Video Game / Turovero: The Celestial Tower

What will you risk to make the light of truth shine brightly once again?

Turovero: The Celestial Tower is a freeware dark fantasy Role-Playing Game, created with RPG Maker VX Ace by QZ Productions, and released for Windows PCs on June 25th, 2019.

The world was created by four benevolent gods, who ruled together in harmony until the Dark One, a being of pure malice and despair, deposed them and began to spread its hateful influence. The only hope lies at the top of Turovero, the tower that reaches to the heavens.

Four brave adventurers - Sigurd the knight, Leilia the druid, Edric the mage, and Ruby the thief - have taken it upon themselves to make the perilous climb in order to oust the Dark One and return hope to the world. But what seems like a straightforward journey to defeat the villain and save the world turns into something much, much more, and our heroes may not be prepared for what they find at the summit of Turovero. Can they face the truths of the world that lie at the top of the tower and triumph over despair once and for all?

Turovero: The Celestial Tower can be played for free and downloaded here.

Warning: This game contains several key plot twists, and is best experienced without spoilers.

With that in mind...

This game contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: In his past life as Peter Choi, Edric's mother was a verbally abusive alcoholic who often called him "worthless", leading to a host of mental health and self-esteem issues, including depression.
• Amnesiac Hero: None of the four heroes have any memory prior to meeting each-other.
• Angelic Beauty: A subtle example. Most of the female characters are fairly normal-looking. However Amitiel is extremely beautiful by human standards, and it emphasizes her non-humanity. The slight glow to her features in her character portrait serve to further accentuate this.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Sigurd in his Dark One route, who is dangerous exactly because he's nice. Remember, he felt it would be kinder to trap his friends in the fantasy world against their will instead of just accepting his issues.
  • Leila isn't any better in her route. While at least Sigurd kept the souls of his friends dormant, she has them completely aware of their situations.
• Big Bad: The Dark One, allegedly a being of malice which usurped the Four Gods' throne and began the world's descent into darkness. Midway through the game, it's revealed that the Dark One was actually one of the Four Gods themselves, who destroyed the others after succumbing to despair, a metaphor for the massacre in the protagonists' previous lives that trapped their spirits in the fantasy world they'd created.
• Bittersweet Ending: The good endings are this in a nutshell. Everyone but the Dark One escapes the fantasy world and the four heroes resolved at least some of their problems and issues. Unfortunately, the Dark One is stuck in the fantasy world. It's implied that they may be able to get out someday, however, and in the epilogue Amitiel's voice reassures them that their journey towards salvation is "just beginning".
• Black-and-White Morality: Sigurd is somewhat naive when it comes to ideas of good and evil; he sees himself and his team as automatically good and the monsters of the tower as automatically evil. In his Dark One route, this devolves into Black-and-White Insanity.
• Broken Masquerade: The Artificial Realm variant.
• The Cameo:
  • Kyle Mason from Prom Dreams has a minor appearance in the Bonus Room. Considering all the crap he went through in his own game, he's not too happy to be there.
  • Tony, Octavio and Pablo from Living Playground appear in their playground form disguised in the park. They can briefly switch into their human forms if you interact with them though. This is a nod to the fact that the cutscene artist, Meaka, is also the developer of the Living Playground games.
  • A few weapons from other franchises can be found within each character's version of the Labyrinth:
    • Sigurd can find the "Master's Sword", an obvious nod to The Legend of Zelda. It will have a 1 in 6 chance of dealing triple damage, but lower his defense in exchange.
    • Leilia can find "Nirvana", a recurring weapon from the Final Fantasy franchise. It has a 1 in 6 chance of healing the entire party when used, but lowers her agility as well.
    • Edric can find "Magicae Sanguinis", an important plot item from Prom Dreams. True to its namesake, it may instantly kill an enemy while sapping 50% of Edric's HP.
    • Finally, Ruby can find "Sagittae Luminis", which is a reference to Puella Magi Madoka Magica and the (nameless) bow used by its protagonist. It will have a 1 in 6 chance of dealing triple damage at the cost of Ruby's MP.
• Chaste Hero: Sigurd responds to Ruby ribbing him about his popularity with girls by saying that he'll "worry about (his) love life once (they've) defeated the Dark One".
• Chivalrous Pervert: Ruby could be considered a female version of this; although she's known for flirting with women, making dirty jokes, and getting involved with her friends' love lives, her intentions are almost always benign.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each hero has a color associated with them: yellow for Sigurd, green for Leilia, blue for Edric, and red for Ruby.
• Comically Missing the Point: In the Bonus Room, if the player interacts with the "past life versions", they start lampshading minor and insignificant details about their deaths, almost forgetting that one of their friends killed them in the first place.
  Myra (after the Dark Leilia route): Look, I'm glad we were able to save Melissa and all, but I think we're forgetting one teeny, tiny detail...She burned down my goddamn house!. If there's money in Heaven, she owes me big time...!!
• Creepy Child: Leilia and Ruby meet one in the tower's fourth floor. She turns out to be the boss, Mortia, a Tower Guardian who uses creepy dolls in the party's likeness to torment them.

