevent body parts from transforming
* New items: cactus, pussy growth/reduction potions, several new armor types
* Finley's quest for steel is now available
* 3 new help topics: Class, transformation info, and a FAQ.
* Inventory now reports fullness/capacity
* Inactive characters now appear on the map
* Unique item artifacts now exist
* Zehtalia has been given a loot upgrade
* New class: Guardian!
* Moonstone now enchants for increased maximum mana (verify)
* New dungeon mechanics: levers and pressure plates
Major class revision:
Class mechanics have been significantly revised, and every class now receives a unique effect that improves with level. These effects stack with retirement bonuses, and the combined bonuses can be substantial. It is advised that you read over the new class info help texts. Some classes that were formerly only useful for their retirement bonuses may be considerably more effective than they were previously.
Rule changes:
* Achievement/class unlock criteria are no longer hidden
* Naga have been moved to higher tower levels
* The retirement quest now awards 40 instead of 30 xp. Just enough to make a new character immediately eliible to complete the death quest.
* Rebalanced armor values and costs, added a few new armor types, and generally scaled armor/cost ratios so that better armor costs proportionately more and bad armor is more cost efficient.
* Bras can now be worn on boobs
* Strength is now a factor in mining success
* Prostitute class is now unlocked after only 5 flirt victories
* The player flirt system has been significantly revised
* Running from combat now consumes stamina
* Shield bash success chance improved slightly
* Tower traps should trend towards 2 per level now
* Living characters inside the tower during a reset will now be teleported to town. Dead characters will become lost.
* Bonuses from the first three gem enchantments have been massively increased
* Chest strength requirements have been reduced
Bug fixes:
* Fixed a text display error when praying at demons (verify)
* Not-yet-implemented classes and perks no longer appear during character generation (ninja, paladin, breeder, etc.)
* Reversed white/black mage unlock texts have been un-reversed
* Internal code ID for slots no longer appears on inventory screen
* Fixed some problems with sex stat tracking for bunny girls
* Selene's dialogue should remember prior conversations now
* Caves should now no longer reset with every map transition/game reload
* Fixed a Charyss dialogue option that wasn't showing
* Damage absorption now reports correctly
* starter rolls of cheese now correctly stack. Fix is not retroactive.
* Fixed another bug with transformation chest traps
* A couple bugs with soul trap mana costs have been fixed, and "real" costs are now visible in the spellbook during combat
* Probably fixed a bug that caused traps to sometimes overwrite stairs
* Fixed a graphical glitch that caused floor tiles to be drawn on top of tower fountains
* Damage absorption no longer reduces damage from magic attacks
* Improved morph description handling. You shouldn't be a monstrosity quite as often now.
* Combat loot drops should stack now (verify)
* Fire healing now works as intended
* (probably) fixed a bug that could cause trap placement to overwrite dungeon events
Build 23.6.04 (June 4): Caves, mining, mobile mode, bugfixes
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New content:
* Caves now appear in the forest
* Mining picks can mine gems in caves
* Daphne can now enchant amulets
* 2 new monsters
* 6 new sex scenes
* 6 new avatars
Mobile/Small screen compatibility mode:
* Horizontal shrink for Crescentheart North
* Button press for avatar change during character generation
Rule changes:
* Hunger has been renamed stamina
* Victory sex now reduces lust at the cost of stamina
* Pawn store no longer doubles the cost of items
* Pawn value of gems has been cut in half
* Firebolt damage has been nerfed
* Loss by lust now results in gold loss the same as from combat losses
* Monsters without hands (horses, spiders, etc.) no longer take gold
Bug fixes:
* House inventory fix
* Players who have level 10 charcters will be retroactively awarded the Power Leveler achievement
* chest transformation trap (verify)
* Hunger/stamina descriptive text should now update instantly
* The priest class can now be unlocked when healing out of combat
* The level 7 priest achievment 'Parson' should now award correctly
* Fixed a bunch of problems with minotaurs
* Horses now drop horse parts instead of fox parts
* Unimplemented flowers should no longer generate in the forest
* Visiting forest level 11 no longer generates errors
* New characters that start at level 2 from scholar bonus now receive a stat point from the free levelup
* Stoneskin and resist potions are no longer permanent
* Rina's quest dialogue has been changed to make the Three's Company acheivement criteria more clear
* It should be a little easier to be classified as a horse or naga now.
* Cleaned up some issues with body display. More remain.
