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Magic and Metal Zero: Tower of Metal is a turn-based, five-character dungeon crawling RPG inspired by games such as Wizardry VI, The Bard's Tale, and Thunderscape.  Explore and conquer five dungeon levels teeming with monsters, machines, and experience points!  This game was developed in two months for the Summer RPG Jam 2020 and includes about 2-4 hours of content.

If you enjoy MM0, keep an eye out for my next RPG, Minerva Labyrinth.

The story so far

The alchemist and engineer known as the "mechanist" operates a successful tourist attraction some distance from the city, showing off her remarkably lifelike clockwork contraptions.  Rarely seen in person, she prefers to let her mechanical servants handle her guests (and their money) as she toils in her laboratory - until the day she rode into town in a panic, looking to hire a team of adventurers to storm her own tower.  She has apparently lost control of her experiments, and the tower is now overrun with haywire servants and angry creatures.  Enter the tower, put a stop to the mayhem, and claim your lavish reward!

The game

  • Uncover the secrets of the tower across five themed dungeon levels
  • Battle 13 enemy types and two bosses in turn-based combat, each with their own powers and tactics
  • Outfit your party with 30 spells and dozens of weapons and armors
  • Configurable controls for both keyboard and gamepad
  • Optional tutorial mode for players new to dungeon-crawling
  • Comprehensive manual includes detailed rulebook and puzzle solutions
  • Save your game anywhere

Download

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Click download now to get access to the following files:

Magic and Metal Zero [Win].zip 22 MB
Version 1.09
Magic and Metal Zero [Linux].zip 22 MB
Version 1.09
MM0 Manual.pdf 169 kB

Development log

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Comments

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(+1)

Since the developer welcomes feedback, here is my shoddy review, ⁣:P:

I was one of those who was scared off by the map-less zone, but thanks to Gridmonger I worked through it, got past the library, and overcame the final boss. Navigating without any aid was how I managed to map the library shifted and rotated, despite the fact that the manual does give the hint required to get the right orientation.

Now, MM0 does various things that aren't my preference, but are perfectly cromulent design. Nevertheless, all things combined, I've found that combat and puzzles become less interesting as the game progresses. Damage spells are too powerful, and buff spells—once full-party spells become available—are streets ahead of debuffs. With rest-in-dungeon design and the low level cap, it soon becomes better to run from the vast majority of combat, use two all-enemy nukes—even if Greta doesn't have the staying power of Fizzy, and clean up with standard attacks. Rest and repeat; the random encounters with debuffs aren't enough for the awesome power the party has at high levels—the strong healing doesn't help either. Then, the last floor wasn't very challenging due to the auto-map, amusingly enough.

Overall, it's my impression that MM0 would be a good first blobber, but it is "skip-able" for the experienced player, even if I enjoyed my time with it. Its short length and quick start are its greatest attributes.

(1 edit)

Thank you for your fair comments.  I agree that the last level does not put up enough resistance, for the reasons you state.  I am trying to avoid this scenario in my next game, although balancing that one is a much bigger task.

(+1)

This is a pretty cool game, but I'm frustrated by the statue puzzle. I looked up the solution in the manual, but it still doesn't make sense. Where are the city, the castle, and the empty field? I think the city is in the north, since that's where the jester is facing. And I guess the castle is in the south, since that's where the gargoyle is. But then how does the soldier watch three travelers leave the city? Only the soldier and the merchant are in the north, but the merchant is heading north, toward the city, not away. And which three travelers are crossing the empty field? I'm guessing the empty field is in the middle, and so the dryad and the gargoyle would be crossing it, but that's only two. But then how does the gargoyle meet travelers arriving at the castle, if it's leaving the castle? And who is the crocodile chasing? It's literally the only statue facing west. Are the statues it's "chasing" not also heading west? So, it's not chasing them, then, is it? Maybe it's the jester and the gargoyle? If it's chasing them, and they're heading north, then shouldn't it be also heading north? Also, how is it implied that the sprite is heading south? I guess it could be one of the travelers the gargoyle meets, but that's only one, and the gargoyle meets three. So, who are the other two? I just don't understand.

(4 edits)

Hi, I'm sorry you found this frustrating.  I hope you were able to move forward in the mean time using the solution provided in the manual, but I am happy to explain the logic behind it.  (Spoilers below, for anyone else reading.)

