Tower of Time ventures out of Early Access

Old-school RPG Tower of Time's nine-month Early Access journey (slightly longer than developer Event Horizon intended) is now over, and if you like the sound of a blend of magic, advanced technology, and party-based real-time combat, then it might be worth a quick look.

You lead a group of adventurers into a strange tower that's emerged from the heart of a massive earthquake. Its 50-hour story is told through both cinematics and lore books, but combat is clearly the focus here. As you battle through each of the tower's 13 levels, you'll come up against groups of enemies that should be large enough to make it feel like a "small-scale" RTS, in which you have to manage the skills of the seven different classes at your disposal.

You can both pause and slow time during fights, and you can activate certain skills by drawing shapes on your target, if you like. At higher difficulties—you can pick between five—Event Horizon say each fight will be a "tactical puzzle".

It has 150 enemy types, 50 bosses and heaps of equipment to find. If the combat system comes together, it sounds like it's different enough from other RPGs to make it worth playing. User reviews are positive, as they were within Early Access, which is promising.

Grab it for $25/£19.50 on Steam.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.