Release Date: 4 March 2014
Date Played: 29 November 2021
Tower of Guns is one of those games that jumped onto the rogue-lite train back in the middle of the 2010s. It seemed like every indie game that was being released back then had to worm its way into that category in order to grab a little hype or be relegated to the forgotten games purgatory every developer fears. Being a huge fan of rogue-lites I'm not one to complain. Several of my favorite games of all time are rogue-lites and I find them engaging and really like their mechanics. In case you didn't know, rogue-lites (or rogue-likes) are games that take inspiration from the old-school ASCII game, Rogue, and have similar features like randomized levels, items, weapons, enemies, and stats that reset every time you start over with a new game. Often they also have a perma-death mechanic where if you die, you lose all progress and have to start from scratch each time. Rogue-lites tend to be less severe with these mechanics and incorporate unlockable skills, items, and abilities that can be collected in a new run to give you an edge. Yes, each run is new, but the pool of items available to you gets stronger each subsequent time you play. I think this more forgiving spin on the "rogue" formula really helps with the frustration of losing your progress and gives even "failed" runs a sense of progression. After a crushing defeat it's a lot easier to pick up the controller for another run knowing that you might be able to grab that awesome weapon you unlocked last time you played.
Grip Games, the developer of Tower of Guns, decided to take these mechanics and combine them with the twitch based first person shooter genre to create something that hadn't really been seen previously in the glut of 2D rogue-lites that were saturating the market. It steps away from the side scrolling action games, dungeon crawlers, and strategy games that dominated the genre and instead opts for intense and twitchy gameplay like Quake or Unreal Tournament to get its point across. Does it succeed?
Not really... The first give away that Tower of Guns may not be a top-tier game is that it was published by Soedesco. To me, they are the current equivalent of LJN publishing from the NES days. Almost every game I've played that they published felt like a total cash grab and is usually a warning sign to stay far away. Their games are full of all of the hallmarks of a budget title with subpar gameplay, cheap graphics, bugs, and unoptimized performance. Unfortunately, Tower of Guns is no exception. While the game does control well and is thankfully bug free, it doesn't offer much more to entice you to sacrifice your time to it.
You begin each run by selecting a gun with a silly name like "Peas 'n Carrots" or "Portable Pizza Oven." At first, there are only these two guns to choose from, but as you make more and more progress with your runs, you can unlock eight more to round out the arsenal. In addition to this, you also select a perk to give you a little bonus (or hinderance to your gameplay). These range from things like starting with a triple jump, negating fall damage, etc. There are plenty to unlock and they can drastically change the game. Also, there are several modes of gameplay available from the onset like Endless mode where you keep looping the game until you die, Dice Roll, where you get a random effect applied to you in every room, Hotfoot, where the floor is lava, and several more that change up the gameplay. After you select this loadout, you dive right into the game and set out to defeat the titular Tower.
You'll notice that the art style of the game relies heavily on cell-shaded graphics with a gritty industrial look to them. This can often been a wise choice when playing a game because this graphical style tends to hold up well over time and not look so dated years down the road. You can feel that this was the developer's intention and they really wanted people to play this game for years without it showing it's age. And, just like the rogue-lite gameplay bandwagon, they also jumped on the cell-shaded graphical bandwagon. Ironically, once all developers learned this, it seems like it was a feature of every game for about a decade and in hindsight seems to date the games even more from that time period rather than guard them against the aging graphics they all so desperately feared. Anytime I see a cell-shaded FPS game these days, I feel like I'm playing something from 2010... and I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. Not that that's a bad thing, per se. It's just that what once made something stand out from it's peers soon began to make it blend in with the crowd. Other than the cell-shaded graphics, the Tower of Guns also relies on a cartoony and exaggerated art style that give a bit of a whimsical feel and serves the tongue-in-cheek attitude the developer was aiming for. This kind of clashes with the gritty and metallic look of everything and makes the game a bit harder to take seriously. In my opinion, a bright and colorful aesthetic would have suited the game much better and helped it stand out from it's peers.
As for the gameplay, it's pretty basic. You enter into the Foyer, which almost always serves as the first floor of the tower. Each floor is populated by a handful of rooms that you have to traverse in order to progress. These rooms act like a series of gauntlets that give the game an arena-shooter feel. You'll have to run, dodge, strafe, hop, and shoot your way through each progressively tougher room. The sheer number of enemies and bullets can often be overwhelming and comically over the top. Some rooms will have upwards of 350 enemies in them and you can get swarmed and cornered pretty easily. Luckily, you don't always have to kill them all and can instead sprint for the door to the next room, shoot it to unlock it, and then dive into the next arena. As you kill enemies, they will drop coins, healing items, gun XP, active item fuel, and the occasional stat increase. The gun XP serves to level up your weapon (to a max of 5) to give you a bit more firepower. Getting hit causes you to lose gun XP, so you'll want to stay on your toes and try to avoid getting hit as much as possible. With the crazy amount of bullets and enemies flying around the levels, this isn't exactly and easy task and you'll need to have quick reflexes to mitigate all the damage coming your way. The stat upgrades you find can be what makes or breaks a run. These include things like adding an additional jump height, armor, damage up, luck up, xp increases, and more. Collecting these is essential and you'll need to get lucky with what drops as well as have some decent skill to string together a successful attempt. You'll also encounter items to purchase for the coins you've collected. These are usually great and you'll want to grab as many of them as possible. This is usually easier said than done as the "shops" are hidden in difficult to reach areas or tucked away out of sight. Keep an eye open, or you'll miss them.