------------------------------

The first clue (found in Clocksworth's study) is "The path of the travelers leads to higher ground," meaning that you're meant to trace the route that the travelers took and orient the statues accordingly.  You don't have to move the statues in a specific order, but the direction of their travels informs the clues, and it's easiest to work them in that order.

So, where do we start?  All of the clues reference multiple travelers except one: "The dryad left home to visit her friend, the sprite."  Therefore, we know that the dryad started out alone before being joined by the others, so we'll start with her.  The sprite statue is east of the dryad, so we know the dryad is traveling east - so, we turn the dryad statue to the east.

The next one is probably the trickiest part.  There are two travelers at this point (the dryad and the sprite), standing at the sprite's location, and there are two clues that reference two travelers: "The crocodile chased two travelers beyond the castle grounds" and "The jester joined two travelers who were heading to the city."  All other clues reference three travelers, so we ignore those for now.  Note that the crocodile is immediately south of the sprite, whereas the jester is all the way in the southwest corner.  Because of the clue "The gargoyle greeted three travelers as they arrived at the castle," we know that the gargoyle represents the castle.  The gargoyle is one position west of the crocodile, whereas the jester is two positions west of the crocodile.  There is no clue that explicitly mentions what the dryad and sprite did after meeting up, but we know that only two travelers encountered the crocodile.  Between this and the fact that there is nothing east or north of the sprite, we can conclude that they traveled south to the crocodile from the sprite's location, so we turn the sprite to the south.  We also know that the crocodile chased the two all the west, beyond the castle, so we turn the crocodile west.  Because the travelers went beyond the castle, and because the gargoyle met three travelers and the jester met only two, we leave the gargoyle for later and move on to the jester.

The jester's clue is "The jester joined two travelers who were heading to the city."  From the clue "The soldier shielded his eyes from the sun as he watched three travelers depart the city," we know that the soldier represents the city, and the soldier is two positions north of the jester.  Since we know that the jester is headed to the city, we turn the jester north.  At this point, the travelers are the dryad, the sprite, and the jester.  All of the remaining clues reference only three travelers, so no one else will be joining them.

Next, the soldier.  Since he is shielding his eyes from the sun while watching the travelers, we can assume (based on Earth logic, at least) that the travelers are headed either east or west - towards either the sunrise or sunset.  Since there's only a wall to the west, we know that the travelers aren't going that way, and so we turn the soldier to the east, towards the merchant.

The next clue is "The merchant turned away from three travelers as they crossed the empty field."  The merchant is the north center statue, and the empty field refers to the empty space in the center of the room (we also know that the only remaining clue indicates that the travelers at some point went to the castle, which is directly south of the merchant at the gargoyle's location).  To cross the field, the travelers must head south, so we turn the merchant in the opposite direction - north.

The final clue is "The gargoyle greeted three travelers as they arrived at the castle." Based on the merchant's clue, we know that the travelers are arriving from the north.  To greet them, the gargoyle must therefore be facing north.

The final path of the travelers looks something like this:

5 -> 6
|    |
1 -- | -> 2
|    |    |
4 <- 7 -- 3

------------------------------

I hope this helps you make sense of the solution.

(+1)

...the overall design of the gameplay and the levels is where Magic and Metal Zero shines. The encounters are fair but never boring, and the riddles and obstacles the game throws at you are hard enough but never frustratingly hard. Progression is fluid, and doesn’t require any grinding to get through the game. The atmosphere and the enemies are exactly what you would expect when you kick this kind of game in – the queer character cast makes a nice counterpoint and adds a own flavor to the genre.

Magic and Metal Zero: Tower of Metal got reviewed by Arcane Cache, a very underground blog focusing on very underground games:

http://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2022/11/07/magic-and-metal-zero...

Great Work!

Thank you for the detailed review and thank you for sharing it here!

(+1)

You do a good job recreating the classic dungeon-crawler experience. I had some suggestions, but literally all of them you are already implementing in your new RPG (better text font, arrows to indicate which enemy is targeted, order of battle, etc). It's encouraging to see that a game like this can be done in 2 months!

Thank you! I'm working to improve the next one.

