Shadow Tower

About Shadow Tower

Shadow Tower (1998) is FromSoftware's bleak first-person dungeon crawler in which a mercenary descends into the underworld after his city and its tower are swallowed whole.

Shadow Tower in Depth

On the continent of Eclipse, the mercenary Ruus Hardy returns home to Zeptar in the Holy Land to find the entire city, and its central tower, sucked into the underworld. An old man gives him the Dark One's sword, the only weapon that can harm the demons responsible, and Ruus descends to rescue the old woman who raised him and the rest of Zeptar. Very similar to the King's Field series, it is an action-oriented first-person dungeon crawl of combat, hidden items, traps and encounters with characters.

There are no experience points. Instead, no creature respawns, and each type of enemy killed raises fixed statistics, so building up particular stats means hunting a variety of different foes, while a special item lets players raise any stat by a few points manually. Stat names can mislead players used to other RPGs: Strength, for example, governs hit points rather than attack power. Every piece of equipment has durability and wears down until it must be repaired or replaced, and there is no music and no automap. Unlike earlier King's Field games, the shield is an item that must be actively raised to block, and the equipment screen is more detailed.

Making Shadow Tower

FromSoftware, known for King's Field, developed it with similar themes and mechanics but wanted to create an entirely new franchise, aiming for play that was difficult yet rewarding. It used a redesigned and polished version of the King's Field engine. FromSoftware published it in Japan on 25 June 1998, and Agetec, which had released several earlier FromSoftware games, localised and published it in North America on 23 November 1999. Reviews were poor, averaging 49 per cent on GameRankings, with Famitsu giving it 27 out of 40.