Developer: WeirdBeard
Publisher: WeirdBeard
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Mac
Tested on: Xbox One
Tricky Towers – Review
Tricky Towers is what happens when you mix Tetris with constructing a Jenga tower. The game has been released on basically every platform, so everyone who is located in the 21st century will be able to enjoy and be aggrieved by the building bonanza. The basis of Tricky Towers –Tetris- was published on June 6th of 1984, so in essence this has been in development for 33 years.
Story
Putting in “You’re a wizard, Harry” probably would get the development team in hot waters. So let’s just omit the famous wizard reference and stick to normal run off the mill wizards. The kind that don’t run around the country using magic for greater good or fanatical evil, but for the sole purpose of building and creating structures that defy both logic and gravity. High and higher still, just for the sake of it. The wizards are the players and the constructions are theirs to command and complete. They rely on your level-headedness to make sure their buildings don’t collapse into rubble. Not quite a narrative epic, but not every game needs to have a story tightly woven into the gameplay to make it interesting enough to warrant a play through.
Graphics
Tricky Towers is fun to look at. It’s not a game that’s boasting hyper realistic graphics, or has protagonists that are anatomically correct. The animations aren’t ample, but they are fluid. When you look at the backgrounds, they are vibrant enough, but not so vibrant that they overpower what’s going on. It’s never unclear what the blocks are or aren’t capable of. Chains mean you can’t turn them, so you have to make do with how they come. If plants grow on the platform it means the platform is ‘grounded’ and you are safe to build on it without it falling apart. It’s always clear what you can and cannot do in the stage.
Sound
The sound play in Tricky Towers trails the line between annoying and funny. The music is fun to listen to, and the sounds the wizards make sound like they are addicted to helium and endowed with the vocal chords of a minion. If you focus on it, then it might become grating, but if you don’t concentrate on the sound and more on the gameplay then it adds to the experience.
Gameplay
Tricky Towers is a physics based puzzle game. It combines the easy-to-come-to terms-with fun of Tetris while still being a challenge. This lies in the fact that you have to really have to pay attention to where you put your blocks. Be even but a millimeter off and the next couple of blocks might slide off and that could mean game over.
The controls are easy, just like Tetris. The shoulder buttons work in a way so you can switch the blocks around. Pressing down will speed the falling of the blocks. You aren’t totally left to your devices when it comes to aiming your blocks, as their trajectory is shown. Then it’s still possible to mess it up and once that happens it’s really difficult to rectify it.
There are three modes to the game. Race, Survival and Puzzle. Race is getting to a certain height against the clock. It’s cool to see the time not only in numbers, but also in a horizontal bar that measures your progress, so you can see if it’s still possible to make it or not. Survival gives you a limited amount of lives. A life is deducted once a block falls off the tower, and once you are out of lives, that’s game over and the score is recorded. The Puzzle mode is where you can train yourself to make sure that every block is neatly stacked. You have to fit them under a laser, so apart from thinking forward and knowing where the blocks go, you have to make sure that they stay put. This can make the levels both engaging, but if you fail for the umpteenth time, they can become rather frustrating, and that’s where the game falls flat, a single mistake inevitably means a game over, which isn’t the case in most games and weighs the potential of Tricky Towers down.
You too don’t have to be the only one frustrated though, as you can annoy or challenge up to three of your friends should the online matchmaking not work out. This way you can all laugh and make fun of each other as the blocks tumble. Getting a high score isn’t just for fun, they’ll be put on a high score list so you can show off to the rest of the player base.
Conclusion
Tricky towers is a game that’s easy to comprehend, and can be easy to learn, but can be hard to master. The downside to this is that the game is extremely unforgiving and it really isn’t helping your experience. A party game that’s best with three friends on the couch that will be the source of mirth, be it your friends towards your failure or you laughing for the other losing players, fun is ensured this way.
Tricky Towers - Review,
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