Tower And Dragon

Retro back to the year 1977! With the Commodore PET & other brands, computers finally became accessible to the masses. It only had 8K. Explore the PET with unprecedented depth as you play an immersive 2D RPG. You play the warrior Frederick, driven by steel, dreams, and conviction.

Tower And Dragon's goal is to create a fully immersive 2D gaming experience that is playable on one of the first computers to launch: A 1977 Commodore PET with 8K emulated on your Mac, Steam Deck, Windows, or Ubuntu system! The game has 8 hours of play, 16 unique zones, complex scenarios, two spells, and a compelling story with different outcomes based on your decisions.

You play the warrior Frederick, driven by steel, dreams, and conviction. Frederick starts out at a camp near a lake searching for a key to unlock an ancient ruin. Tower And Dragon is a classic dungeon crawling adventure with primary and offhand weapon, armor, quest storyline, moving walls, teleportation, and unique tilesets and monsters for each zone.

The PET had a built in cassette player for data and options for 4K or 8K of memory, no graphics, and modified text ASCII (referred to as PETSCII). Due to the cassette requirement, the gameplay is primarily in a linear order, although you can go back to most zones.

Can a fully-fledged 2D adventure game be made with such tight limitations that can be played from cassette, disk drive, or virtual disk drive? Tower And Dragon 4.0 does just that!

Features:

Ranged Magic Spell Awarded upon completion of quest. This will have 3 full charges each time you switch zones. It will also charge once per each mob vanquished.
A Buff spell that has 3 charges per zone change allowing you to exceed your max health by 50 or, if under full health, heal your health by 50.
A river zone where a rowboat is utilized.
A rescue mission zone where you have to recover the mage Cheryth, and lead her to safety with odds stacked against you as well as an end boss.
A complex plot involving 4 zones and a lich. Included in this scenario will be a swamp where a raft is needed and thought/planning is required to reach the end, a ruined castle, catacombs, and the final lich lair.
Choices that lead to different end game outcomes.[
8 hours of game play.
Animation for the player - Finally! Yes, all mobs were animated on version 3.0, but I just didn't have the space at that time to get the player animated. The animations for the player are simple, but there's only so much you can do with PETSCII.
There is a shop where you can use your gold to buy enchantments and upgrades for armor, weapons, magic bolt, and a heal potion.
Some mobs run away on low health.
Total time of play recorded.
Due to being playable on stock Commodore PETs with only a cassette, gameplay is designed to be linear in order,
although you can choose to go back to (most) previous zones explored.
Animations for zones & monsters.
Playable using a game controller.
26 Achievements.
A touching overarching story.
Four zones used in this game were designed when I was a boy in 1980.
Some of the game story is directly from my D&D Campaign spanning 1980-2000.