Crystal Towers 2

[tamakun]

davidn has been working on a sequel to a game he originally released back in 2005. Since then Crystal Towers 2 has been a project that he has been working on for the past 4 years. A couple of months ago, he simply stated that he was going to finish it up, and I have been seeing an intense amount of work go into the game, and he finally released it two weeks ago.

It's very hard to define this game because it spans so many different genres. It's a side-scrolling platformer at heart, but there's so much more than just running and stomping on Soni-Mushrooms. This game is simply massive. There is a Hub which connects all the worlds together, and each world has a couple of different stages, and each of those different stages has different challenges, ranging from "get to the end" to "destroy certain enemies" to "don't stay on the ground for more than 12 seconds". You can collect magic spells which help you reach those out-of-the-way items. There's an inventory system that lets the character collect items from defeating enemies which are then synthesized into items to help you find more gems.

I haven't even talked about the music - Mr. Newton is a very talented man. Despite all the programming, graphical creation, and creature behaviours, he's also written all the music for the game as well.

I'm going to link you to his announcement page on his own LJ and I strongly urge you to visit there. He's got a demo version which, as I've been reading, gives you a decent amount of the game in itself (about 1/7th of the full game!) and you can carry over your savefile from the demo onto the full version, which only costs $5. I simply bypassed the demo game and purchased the full version right away, considering what I had seen in the chronicles of his devlog. Honestly, I think the man's underselling himself. The value for this game is incredible.

And for those who are playing along, here's my current status. I've also put it in my LJ info.

Right, back to playing a few more levels before bed...