Towers: Lord Baniff’s Deceit was a first-person RPG / dungeon crawler developed by JV Games (AKA JV Enterprises) and originally published on PC in 1993, with a Game Boy Color port published by Vatical Entertainment in 2000. A sequel titled “Towers II: Plight of the Stargazer” was later released in 1995: JV planned to also port this one to the GBC, but unfortunately the project was cancelled.
Robert was able to get in contact with Vince Valenti of JV Games, who shared some details and screenshot from their cancelled game:
“We estimated it would take 3-4 months to convert. It took about 6. We took the Towers I game code we wrote for the GBC and improved on it to lay out the Towers II game. Came out nice, we thought. Too bad it never made it out to market.
Towers 2 – Plight of the Stargazer, picks up a couple of months after their initial landing. The crew is discovering that there is something very strange in the land of Lamini. There is no outside trade or information, and the locals seem only interested in the current affairs of Lamini.
During this time repairs have been made to the ship, which is almost complete, and the crew is more then anxious to leave the island. This is when the new sheriff requests our audience. Lord Daggan, one of Lamini’s highest council members appears to have gone mad. The council’s elite guards and mages were sent in to stop Daggan, but none have been heard from since.
According to the sheriff, you are Lamini’s best chance. It seems that the only people that have been able to enter the Towers and escape have been individual or small groups of thieves. Several thieves were questioned, and their confessions were amazing. They spoke of large eyes with wings, men made out of metal, and living fire. It is now up to you, with a companion if you choose, to enter Daggan’s towers, and unravel the mystery.
In this game, the mysteries of the island of Lamini start to unravel as well as the deceit of the council.
New & Improved Features:
- Approximately 6 minutes of vocal conversations.
- Larger view screen.
- changing dungeon graphics, by level.
- Teleporters.
- Visual graphic spell selection.
- Improved AI, the intro of friendly characters.
- Improved story line integration.
- Spell effects
- More puzzles
- American-style, full featured RPG
- 2 player linkable option (co-operative mode)
- 15 levels to explore”
Thanks to Robert for the contribution! A playable prototype was found and shared online by Gaming Alexandria in January 2020.