* Fixed an error that sometimes prevented human adventurers from stealing items
* Creatures without fluids no longer give bottles of error
* Several problems relating to naga/snake parts have been fixed
* Bunny victory sex events are now properly logged
* CombatUI damage reporting for weapons now no longer incorrectly include bodymorph bonuses
* Fixed the pluralization error with stackable combat drops
Build 23.5.15 (May 15, 2023): Crescentheart South, Enchanting, and Bugfixes
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New features and content:
* New zone: Crescentheart South
* New shop: lumber mill, which can bulk buy and sell wood
* New shop: Daphne's jewelry
* Game save/loading has been added to the main menu
* Enchanting is now available from Daphne
* Gems have been added to the loot tables
* New avatars, and avatars can now be changed at any time from the stats menu
* Arrow keys can now be used to move
* 1 new character map icon
* Items in inventory can now be destroyed
* You can now build a bed and upgrade storage in your house
* Change log added to menu
* You can now "visualize defeat/fantasize" about being overcome to more easily lose battles
* Pawnshop and house inventories should remain vertically stationary now
* Minotaurs now have combat decriptions
Rule and balance changes:
* Meat/semen/milk can now be pawned for money
* Food/hunger values of meat/semen/milk have been adjusted
* Scholars no longer start with firebolt, and instead gain an extra +1 xp per combat victory
* Unlocking prositute now only requires 10 flirt victories
* being ressurected now restores you to full health
* Penis and breast reduction serums can now fully remove parts
* Newly constructed houses start with 5 storage instead of 10, but are now upgradable to 20
* The distribution of tree tiers has been significantly smoothed over larger number of forest zones
* Defeat by goblin now results in waking up in the church rather than being stuck at low health
* Ordinary and transformative food and drink can no longer be consumed during combat. Potions still can be.
* Items formerly lost when the player loses a limb but lacks inventory space, are now sold to Skitters at the Pawnshop
* Snake milk has been removed from the tavern
* Firebolt mana costs now scale with damage, and will cause feedback damage if they reduce you below 0 mana
* Increased gold drops in the forest by about 33%
* Finley's restocking has been made sligthly more favorable
Bugfixes:
* The transformation code has been completely rewritten from scratch, theoretically solving several related bugs
* Transformative food and drink should now work correctly
* Charyss event will no longer disappear if you talk to her then initiate combat
* Charyss is now correctly treated as a demon type for fire effects
* Unimplemented spell "passwall" has been removed from tower bookcase events
* Wolf part health bonus now updates instantly
* Fixed bug that prevented new body parts from being able to equiping/unequip gear: note does not apply retraoctively, bugged parts are still bugged
* fixed penis growth serum
* Power level perk should now be awarded correctly
* Earning the black mage achievement no longer results in an error cascade, and the damage bonus now correctly only applies if you have the perk
* Mage class perk description is now phrased correctly
* slime either ( error has been fixed
* tower monsters defeated by flirt no longer bleed all over the floor
* Up highest zone is now properly reset when the tower is reset
* Peace in the Calm of the Horny can now be unlocked
* Minotaur defeat event should now be accessible
* Defeat by goblin female should no longer result in getting stuck
* Morphology reporting now includes goblins and slimes
* "giant spider" name/morph error fixed
* Selene no longer resets her quests when a new player talks to her (looks ok, but verify as stated)
* Pit trap error when returning to a previously destroyed floor fixed
* Spiders should no longer give snake meat
* Horse legs can now kick. Note that this bug occured at assignment, and the fix doesn't retroactively correct limbs from prior versions.
* Visual error preventing Best Lumberjack bonus from showing in the UI has been fixed
* With suffficient Best Scholar levels, it is now possible for new characters to start at level 2
* Fixed a bug that could cause items of same type but different material to collapse into each other\
* Stats screen no longer mixes up barbarian and paladin bonuses
* Monk and barbarian unlock requirements have been fixed
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May 1, 2023: Bugfixes and rebalancing
* Early game difficulty reduced, new NPC dialogue added to explain certain game concepts
* Bugfixes for traps, the ressurection quest, and various other things.
* Food based transofrmations temporarily disabled. System needs an overhaul.
April 30, 2023: Initial release
Many of the reviewers are complaining about the grind, and I get it, but it turns out that's not even the real problem. I hacked my stats higher, but within reason in the dev console - I set them all to the 20s range - and I still get absolutely creamed by most monsters. This game just wants you to lose and repeatedly losing gates all of what seems like should be interesting content. This game needs a heavy balance pass in addition to reducing the grind.
