Dark Tower is a 1981 electronic board game, by Milton Bradley Company, for one to four players. The object of the game is to amass an army, collect the three keys to the Tower, and defeat the evil within. Advertising for the game included a television commercial featuring Orson Welles.

A sequel, Return to Dark Tower, was developed by Restoration Games and released in 2022.

Components

The game includes:

The circular game board is divided into four quadrants, each corresponding to one of the four kingdoms, with the Dark Tower in the center. Each kingdom quadrant is divided into spaces, four of which are labeled for a building; the innermost (closest to the center) space is labeled as the Dark Tower, and the outermost ring of spaces includes a space for the citadel for that kingdom, which is where the kingdom's flag is placed and where the player pawn starts.

The sixteen buildings are divided into four sets (distinguished by color) of four buildings each: ruin, bazaar, tomb, and sanctuary. The twelve keys are divided by color into four gold keys, four silver keys, and four brass keys. Each flag corresponds to one of the four kingdoms (Arisilon, Brynthia, Durnin, and Zenon) and the Dark Tower itself. During the initial assembly of the game, the buildings are placed into the labeled spaces on the board, and stickers are peeled off a sheet and placed on the keys and flags. The quarter of the board in front of a player is their kingdom. Each kingdom quadrant is separated by a "frontier" space; when moving into a new kingdom from the frontier, players may choose to move into any space adjacent to the frontier. Vince Erato, who previously created the Big Trak toy (1979), was credited with designing the game, inspired by the computer game Wilderness Campaign (1979).

George Ditomassi, the M-B vice president of sales, said it was aimed at "people who had heard about D and D but who didn't want to be Dungeons and Dragons freaks." Shortly after launch, although the game's retail price was between US$55 and , Ditomassi noted "it shouldn't be selling yet because it's too high-priced and there hasn't been any advertising", but added that nevertheless, each Toys "R" Us store was selling an average of one and a half units per week.

Marketing for the game included a television commercial featuring Orson Welles. Despite favorable reviews and reportedly strong sales, production of the game stopped after a single holiday season, and it was targeted by a lawsuit. Erato was present for the demonstration. Internally, M-B used a three-tiered review structure, with only 5% of game ideas receiving the scrutiny of top-level executives during a "Presidential Review"; according to internal records, Triumph received a Presidential Review on March 20, 1980. According to Erato, he independently conceived the central tower around Christmas 1979, two months before Burten and Coleman met with M-B, but his combative attitude at trial hindered the believability of his testimony and because he did not keep good records, he could not prove this assertion. The First Circuit Court of Appeals reversed in May 1985, finding evidence that Milton Bradley entered an implied agreement to keep the game confidential and reinstated the damage award.

Reception

Games magazine included Dark Tower in their "Top 100 Games of 1981", noting especially how the "tower itself swivels so that each player alone views what happens to his own band of warriors".

In a retrospective review of Dark Tower in Black Gate, Scott Taylor said "as I remembered Dark Tower, and its card game predecessor Dragonmaster, I couldn't help but get incredibly nostalgic. There was something truly unique about those games, something almost spiritual, and I can credit this most certainly with the artist who brought them to us, Bob Pepper."

Reviews

  • Family Games: The 100 Best

Legacy

Several web-based versions of the game have been developed over the years; an app called Droid Tower developed by Muse of Water was available for Android; and a similar app by MacCrafters is available for iOS.

Sequel

Return to Dark Tower was launched on Kickstarter on January 14, 2020, by Restoration Games as a cooperative game for 1–4 players. Designed by Isaac Childres and Rob Daviau, the creators of Gloomhaven and Pandemic Legacy respectively, the game features a motorized rotating tower guided by an app.

See also

  • Enchanted Palace (1994–1995)

Notes

References

  • Original TV commercial with Orson Welles on YouTube
  • Dark Tower review with photos, at gamepile.com
  • Dark Tower for Android
  • Dark Tower for iOS
  • Multi player Dark Tower for PC
  • Single Player Dark Tower for PC