• Dark and Troubled Past Each of the heroes has one of these, which may not be surprising. What's more surprising, however, is the exact nature of their histories and the demons they must face.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Using Stonecleaver on stone statues occasionally leads to herbs that Leilia can harvest.
• Dungeon Shop: None of the heroes are sure how Ami the merchant made her way into the tower, but they're all too happy to partake of her adventuring supplies.
• Exposition Break: The Springs of Truth
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Sigurd, Edric, and Ruby fit the archetypes to a T, with Leilia rounding the party out as the healer. Which makes perfect sense when you discover their origin.
• God Was My Copilot: Ami turns out to be an angel, there to guide the heroes to discovering the truth of Turovero.
• Knight Templar: Sigurd becomes one of these on his Dark One route, determined to "save" his friends from pain and suffering by any means necessary. He is the only Dark One who truly believes they are doing to right thing.
• Leitmotif: The Hymn of the Four Gods, the melody of the main theme. Sigurd plays it on his dulcimer when the party is at rest, and it can be heard in several key moments throughout the game.
• Lethal Chef: Sigurd is a downplayed example. Ruby makes mention of him not being allowed near the cooking pot due to his record of cooking mishaps, such as trying to cut open a pumpkin with his sword with disastrous consequences. In his past life, as Ryan Elliot, he left a permanent charred sludge in Peter's oven trying to make frozen pizza, and he also mixed up the sugar and salt while making a cake.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: The boss of the third floor, Viveca, does this in spades.
• Odd Couple: On the third and fourth floors, the group is split between male and female. Both groups’ banter qualifies for this. Especially Sigurd and Edric.
• The Player Is the Most Important Resource: At the end of the game, the protagonists (except the Dark One, who's too busy wallowing in self-pity) will thank the player for helping them reach Heaven and resolve most of their issues.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: During Leilia’s route as the Dark One, she begs the rest of the group not to leave her behind as she can’t bear the thought of being alone. She would go so far as to trap her friends inside Turovero to stay with them.
• Properly Paranoid: Ruby's trust issues are a result of this. In her previous life, as Myra Arazi, her journalist father became the target of a North African criminal organization, which led to the death of her mother and her family's subsequent flight to America.
  • Improperly Paranoid: During Ruby's villain route, however, Myra's reasonable fears turn into outright paranoia when her father commits suicide. After a psychotic break, she begins to blame her friends for his death, which ultimately leads to the quadruple murder-suicide setting off the game's events.
• The Reveal: Quite a few one after the other:
  • The Dark One is actually one of the Four Gods who's been overwhelmed with despair. This coincides with one of your party members beginning to act strangely...
  • Said party member ousts himself - and the others - as a god and as The Dark One. The party are reincarnations of Four Gods.
  • The remaining three party members remember their true names - back when they were mortals on Earth. Their group, Dark One included, was a tightly-knit circle of friendship... until an unspecified event ruined that. Their various fears - such as Leilia's fear of fire - are results of traumatic events from their previous lives that remain unresolved still.
  • Ami reveals herself to be Amitiel, the Angel of Truth, here to guide the party to a happy ending. She replaces a missing party member.
  • After braving the Dark One's chapel, the party finds out their true name and that they've killed the others and then themselves. Turovero is actually a Purgatory-esque realm held up by Dark One's delusion, and it will continue to hold the party inside until they're defeated.
• Romance Sidequest: It’s possible for Leilia and Edric to begin a relationship by the end of the game. They need to talk to each other at every campfire and neither of them can be the Dark One. Once the conditions are met, the good ending sequence will change slightly. Additionally, this will unlock a Status Buff where if one character falls in battle, the other will gain a significant magic power increase.
• Shout-Out: It happens in the same universe as QZ Productions's previous game Prom Dreams, as the incident at St. Giles Academy is mentioned in a newspaper.
  • Ryan laments that the victims's life was cut too short, as they were around the same age as him.
  • Melissa wonders who could have so much hatred in their heart to kill people in cold blood.
  • Peter believes Kyle to be the murderer due to being the only survivor and scoffs off at the theories online about black magic being involved.
  • Myra projects herself on Brooke and Neela and believes they were killed due to their parents being a senator and a mafia grunt respectively.
  • Kyle pops up in the Bonus Room for a cameo. Needless to say, he's none too happy to be there after what happened in his game.
• Sole Survivor: In her previous life, as Melissa LeBlanc, Leilia accidentally started a housefire which claimed the lives of her mother, father, and baby brother. Her guilt and trauma from this event translated into a phobia of fire and a fear of abandonment in her current life.
• Start of Darkness: Each one of the four heroes has survived a great trauma in their life. Depending on the way the story unfolds, we can see how, in different ways, trauma can give way to tragedy.
• Story Branching: Depending on how certain events within the game play out, any one of the four heroes can turn out to have been the Dark One, making the final chapter play out in one of four drastically different ways.
• Supreme Chef: Ruby is known for her cooking talent, and is shown making potato stew for the party during the Frozen Chamber section. In her past life, as Myra Arazi, she enjoyed cooking curries and dishes from her home country, such as falafels.
• Tsundere: Edric shows traits of this, as he tries (but usually fails) to mask his feelings for Leilia under an air of aloofness. During his Dark One route, however, these traits becomes somewhat more Yandere in nature...
• Villain Shoes: In the final Spring of Truths, the player controls whoever became the Dark One in their former life, in some cases even making the player perform the actions that would lead to the group’s deaths.
• Visible Silence: Used all...the...time.
• Yandere:
  • Edric becomes one towards Leilia on his villain route of the game. After falling into despair, he becomes obsessed with the idea of becoming "perfect" for her, and evidence of his obsession with her extends even to the puzzles on the tower's seventh floor.
  • On her villain route, Leilia herself becomes a platonic example, as she takes drastic actions to keep her friends trapped inside Turovero with her forever, becoming unhinged and hostile when her efforts are challenged.

---