I wan't to see where this is going, I like the setting and the premise. But please put in some kind of story mode, where you get 10x xp(at least, even that probably won't remove the grind), for those who don't want to spend their free time with mindlessly grinding towards an RSI. I subscribed for updates, but I won't play again until I see in the changelog that the grind has been considerably reduced, I think it's completely unecessary and massively detracts from the game.
Also while it'd be probably a ton of work, some kind of paperdoll that tracks all TFs would knock this out of the park.
I really want to like this game, I really do. The problem is the brutal grindfest. There are multiple ways to level up, but it's just all in the service of reducing the grind. Having a character starve to death, then losing all their levels after reincarnation... all to have to restart the grind is not worth it. Just killed the interest in the game.
Writing is not bad, plenty of fun sexy characters. Just repetitive fighting the same lvl 1 character over and over again.
Normally I don't leave reviews for unfinished games, but after deciding to try this after all the drama surrounding it, I feel confident in saying I've no desire to return to it.
--- Gameplay
It is a grindfest, ultimately. The actual battles are fairly mindless. You press a button and hope the RNG doesn't screw you (that hit rate is just the epitome of player unfriendly mechanics). It is very bare bones in terms of strategy, and if it adds actual strategy later? Then my response is that I'm not going to play another several hours of a game just for a mechanic to start trying to be good. The actual main gameplay loop is more just about continuously cycling through generations of adventurers to slowly accumulate stronger and stronger starting points for your journey. Between that and the in-game grinding, the whole thing is set up around slowly building up your resources to make yourself stronger. That is where all the depth is.
It is very slow. The sort of person this'd most appeal to is probably the sort that finds routing through speedruns fun to figure out. The "git gud" is basically just figuring out the tricks to be efficient in the grind and manage the various RNG better, it seems. This expands to side quests and other minor elements of the game. Tutorials exist, sort of, via NPC dialogue basically throwing walls of text at you when you go ask them. I won't say it's not there, but the game is wholly uninterested in teaching you how to even have fun with it.
For me, it felt like a chore by the end of my time with it. That is in no small part because it throws you into what is almost definitely the least fun state of being to engage with the game in at the start, and asks you to put work in to make it fun. All without much in terms of support from other elements (like writing) to make those parts more interesting as the gameplay fleshes out. This is definitely the sort of game that has an audience. Just not me.
--- Writing
It is technically good in regards to grammar and offers a standard presentation that avoids common pitfalls for amateur indie devs (like you'd see on this site a lot). Everything here has the fundamentals down. Another decent element of it is that the characters and worldbuilding clearly has thought put into it. I cannot say I was engaged by it by the time I stopped, but it had concepts that could be expanded and elaborated on into something engaging.
The problems start after that, though. The actual substance of the writing is pretty suspect. There are a few major stumbles that end up making most of the writing quite dry and, to be honest, boring. First, the player is treated as more of a silent protagonist type. They talk some, but it lacks any real character to it. Almost every line is a basic question. Second, the actual conversations are almost entirely 1v1 conversations. It's always the protagonist asking someone questions. Third, a lot of these investigative questions are used as jumping off points for tutorials and expositional text.
What does this result in? The vast majority of these interactions are one character monologuing at the player. And with a lot of those monologues being ways to try to introduce exposition and tutorials, you end up with most characters being walking walls of text (occasionally broken up by the protagonist asking a simple question. Which helps, but only minorly). The characters often have background and personality weaved into all this, but because of the setup these often end up similarly poorly presented. The last big ramification of this is that the voice of all the characters sounds basically the same. Most characters sound like they're a textbook describing themselves and the game mechanics for most of the time you're around them. It's a very dry read for a lot of it, and that also hurts the purpose of the tutorials and expositions being here, since you'll retain less info going through it.
There are some exceptions to this, and its notable that comes with characters that don't have exposition dumps and don't do much in terms of tutorializing. The big example being the Guild lady that gives the quests. Most of her interactions and short back and forths about the side quests she gives, so they're often short and focused around actually demonstrating her personality. It still leaves her basically having a one sided conversation, though, and even with her it's more that she's got a personality gimmick to make jokes from.
As a whole, it's pretty clear the writing and story isn't a focus. It's extremely detached from the gameplay loop and progression. Storytelling principles are largely absent in favor of making these dialogue exchanges part of the 'discovery' element of the gameplay loop (and as noted, what's there to discover has its problems). If you play games for narrative, don't expect this to offer much more than a general context for the sex scenes and TF changes.
