Crystal Towers 2

[davidn]

$5 through Fastspring secure ordering Transfer your save over from the free edition and keep playing Open the full Music Castle and recover the eight instruments Enter all 33 levels and 14 bosses Which make up nearly 300 individual challenges More gameplay than time left in your natural lifespan* Synthesize items to gather a library of special abilities Complete your scorecard and look down on all the people who downloaded the version over on the right there Get an intangible spark of inner satisfaction! (* If you're a medium-sized insect)

Explore the lower floors and levels of the Music Castle Recover one of the eight Music Crystals Complete about 15% of the game Which is still a decent amount, really Pick up enemy drops and try out the synthesizer Track your progress on the castle's complimentary Internet and show off your scorecard and achievements online Comes with a free slight feeling of incompleteness until you get that version over on the left

I know, I can't quite believe it either, but the above links are genuine. They go to the actual, complete free and full ($5) releases of Crystal Towers 2. Which means the unthinkable has happened - I have finished it. I've already had two orders and I hadn't even mentioned it anywhere yet.

Here, have a dizzying array of screenshots.



Thanks once again to absolutely everyone who contributed graphics or their time for testing this thing exhaustively - Adam, Hempuli, Chris, Hayo, Jared, J (Freude), crassadon, kjorteo, ravenworks, quadralien, rakarr, wolfekko and of course Whitney for encouraging me to get it finished (perhaps mostly so that she'll see me emerge from the basement office every once in a while now). Perhaps, at some point, I'll return to a normal life.

But not just yet, because I have to work on the Flash advertising version.

In the meantime - http://www.crystaltowers2.com.

Comments

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Already am. :] In fact, the last thing I did before making the purchase was completing clearing Iron Works.

[davidn]

It's been interesting, so far, to see where people are in the game when they decide to buy it - my intention was to stop it just before the second boss so that people who wanted to continue and see the rest would be at their most persuadable point, but so far, I don't think that anybody's got as far as that sticking point before switching to the full version!

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Heh, it wasn't even until after I made the purchase that I was aware there WERE bosses in this game.

Then I ran into the Cleaner, and....holy cow. XD Took me 7 attempts to beat him, 4 of which were spent figuring out how to even hurt it.


EDIT: Just as an aside, I am LOVING the music to this game. Magma Falls A is currently my favorite.

[davidn]

It's a difficult thing to imagine for me, going into the game without intimate knowledge of how it all works after all this time. I can only hope that the difficulty has miraculously settled into a perfect place ;)

And thanks, I'm glad you like the music :) That one does seem to be popular in particular, and it was actually the earliest one written, being originally put together for an unfinished Megazeux game some time in 2001.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Some of the objectives are proving a bit tricky (particularly the health/gem-leak ones), but over all it's been pretty good.

I will point one minor quirk with the music...namely, the tune that plays each time you complete a level.

Don't get me wrong, it sounds great, but it seems out of genre...every time I hear it I think I just finished off a Robot Master and should be picking up a new sub-weapon.

[davidn]

An interesting view, as I thought that that was the most Sonic-inspired of the lot of them! At the time when I put that in, I don't think I'd ever even played a Mega Man game - he was pretty much unheard of in Europe until well into the PS era.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Well, that's just how I look at it.

Also, after looking at the Scorecards page: WOOO! I'M IN FIFTH PLACE!


If I might make one minor suggestion, though? Any chance for a map of Music Castle? It's getting a bit tedious having to remember the location of every single stage. :/

[xaq.livejournal.com]

AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!

Power went out on me mid-game earlier, and it seems to have corrupted my save file. Says it was created on a different version of the game, so now it won't load it.

There are no words to express my rage right now. None that I use with friendly company anyway.

[davidn]

Inspiring old-fashioned console rage already - but that's not a good thing! Email me your save file (it'll be in your Application Data, called [player name].ct2) and I'll see what I can do to reconstruct it.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Such is the dangers of emulating the era of video gaming that gave TV Tropes the "Nintendo Hard" page, I guess. :/

Anyway, email sent.


EDIT: SUCCESS!! :D

[davidn]

Here's a bonus for you :)

No labels, though. Perhaps you can fill it in as you go along.