Tricky Towers

Tricky Towers
Developer(s)	WeirdBeard
Publisher(s)	WeirdBeard
Engine	Unity Engine[1]
Platform(s)	PlayStation 4, Windows, OS X, Linux
Release	WW: 2 August 2016 [2]
Genre(s)	Puzzle
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Tricky Towers is a physics based tower building game puzzle video game that uses a tile stacking game mechanic.^[3] It was released in August 2016 on the Playstation Plus service and month later on PlayStation 4 and on digital distribution service Steam for Windows, OS X, and Linux.^[4][5] The game runs on the Unity engine and was created by independent studio WeirdBeard. The game received favourable reviews.

Gameplay

Tricky Towers uses a combination of tile-matching gameplay as seen in the well-known game Tetris with a physics based tower building game mechanics. It includes falling blocks but is more of a tower stacking game.^[2] Random blocks drop from the top of the screen and rows do not disappear. Instead blocks may fall off the tower. They may double in size or drop at faster rates for short periods for example. The player takes control of one of the available wizard avatars and must, depending on the game mode, compete against other wizards in creating his wizard tower as high, stable and quickly as possible. The games are short and fast paced and are easy to pick up and play. Pieces move in half-square increments.^[6]

Players can use magic upgrades to assist. During a match, the player can use one of the 17 spells available to him to his advantage. Spells are divided into Light and Dark magic categories, and using a spell of 1 category limits the use of spells of the other. Light magic focusses on augmenting your tower, whilst protecting it from hostile dark magic spells. Dark Magic revolves around interfering with your opponents, toppling their towers down, or meddling with the opponent’s engineering efforts in other devious ways.

The game has 3 distinct multiplayer game modes, these are Race, Survival and Puzzle. In the Race game mode, players must compete to be the first to build a tower who’s height passes the finish line. Efficiency and construction speed are key to this game-mode and it makes for a fast paced frantic game experience. In this game mode, the player must try and placing a certain number of bricks in their tower without dropping too many and losing your health. The player must focus on careful construction and smart application of spells to triumph. The puzzle game mode is a more slowly paced game-mode compared to the above 2. Players need to try and place as many bricks in their tower below a certain cut-off point. This requires a more creative way of play, as the player has to try and overcome the physics and come up with various engineering solutions.

There are also a number of singleplayer challenges available, where the player has to try and achieve a certain set of conditions depending on the challenge to succeed.

Development

Development started on Tricky Towers after WeirdBeardGames’ previous title 99 Bricks Wizard Academy was released in 2014. It is a continuation of a concept they’ve been developing and improving upon since 2009, starting with 99 Bricks Classic, which was released on the online game platform Kongregate.

Tricky Towers was released on 2 August 2016 on the Playstation Plus service and a month later on PlayStation 4 and the Steam platform for Windows, OS X, and Linux.

Reception

Tricky Towers on PC received "generally favorable" reviews from critics according to review aggregator website Metacritic, while the PS4 version received "mixed or average" reviews.^[7] A PS Nation review thought the game was fun but not easy.^[6]

References

External links

• Official website
• 99 Bricks at Kongregate