Ah, right, probably worth mentioning the sex scenes. Those seemed better, as they followed a more tried and true "bad end short sex scene" concept. Structurally they're not poorly implemented, in contrast. They are plentiful for those that want that as their focus.
--- TF Content
The TF content is plentiful but also falls flat for me. The systems involved here end up contradicting each other and minimize a lot of the benefits each provides. First... You get TFs by losing in battle to various monstergirls/boys. From these you get a random body part TFed into something that resembles who you lost to. Mechanically this offers some interesting ideas by creating a real mechanical reason to pursue the "Bad End Hunt" many types of games here offer for TF. Being a roguelite, you don't game over from these. You also get a large assortment of unique traits and bonuses from getting all these. There is some strategy to pursue here. Theoretically, the individual parts being TFed means you could theoretically get a combo you want.
Theoretically. Because its random, that's not a realistic goal. Especially since other parts can be overwritten. The same sort of applies to the bonuses part, since it is again randomized. Strategy can exist, but its fairly far from lacking in tediousness. And getting the TFs you want is a gamble every time.
The other contradictory element is the presentation. There's a lot of AI art, but the use of AI art actually works against the game's design in this respect. This level of customizability is just begging for some visual representation of it. A paperdoll system, most likely. But you can't really do that with AI art. The randomness of AI generation means the needs of a paperdoll systems (aka, the pixel perfect consistencies of angles, art styles, coloring, etc) to make all the parts work together is not an option. So you're left with portraits and pixel art that directly contradicts what you're told is reality. And regardless of reasonableness of whether other options are possible, it still ends up working against itself.
--- Technical/Controls
It is a very well put together HTML game. It does a lot of impressive things for the engine. Though, many of those are things really better done in other engines, and it results in the controls and intuitiveness of the UI being on the clunky side (which doesn't help with the grindiness feel). it could very well be a lot worse. So praise where praise is due. It works well enough to be playable despite trying to basically be a different engine with its mechanics. It doesn't do a great job of tutorializing this unique system for this engine, so just try to keep that in mind if you try it. It seemed pretty stable bug wise, with more the wide non-linear scope accounting for the corner cases that could cause problems since the creator didn't consider them. Which, while not perfect, is certainly a good situation to be in.
--- Presentation
Want to talk about AI Art? lol, I don't care that much, but my personal stance is that I am generally fine with it so long as you're not trying to sell the game or paywall it. When you start trying to make money off other people's works... Yeah, that's typically the line I cross. For here the issue I take with the AI art is that it works, design wise, poorly into the overall design of the game's TF system. The quality of the AI art is decent, but nothing to be game changing.
I'm more curious about the pixel art stuff. Some of it looks a lot like RPG Maker Tiles. And... uh... if the creator doesn't know, you are legally not allowed to use those in non-RPGM projects. Even edited versions of those location tiles would be subjected to that. It's hard to tell for sure, since there doesn't appear to be any credits documentation for where stuff came from. And I severely doubt its all original work from the creator when they're relying on AI art. So uh... head up, yeah. (If ArcDragon ever decides to actually make a publicly available credits list for the sources on their resources for making the game, as many creators can, anyone and everyone would be able to quickly confirm or deny this, to note. And that, imo is the big takeaway here.)
In general, the presentation is decent and on the upper end of what you'd expect out of an HTML game. Most of the hang ups come from the web browser elements that make it clunkier with this entirely different system of navigation and such.
--- Overall
Overall, I can't really say I had fun with it. There is a reason I have a strong belief that I won't give it another shot. The problems actually are a lot more fundamental than I thought just hearing previous feedback from before.
This isn't to say it's a bad game. Its main appeal, and the main thing it focuses on, are just made for an audience that likes that sort of gameplay loop. And there really isn't much supporting the game outside of that main, grindy gameplay system it relies on. I know I spoke negatively much of the time, but this is decidedly a game not for me, and I think the main takeaway from my review here is that this is not the sort of game that has wide appeal. If it sounds interesting, give it a try. Just don't expect a saving grace if it doesn't click for you.
Long time no review. The game is a lot of fun in my opinion. The tf part of it isn't really a focus which is alright. The game itself is really well made featuring rewarding the player for exploring and attempting new things in the game. The game promotes exploration and each of the needs are pretty straightforward on how you meet them. If I had to say a few negatives it would be that if you mess up the omnibus quest in the forest you cannot redo it unless you reset all quests in the game, locking you out of iron equipment. Beyond that so long as you use proper strategy and have a bit of luck the game is pretty easy to understand. A fun game that has a lot of different ways to play. I reccomend giving the game a go for sure~!
