Version 1.00 Out Now!

Hello All,

This is it. I am proud to share with you all Version 1.00 of The Baleful Tower. It’s pretty wild for me that this project has finally reached a point where I can reasonably consider it “done.” Sure, I will definitely take time to support it as needed, but I think I’ve included just about everything I can from the notebook of ideas I’ve spent the past several years filling. I originally started actively working on this game over four years ago, but I originally began sketching out enemies and thinking about player classes years before then. Since I started active development on The Baleful Tower, back in my childhood bedroom during the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve graduated from college with my Bachelor’s Degree, I started my first “real” job and, just within this past month, I started a new job that had me move across the country, leaving my longtime home in the American Midwest for its Southeastern region. And throughout all the major life changes and events that have occurred throughout those years, I’ve been picking away bit by bit, some weeks much more actively than others, to try and finish creating what I originally had in mind all those years ago.

I’m immensely grateful for each and every one of you that has spent your time and money on this little side project of mind. While I am going to focus more on my new job and my next game (I’ve been turning an idea over in my head for about a year now, but didn’t want to actually start working on it until I finished The Baleful Tower), please reach out if you encounter any issues or need support, and I will be happy to assist. I will still be providing support as needed, but this is the end of the planned content and feature updates.

This new update contains the last of the twelve player classes I had originally envisioned: The Kinetic. The Kinetic is kind of like a battlemage that relies on telekinetic abilities. They have no physical weapons to speak of, but can conjure spinning blades, projectiles and shields through the sheer force of their minds. For their three active abilities, they can call forth weights from the sky that fall and crush the enemies before them, repel all nearby enemies in a strong mental blast or pull far away foes towards them, so that they may dispatch them with their strong melee attacks. Their mental control over the material world can also harm foes in a more passive manner, as well, for their Essence grants their attacks the chance to cause their enemies muscles to atrophy, Slowing them for a period of time. I really enjoyed working on this class and playing it in my testing. It was really fun to pull enemies in and then force them away with a Repelling Blast. I hope you will like it as much as I do.

I’ve also added the Final Biome, the end of the Baleful Tower. This biome is a combination of all the dangers you have seen before, with the environmental hazards from all nine previous biomes appearing within. It is also home to three powerful exclusive enemies: the Magos, Minotaur and Valkyrie. In addition to these three, I have added three more enemies that may appear in the other biomes: the Chomper, Manticore and what might be the silliest of my creations: the Bowler, who throws their ball in a curved trajectory, and it also makes a strike sound if it hits its target. At Floor 99 resides the Baleful Guardian, the final boss of the Baleful Tower. She is a fearsome adversary that combines attacks from all prior bosses and all playable classes in a deadly fight.

If you manage to defeat the Baleful Guardian, you will find the core of the tower on Floor 100. Destroy it to see the ending movie as well as unlock some new features for subsequent runs. The first of which is the fact that while the Tower may have physical limits on the outside, inside it continues forever. Players may continue beyond the 100th floor, but they will find greater challenges. In particular, they will need to fight more bosses at the end of each biome. For example, in Floor 110, the players will need to defeat the Emperor Penguin as well as a random other boss. At Floor 210, they will fight the Emperor Penguin and two other random bosses. This continues until players are fighting all ten bosses at the end of each biome. If a player has already cleared 100 floors, they may skip straight to that point and start their journey from there. The other fun new feature that gets unlocked upon clearing 100 floors is the Boss Rush Mode. In this, players will fight all the bosses in rapid succession, and, like with the previous new feature, after they fight through all ten, they can keep going and fight two, three, four, etc. at a time.

In addition to all these new features, I have included some more bug fixes and balance tweaks. The full patch notes are listed below.

I also would like to take a moment to thank everyone that has helped me during this development process. I would not have been able to make this without your support. In particular, I would like to thank Alex Hahn, Jake Adkins, Shafer Hess, Troy Gayman, Jamison Whitaker, Spencer Seim, J.D. Crites, Jared Botte, Roman Cyliaz, Will Cross, Cal Siers, Rylan Smith, Anthony Geraci, Sunny Judge, Raviteja Vajja, Sadid Khan, Zach Neuhofer, Vidit Pandya, Akul Ghormade, Skyler Brown, Adam Kubicek, Jim Adkins, James Adkins and Annette Adkins.

Thank you and enjoy,
Grant

• Added the Kinetic Class
• Added Final Biome and Baleful Guardian Boss
• Added 6 new enemy types
  • Chomper
  • Bowler
  • Manticore
  • Magos - Final Biome Exclusive
  • Minotaur - Final Biome Exclusive
  • Valkyrie - Final Biome Exclusive

• Added ending video on 100th Floor
  
• Added feature that when players continue beyond the 100th floor, they face an additional boss in each type for every loop through the 100 floors. For example, on Floor 110, players will fight the Emperor Penguin and a random other boss. On Floor 210, they will face the Emperor Penguin and two random other bosses. This continues until players fight all ten bosses in every boss fight.
  
• If a player has cleared a multiple of 100 floors, then they are now able to skip to their highest cleared multiple of 100 and start from there, with an appropriate level set for each of their stats.
  • In online multiplayer, this is determined by the hosting player’s highest cleared floor

• Added a new Boss Rush Mode that is unlocked after beating the 100th floor for the first time.
  • In online multiplayer, players who have unlocked Boss Rush Mode can host sessions with it enabled

• Added all Bosses to the Bestiary
  
• Added sound effects for the bosses’ attacks
  
• In multiplayer games, if one player is trying to exit the floor, and other players are too far away, in addition to prompting the player to gather their party, all players too far from the exit are now prompted to head towards it.
  
• Adjusted the goal threshold setting for longer runs that exceed the amount of unique floors to be more reasonable
  
• Increased Player Ability Strength scaling by 20%
  
• Tripled the Burrg’s possible ranged attack inaccuracy
  
• Lowered Burrg’s starting health
  
• Increased Skeleton move speed
  
• Lowered minimum possible Withstand Damage Goal Threshold on Daydream difficulty from 33% of the average max health of all players to 12.5%
  
• Reduced player roll animation rate scaling per Speed level by 33.3%
  
• Fixed issue with UI scaling in Mac versions making the Hints Page too big for the screen
  
• Randomized the starting positions of the Gorgon’s Statues
  
• Fixed bug where Fishmonger’s Shark Fins, Zombie Bard’s Harp Throw and half of the Crimson King’s
• Firewalls would turn invisible on client in online multiplayer upon their first collision with a wall
  
• Fixed bug where none of the Zombie buff effects would appear on clients in online multiplayer
  
• Fixed bug where the client would crash in online multiplayer games on the ending of Ranger’s Poison Arrows buff
  
• Fixed issue where Radslug wastes would damage player if their melee weapons collides with it
  
• Fixed bug where the “Saving Game” popup would appear at moments where it was not actually performing a save operation
  
• Fixed bug where Player 1’s items would duplicate to Player 2
  
• Fixed issues with music playing inconsistently on clients in online Multiplayer
  
• Tried to fix issues with the camera not exiting Spectator Mode in online multiplayer when a player is revived. I am not going to say that this will never happen again, but it should be incredibly rare, and if it does happen, there is another backup where the first time the revived player attempts any action, that the camera should snap back to focus on their character.