"Demon Tower" has some annoying bugs and quirks

[sinistraltome]

I know I'm just screaming in the wind on this one, because no one will ever patch an optional mini-game in their incredibly successful indie game, but, I feel like venting a bit of frustration, and maybe someone can take something from this.

I actually really like games like Demon Tower, and I'm a fan of challenging games. But, there is a difference between "challenging" and "bull****". Going back in for the true ending to Demon Tower, I was able to beat every floor on one pass, except for one that I spent two hours on: Level VII, Blood Moat.

In no real order, I'll try to explain why:

You can only take 4 hits on this level, which makes it real cheap that you can get hit by a river of blood in seconds that is hidden under the level splash. Each repeat is random, so this doesn't happen every time, but I would say it happens three out of every four times.

I really don't like in any game where touching an enemy hurts you, but that's just personal preference. When an enemy can hurt you by touching you AND can occupy the exact same space as you, though, that's a problem. Bonus points go to the hairball enemies, which if they kill you by literally staying under your character until death, their "attack" noise begins to loop and feed into itself, and, as I found, can actually cause ear pain. That was when I stopped using headphones, which is especially devious when the rest of the game has such amazing attention to the audio and music. There's no excuse for that.

About four times, I died in the room with the key because it appears on a 3x3 platform surrounded by blood, and the button to dash is the same one to open the chest, resulting in me dashing off into the blood. Especially fun when the dagger-throwing enemies or fire throwing enemies are on the other side, and getting that close activates them. At least the dagger-throwers sometimes have the decency to die in the blood rivers too.

Speaking of the key room, I died one time when, during the screen transition, a skellie was just chilling out on the first exact space in the room. I had not walked into the room yet to activate anything, so I guess that was just RNG having a laugh.

Three times, the room before the boss formed with a spike trap island in the middle, and that formation makes it super easy to get stun-locked to death between the spikes or an enemy and the blood moat surrounding it. Really sucks when you're literally a door away from the boss.

The dash is deceptive, in that if you run up to the blood rivers to jump across, you can sometimes get hit by moving too close. Conversely, you can also get hit by not getting close enough, and coming up short on the dash. By the very nature of this floor, you will have to jump at least once, so it's going to happen at some point. Bonus points if you get a really jacked up room before the boss that requires multiple jumps.

I finally got to the boss, and beat it in one go. I can't even tell you if the blood trail he leaves hurts you, but my Binding of Isaac reflexes say "yes", so I left a clean trail to the door.

[Edit: There was a bit of a rant here about this minigame reflecting the overworld game's quality, which I don't really believe anymore. We have some buggy games in real life, so it isn't far removed that they can have bugs in a fake video game, too. I absolutely love NitW, and I've gotten better at running through this game, aside from the occasional snag on Blood Moat. C'est la vie! Sometimes you gotta take the bad with the good.]

[32x32 Riker jpeg]

TL;DR The optional unfinished prototype game you can ignore was too hard, plz remove.

[Meow-Meow Power]

Originally posted by Regal Rabbit:

TL;DR The optional unfinished prototype game you can ignore was too hard, plz remove.

Thx long rants are soo boring to read.
And i agree its optional and you can ignore it

[littlemissietp2]

I agree that demon tower is beyond frustrating. I'm on the blood moat level now. I'm hoping that I'll be able to get both achivements in one go so I don't have to ever play that mini game again.

[sinistraltome]

Originally posted by Regal Rabbit:

TL;DR The optional unfinished prototype game you can ignore was too hard, plz remove.

It's not unfinished, not a prototype, didn't say it was too hard, didn't say to remove it. Good job.

[sinistraltome]

Originally posted by littlemissietp2:

I agree that demon tower is beyond frustrating. I'm on the blood moat level now. I'm hoping that I'll be able to get both achivements in one go so I don't have to ever play that mini game again.

It sort of comes down to luck on room formation, and playing on the incredibly cautious side. It's not worth hunting down all of those robed guys before they can become door guards, since the boss door room typically forms in a way that can screw them over too. Never trust the level name splash, go straight for the key, and hope for the best with enemy placement. The boss on that level isn't too bad, but it does leave blood with each move, and I'm willing to bet it hurts to touch, so treat it like a game of Snake while doing small hits and dashes. Occasionally, he'll stop and shoot fire, which is when you can get a few good hits in.

The level after that is easier to me, but that depends on how well you can fight the knife-throwing enemies. Dashing into the projectile deflects it. The boss is just an upgraded version of them, and if you back against the wall immediately upon entering the room, you can take out some of the regular enemies and make a clearing to fight him. Stage after that has only ghosts and robed guards, with no boss, and after that is the final stage, with the optional room for the true ending. The last boss seems harder than he is, but you can rush him hard while dodging his one attack. If you went the true ending route, he can't heal, but as long as you keep him in a vertical path, he never gets the chance anyway.

It's a pretty fun mini-game, and could make a decent standalone. There's just a weird hitbox dissonance going on with the floor traps, a hard rebound, and no real invincibility frames, so you can easily get bounced back and forth between floor traps that really seem like you didn't touch them. And take off headphones any time you see those little hairball guys.

[ice]

Sounds like you're just not that good.

[sinistraltome]

Originally posted by Ozelot:

Sounds like you're just not that good.

