I saw Sylvtt share his RPG project, and that inspired me to share my own (semi) RPG that I'm working on: Tower of Malgon. It's still in early development, but I think sharing it might be fun and will give me motivation to keep working on it.



It's a unique kind of game in that it's kind of an RPG, kind of a puzzle game, but can't really be distilled down to either specific one.
The RPG elements appear in stats like HP, ATK, and DEF. Battles consist of a very simple format: you attack the enemy and deal your ATK minus the enemy's DEF; then if the enemy is still alive, it attacks you and deals its ATK minus your DEF. This is repeated until you win the battle (or lose). When you win, you gain some EXP, and when you gain enough, you can level up. Emphasis on can; you chose exactly when to level up, and you get to chose what bonus you get out of it.


Because of the monochrome screen of the Casio, I decided to use Light and Dark keys, instead of keys of many different colors. LKY stands for Light Key, DKY stands for Dark Key.

Meanwhile, the puzzle elements show up in resource-management style gameplay. Almost every battle results in you losing your most precious and limited resource, HP. But, some enemies are blocking important paths, or useful powerups that can increase ATK and DEF and therefore reduce the damage you take per battle. The goal is to strategize and figure out the best path to continue, or at least one good enough so that you don't die. Kind of like a dungeon crawler, but without any randomness since taking the same actions each time results in the same actions.
It's an unusual system originally developed over two decades ago in the game "Tower of the Sorcerer," but it holds up well and manages to be extremely fun for certain players. Although there aren't any major developers who have released games using this system, a few niche indie developers have tried it out: "DROD RPG" is probably a slightly more well-known one, and "Tactical Nexus" is a personal favorite (and the main inspiration for my project). I plan on borrowing some elements like Magic spells and in-level item shops from the latter.

God this shopkeeper graphic simultaneously makes me proud and makes me cringe In all fairness, I probably drew this years ago... Some things still bug me like the weird-looking tail




Currently, I have most of the core systems implemented, but I have very little in terms of level design, graphics, story, etc. in the right now. While I care about the fun aspect of the game, I also want to take this project as an opportunity to practice some of my artistic skills like pixel art. I think I have a ways to go before it looks entirely professional, but I'm having fun

I swear this isn't Dragonite

Anyways, if anyone's interested in this game, please let me know! I could always share more details if anyone's curious about my plans for this game or how this genre of game works, I rushed this explanation a bit so I might have left out a few important details.