As a sort of cruel joke, the developers decided to include a Difficulty UP stat increase to buff your enemies. Picking up one of these can often kill a run and derail your attempt. With all of the chaos going on during the game, it's quite easy to accidentally grab one of these as your trying to collect all of the items that drop from your fallen enemies. Honestly, It's very frustrating and caused me to fail an attempt that was otherwise going extremely well up to that point. These feel like the developers are giving you a big middle-finger as an insult and the game would have been much better without them. In a fast paced game like this, you want to keep moving and grabbing all the items the enemies drop before they disappear. You can't do this and focus on killing the copious amounts of baddies when you have to constantly be on the lookout for a powerup that serves no purpose other than to troll you when you accidentally grab it. Yes, I know these sorts of items are found in lots of other rogue-lite games. But, it doesn't suit this sort of gameplay well and detracts from your enjoyment rather than giving you some sort of crazy item that you have to make due with. It doesn't add a challenging mechanic, or wavy shot, or some other effect that throws a wrench into your gameplay but is potentially able to be overcome. Often these items have the chance to have crazy synergies in other games that can make a memorable and extremely fun run in the right circumstances. That's not the case here. Tower of Guns has no synergies I've seen and this item only makes the enemies take more damage and deal more damage. It's a lazy item and shouldn't be in the game.
After clearing a floor, you'll face off against a giant boss that is, just like every single other enemy in the game, a combination of gun barrels and spikes. They usually involve the same strategy of strafing around and avoiding their shots while blasting them away. Often, they are pretty cool looking and can have some interesting mechanics to them; but after a few runs, they all seem to blend together. Once you kill one of these bosses, they'll drop an active item that you can use. Unfortunately, these are usually quite underwhelming and often have a very narrow usage like insta-killing a specific type of enemy or making you shoot faster but be unable to move. Sadly, each time you grab one of these active items, it replaces the previous one. So, each time you kill another boss, you only get a new choice of item rather than adding another item to your arsenal and getting stronger. As for the repetitive nature of the bosses, the same can be said of the general enemies in the game. They are usually just turrets that fire different projectiles at you, floating enemies that home in on your location in large numbers to point-blank shoot you, or some form of tank. It's only slightly funny that everything is a gun, because it is a Tower of Guns, after all. But, I think the game could benefitted greatly by adding some additional variety rather than put all of it's money on the meme-like nature of the everything is a gun concept.
Eventually, you'll fight your way up to the top of the tower and face off against a final boss. This takes about an hour to complete and each run usually gets a lot easier as your progress and collect more and more upgrades... if you make it that far. The game could use some more balancing and you'll either find yourself very underpowered and don't make much progress. Or, you'll be so overpowered that the game feels like it has no challenge at all and you'll just blow through room after room with little effort. Even then, though, you never feel... awesome. I think part of the issue with making the player never feel empowered is a result of the guns themselves. They don't really feel substantial or exciting and usually have very slow shot speed. It's very frustrating to fire a gun and see the bullet slowly move towards its target for several seconds only to have the mark mindlessly move out of the way at the last second. I almost always felt like the guns were working against me instead of for me and I was finding myself having to get right up in the enemy's face to make my shots connect. This, of course, led to me taking additional damage.
As for the story, there really isn't much to say. Every run, I guess you're playing as one of several characters that's trying to ascend the tower for some sort of revenge purpose. The dialog is not very interesting and it's difficult to keep track of what the character is saying anyway due to all the busy chaos going on during gameplay. I mostly ignored it, honestly. It's nice that the developer tried to put a little effort (though poorly executed and misplaced) into the game to give it some sort of flair. But, that effort could have been better spent elsewhere. To pair with the lackluster story, we're also given a very lackluster soundtrack of mostly drones and ambient sounds. It stands in stark contrast to the high intensity gameplay and really brings down the overall energy of the experience. The game really could have done with some pumping and catchy music to keep you engaged during the countless attempts the developer intends for you to play. It's a huge letdown and was a grievously missed opportunity.
So, what's my final conclusion. Tower of Guns is a good idea that is just executed poorly. It's not really a bad game, it's just very boring and unimaginative. I don't even know how you go about creating a game that has hundreds of bullets firing at you from all angles while you dodge and move out of the way (all while returning fire) and yet still makes the experience feel...deflated. All of the levels of the tower and all of the enemies look and act the same. You'll encounter the same enemies in the last room of the game that you encounter in the first room. There are probably 12-15 enemies that are just recycled for the entire duration and it's very noticeable before very long. Also, The guns feel weak and unfun to shoot and the upgrades are usually underwhelming. The unlockables you get for your loadouts feel uninspired and too familiar. And finally, the graphics, art style, and music are too derivative of things gamers have seen over and over again that it's almost impossible to describe without saying something like, "Imagine Borderlands but with no characters." All of this just adds up to an underwhelming experience that really isn't worth more than a couple of hours of fun at most. After you've conquered the tower for the first time, it feels like you've seen everything the game has to offer... and that's the worst thing a rogue-lite could possibly do.
Final Status: Beaten
Final Score: 5/10 (Mediocre)
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