The Tower of Druaga

The Tower of Druaga is a maze-based action role-playing arcade game released by Namco in 1984 in Japan and the United States. It was one of the first action role-playing games, along with Dragon Slayer. It is the first game in the Babylonian Castle Saga series, based on Babylonian mythology.

The game runs on Namco Super Pac-Man hardware but with a video system like that used in Mappy, and is the first game from Namco to display its year in Roman numerals on the title screen. It was later ported to the MSX, Famicom and remade for the PC Engine platform by Game Studio. Its first appearance outside Japan was in the third compilation of the Namco Museum series for the PlayStation and also appears on the Nintendo DS, PSP and Xbox 360 version of said series.

Originally the game and its sequels had no specific setting other than 'the tower'. However, in recent years, the series has been retconned as being set in the fantasy kingdom of 'Babylim'.

A 2008 anime series, beginning with The Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk, uses the game as its back story, though is set many decades later.

The player assumes the role of the hero Gilgamesh, whose goal is to rescue the maiden Ki from the demon Druaga. To do this, he must traverse through 60 floors of an immense tower. Gilgamesh comes equipped with a sword, which he can use to defeat monsters, and a shield, which can be used to block magical attacks. The monsters get progressively more difficult as the game progresses, beginning with simple slimes and culminating with Druaga himself. Each floor consists of a maze filled with monsters, and a randomly placed locked door leading to the next level. The player must navigate through the maze to find a randomly placed key that unlocks the door. In addition, each floor contains a hidden treasure, which appears once the player has performed a specific requirement. The player's starting position is also randomly determined; however, the hidden treasure always appears in the same position the player starts from when revealed. The mazes themselves are not random, but there are various predetermined patterns. Some of the treasures are merely helpful items, some are detrimental, and some are essential to completing the game including the Blue Crystal Rod, the game's most important item; without it, Druaga will not appear and the player will be forced to return to an earlier floor, known as 'zapping'.

The regular enemies are slimes, magicians, ghosts, knights, lizard men, ropers (which look like huge blobs with tentacles), and dragons (the main being Quox).

In the third Namco Museum game, there is a small handbook explaining how to get the treasures. There is also a hidden version far more difficult than the regular named 'Another Tower' and an extra version named 'Darkess Tower'. The treasures (save the first one) are all alternated in how to get. In the museum's library, there are three books containing illustrations of the game's characters. The Namco Museum DS version does not have a physical handbook, but the actual game does feature a 'hint mode' for getting the treasures.

On some early releases of the arcade version there is a glitch that makes the last level unbeatable.