Dragon Tower Preview

As of early 2005, role-playing games are decidedly underrepresented in mobile. There have been a few big hits, like Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, and EverQuest: Hero's Call, but most developers have chosen to sidestep the daunting challenge of fitting a decently sized story and game world into 300K by ignoring the genre. Dragon Tower, an upcoming RPG from Big Blue Bubble and THQ Wireless, is approaching the mobile RPG from a different angle. This game focuses purely on two aspects of the RPG experience, combat and level management, in an effort to pare this tall order down to something a little more manageable. So far, we're extremely pleased with the fruits of their labors, because Dragon Tower is shaping up to be a very simple, very entertaining dungeon romp.

All is not right in the village of Ozmyn, and it never has been. That's because a huge red dragon lives at the top of an ancient tower right outside of town. Periodically, it wakes up and sneezes, which results in a firestorm that engulfs the entire burg. You're just the latest would-be hero in a long line of chumps who've tried to scale the tower, slay the dragon, and steal its treasure. At the beginning of the game, you choose your character class (there were only two in the beta build--the warrior and the ranger) and stumble into the tower drunk and weaponless, with only 20 gold pieces to your name.

That's not exactly a recipe for success, but fortunately there's a merchant on the first floor of the tower from whom you can purchase weapons and comestibles. Dragon Tower is organized into floors, which you navigate via the game's text-based menu interface. When you're not fighting, you have only a few options: You can search your current floor, check your items and equipment, rest to regain hit points, or walk up or down stairs. Searching the floor produces a variety of results. You might find nothing, turn up a monster that you'll have to fight, discover a treasure trove, or run into a wandering merchant who'll sell you a random, undisclosed item for a certain amount of money.

This uncertainty is part of what makes the game so much fun. The other part has to do with killing monsters and gaining levels. Combat is just about as rudimentary as navigating the tower, and it's also text-based. You can fight, use items like spell scrolls and throwing daggers, or try to run away. As in all RPGs, your success when fighting depends upon your character's stats and equipment. So the higher your strength is, the more damage you can inflict. Similarly, dexterity governs whether you attack first, and so forth. If you manage to vanquish a monster, you'll gain gold and experience, which propels you toward your next level. If you fail to beat a monster, you'll lose half your hit points, as well as some experience and gold, and then be unceremoniously thrown down the stairs to the previous floor. The secret to success is proceeding just far enough up the tower to both advance your level and stats quickly, though without proceeding far enough to get yourself trashed by the tower's nasties.

Like most of BBB's other games, Dragon Tower looks like it will have a high level of graphical and aural polish. The character art is hilarious, and it's obviously been handled by the same highly talented team that drew the characters in Geeks. The sound is going to be great for a Series 60 Java game, too, since it already has a pretty tuneful theme and lots of sharp sound effects. Unfortunately, Dragon Tower is basically just an updated version of old text-based RPG adventures, like the old Bard's Tale series, so the pretty pictures and sounds really just represent infrequently updated backgrounds. Hopefully BBB will consider adding a little animation or something to the final product.

Dragon Tower is currently in beta and is scheduled for release in the near future. We'll have more details on the game as they become available.