Wizard's Tower is an RPG style game for 1 player, where the players mission is to get three magical talismans: the Sceptor of Speed, the Ring of Strength and the Crown of Wisdom. The game has an overview map showing towns, mountains, monsters, etc. as well as the huge Wizard's Tower in a way similar to Aardvark's earlier Quest game. Using arrow keys to move around the player has to gain items and fight encounters to eventually make it to the Tower. At the beginning the player is near a city (yellow square) where they can buy and sell items, including weapons, armor, rations and magic spells. One annoying thing is that the game exits back to the map after every single purchase or sell; at the beginning of the game especially the player will likely be buying multiple items, so this slows the game down (and the monster positions all change each turn as well).
Once the player enters the tower, they enters a multi-level dungeon that is shown in a top view. The player is still the '*' character and monsters are still a single letter, but there are also purple squares (treasure chests), '#' is stairs going up, and '%' is stairs going down. This is where the quest for the 3 special items starts. As on the main exterior map, every move the player makes is matched by all the creatures being updated as well (they may move or not). The treasure chests usually contain just gold, but some will hold the special items that you are looking for.
The game features 4 kinds of monsters (B=Balrog, G=goblin, W=Evil Wizard, D=Dragon) of which only Goblins are on the main map. The controls are quite simple; the 4 arrow keys move you in their direction, and I is for inventory.
One interesting note is that this game was ported to multiple computers - including the MC-10 (The Coco's small cousin). Another is that the artwork and manual calls it Wizard's Tower, while the game title screen calls it The Wizard's Tower.
Title: Wizard's Tower
Author: Stephen C. Mitchell
Publisher: Aardvark
Released: March 1983
Requires: Color Computer 1,2 or 3, 16K RAM Extended BASIC