Tower of Memory is a Horror game in which the player must navigate dreamlike environments pursued by an invincible Nightmare creature. As the player explores each dream, a timer ticks inexorably downward, and as it does the Nightmare in pursuit grows stronger and faster until escape becomes impossible. The challenge lies not only in avoiding one’s pursuer, but in grasping the strange logic of the environment before it is too late.
Each game of Tower of Memory is short (around 10 minutes) and heavily randomized. Levels, in particular, are especially random. Each playthrough is comprised of several randomly chosen areas, and each area is itself heavily randomized, with different lighting, weather, enemies, entrances, and exits every playthrough.
Nightmares
The Nightmares are another source of randomization. A random Nightmare is chosen at the start of each game, unknown to the player until it is first encountered. But each Nightmare varies in far more than aesthetics – different Nightmares all attempt to trick, trap, or chase the player in very different ways, as well as affecting how the level is generated, what environmental effects are in place, what minor enemies will be encountered, what additional capabilities the player will have (flashlight, gun, sprint, etc.) and how the timer drains.
For example: the simplest Nightmare, The Grudge, manifests as a huge, mocking face which constantly moves directly towards the players, moving straight through walls and obstacles, getting faster as the timer decreases, instantly killing the player on contact. The player can briefly stun The Grudge with their gun, or sprint away if necessary, but using either will consume a significant chunk of timer, making each subsequent encounter harder to survive. A more complicated monster, The Shadow, stalks the player in darkness, unable to move into well lit areas. The player has a flashlight which can be used to ward off The Shadow and navigate between patches of light, but doing so causes the timer to drain faster. As the timer empties, both the flashlight and the lights in the environment begin to weaken and falter, eventually leaving the player lost and vulnerable in deep darkness.
Story
The story and setting of Tower of Memory are deliberately vague and surreal to create the feeling of being stuck in a dream one can’t control – the feeling that there is some logic and meaning to the madness, but it is just out of reach. There are, however, snippets of sense hidden among the dreams; over the course of many playthroughs, a player will gradually discover the truth of the Tower of Memory, and perhaps eventually, means to truly escape the cycle of terror and death.
Inspiration
Tower of Memory was inspired in large part by the excellent and mysterious cult-classic LSD: Dream Simulator. While not explicitly a horror game, LSD: Dream Simulator was exceptionally successful in invoking the feeling of anxiety that stems from being immersed in an alien environment with goals and rules beyond one’s understanding. With Tower of Memory, I wanted to take this uncomfortable feeling a few steps further: What if you could never wake up? What if you weren’t alone in there? And what if the only thing you could know for certain was that an unearthly malice was rapidly closing in? Currently, Tower of Memory is in the early stages of production. The core gameplay and level generation have been established and I have begun working on content such as level design. Though on a brief hiatus doe to technical limitations, look for more Tower of Memory updates in the near future!
Strange Times 