Eh, I beat it pretty easily aside from the cheap-out stuff, which all sort of combined in that one level. It reminds me a lot of the first Rayman game, where most of the difficulty came from getting hit by things immediately off-screen, which often knocked you into instant-death pits. That was still in the time where "lives" systems were used on games as a layover from the arcade days, and were kept to make the games seem longer than they were.

[RexIvan]

I beat the mini-game, and my only complaint was how Palecat will sometimes turn in the opposite direction while getting ready to slash an enemy. This results in the attack missing and Palecat turns his back to the enemy, leaving himself open to attack. It happens fairly rarely, but when it does, it's noticeable.

[xx4353]

I really like the game. But yeah Blood moat was annoying because sometime enimes can knock you to the blood and you can't move and your dead. I also really hated those cat skeleton with the fire

[Martyin]

Originally posted by Regal Rabbit:

TL;DR The optional unfinished prototype game you can ignore was too hard, plz remove.

Bahahaahhahahahaaa!
It's weird seeing a giant novel written over an optional mini-game that has no real bearing on the story.

This reminds me of the days of NES games, where they were incredibly unfairly difficult and you just had to suck it up and deal with it. Kids back then didn't whine on the internet because they couldn't, and it was even worse for them because a majority of kids would rent out games for the weekend with no idea on whether the game was well-designed or not. Once you rented out the game, that was your weekend game, even if it sucked you still may as well kept playing it cause... it's a new game to you and you only have it for the weekend.
Lots of games back then were super punishing, like once you ran out of continues that's it, game was over, and it was tough to find more continues.

Are there infinite continues in Demontower? I haven't actually died often enough to get sent all the way back to level 1. If there are infinite continues, then the RNG and annoying things are kind've irrelevant. You died on that level? K well you can try again. Frustrated? Stop playing the game and play the NITW game, or just take a break all-together.

See I can make a mini novel too! :D

[Steel]

The only thing that makes the game hard for me is that there is no recovery time when you get attacked. Since you have less health every level, and more monsters are in the level, it makes things quite hard, even with the dodge option.

[sinistraltome]

Originally posted by OmniPhantom:

Originally posted by Regal Rabbit:

TL;DR The optional unfinished prototype game you can ignore was too hard, plz remove.

Bahahaahhahahahaaa!
It's weird seeing a giant novel written over an optional mini-game that has no real bearing on the story.

This reminds me of the days of NES games, where they were incredibly unfairly difficult and you just had to suck it up and deal with it. Kids back then didn't whine on the internet because they couldn't, and it was even worse for them because a majority of kids would rent out games for the weekend with no idea on whether the game was well-designed or not. Once you rented out the game, that was your weekend game, even if it sucked you still may as well kept playing it cause... it's a new game to you and you only have it for the weekend.
Lots of games back then were super punishing, like once you ran out of continues that's it, game was over, and it was tough to find more continues.

Are there infinite continues in Demontower? I haven't actually died often enough to get sent all the way back to level 1. If there are infinite continues, then the RNG and annoying things are kind've irrelevant. You died on that level? K well you can try again. Frustrated? Stop playing the game and play the NITW game, or just take a break all-together.

See I can make a mini novel too! :D

I like lengthy replies, but I guess that's because I still have an attention span and like genuine discourse. I dunno, I guess most people can't be bothered these days.

It wasn't the NES days for me, but around age 9, in the wild early days of the PS1, I definitely got burned a few times by rental games. I remember one game for Toy Story 2 that was teeth-grindingly difficult, but something about it made me keep renting it until I beat it. To this day, I can't tell you anything about the game, except that the last part has you fight three major bosses at once, I want to say either in an airport terminal or in an airplane cargo hold. And something I literally just remembered was that there was a lot of platforming with that early-3D camera frustration. Now I want to play it again...

Oh, and it never sends you back a level, just regenerates the stage each time. The first time through, I died a few times across the board until I got a feel for the controls, but going back for the true ending, it was only that one stage that I got hung up on. I did actually take a break from it for a while, but there's this sort of completionist mindset I get when I know I *could* beat something, but at the moment *can't*. Trials and Burnout: Revenge were the worst games I've ever had that compulsion with. There's still one Burning Lap in Burnout: Revenge that I've never seen completed in an NTSC version of the game.

[mxcl]

Level 10 pisses me off. Three hearts, but it's so easy to get stun locked and then lose all three in a couple of seconds. Finally if I get to the boss he's a fast dash git that takes me out too easily.

I'm only doing it for the achievements but it feels like a slap in the face since this is not really anything like the game I enjoy. And I have to finish it for the Seriously achievement which feels like the achievement that really embodies what I like about the game, ie. the characters and relationships and what they did for Mae hence she records them in her journal.

[sinistraltome]

Originally posted by mxcl:

Level 10 pisses me off. Three hearts, but it's so easy to get stun locked and then lose all three in a couple of seconds. Finally if I get to the boss he's a fast dash git that takes me out too easily.

This boss fight is a little bit easier when you learn that dashing into the knives deflects them. Found that out totally by accident. Works on the little scarecrow guys too. I've come around to genuinely liking Demon Tower, but I still say Blood Moat can eff off.

[Flowers]

Play with a controller instead of your keyboard if you are using a keyboard. I found that minigame game to be so much easier with a controller.