(+1)

I had a nostalgic summer of playing Might and Magic III-V (ok still wrapping up darkside) and it set me to wanting to make my own 8/16-bit crpg, which led me to here!
Lovely game, really enjoying how you are covering a gamut of design elements from 80s dungeon design to Etrian-style combat. I'm hung up on mapping thru the spinners/teleporters, lol, but that's a me thing- I only played Curse of the Azure Bonds in the 8-bit era, and mostly the less bastardy M&Ms in the 16-bit era, I was too little to have the patience for Wizardry's maps or Bard's encounters.
And oh! The characters! Got a big smile when I saw that it wasn't just elves and orcs and such.
This game is fun, and it's interesting to play a game that's running on parallel inspirations to what I've been thinking about for a few months. Thank you very much for sharing it with the world!

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback, and good luck with your project!

(+1)

This was wonderful and I'm looking forward to more rpgs from you.

Thank you!

(1 edit) (+1)

Really great classic RPG and easy to understand. Your effort  shows. Well done.

Thank you!

You're welcome! I'll remember your gesture of feedback. All the best. :)

(+1)

So I beat the last boss and get a lot of text.  Was there suppose to be more?  Also, there is a door on the first floor I still can not get through.  Is there any way past that door?  Is there another ending?

(1 edit)

Hi!  Thanks so much for completing the game.  I hope you enjoyed it.

The text after the final boss is the end of the game.  There's only one ending.  I could probably make this a little smoother and more clear than just kicking the player straight back to the title screen, so that it doesn't look like a bug.  I'll give that some thought.

There's nothing beyond that locked door, and there is no way to open it.  When I first designed that level on paper, the layout and events were a little different and you would have needed to explore that area.  As I was working on it, I changed some things around and just ended up not making use of that space.  I left the door there just for fun, pretty much.

(+1)

Thanks!  I really did like the game.  The reason I wondered if there are more than one ending if that some questions were asked that do not really get answered.  Yet, thank you for clearing up my previous questions.

The conclusion isn't as satisfying as I would like.  I was pretty much making this up as I went along during the jam, so I just decided to leave it a little bit open-ended.  I might revisit these events later on in another game.

Since you finished the game, do you have any feedback on what worked well and what needed improvement?  I mostly only get feedback on the first floor, so I would be interested to hear what you thought about the rest of the dungeon.

(+1)

I wished the automap worked while on the library.  I also noticed that the designs of many of the enemies were just variations of each others.  For example, the rats had three or so variations.  The robots also had such variations.  I would like to have seen each enemy kind being unique.  Other than that, this is all I can think of.

(+1)

Wow, I'm in love with this game and its lovely pixelart! It feels very classic and at the same time is very original with its unique setting and atmosphere. I'm eager to see more from this fascinating universe! Fantastic work. :)

Thank you!  I definitely want to make more Magic and Metal in the future.   Let me know if there's anything I can improve on.

(1 edit) (+1)

Amazing turn based rpg!
Excellent visuals-audio and fun turn based gameplay!
Still the controls could use a little improvement especially the keyboard shortcuts for each action (which you should also have an ingame visual on the relevant area since you can only access the help from the main menu).
Some examples of a little weird shortcuts (nothing major but I still needed to hunt down the manual for them):
TAB for ingame menu (instead of using ESCAPE since TAB is usually used for Map shortcut)
only using Q,E for switching characters on inventory, magic, etc (instead of also using Arrow Keys or even 1,2,3,4,...

(+1)

Thanks so much for the feedback!

In-game control help is a good idea, I'll look into it.  The character switching is a bit tricky since the left/right arrows are used to change pages between equipment, spells, etc., so switching characters needs different keys.  Maybe pgup/pgdn could work for this since they're close to the arrow keys.  At one point during development I did have numbered shortcuts - I can't remember if there was a reason I removed them.  I'll take another look.

Input rebinding is on my to-do list, so that should make things easier once it's ready.

Let me know if you complete the game (or if you have already), I'd love to hear your final thoughts.

(2 edits) (+1)

Thanks for making such amazing turn-based rpg! We need more turn-based rpg!
I am currently playing the linux version (which play perfectly on my linux mint OS).
I will post here my thoughts when I finish game.
FYI: to open all the panels I am using TAB and select from the menu the panel I need. At least for me, the combination of TAB and arrow keys (which are also used for movement, enemy selection, etc) feels better than using the other shortcuts.

Using the above control scheme I think 1,2,3,... feel better for character selection.
In any case if input rebinding is on your to-do list we can always change the keys from our end.

(+1)

Some people said it couldn't be done, but here it is.

The successor to Wizardry 7.