TowerClimb

[Josiah]

Started playing this cool little game called TowerClimb. It will remind a lot of you of Spelunky, but it seems a lot harder and the action is a lot more plodding. Some cool concepts though, and some more great exploration of procedurally generated content.

http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/towe ... 1459/2170/

I'd like to spend some more time with it and see if it's worth the dedication I gave Spelunky.

[Josiah]

Some things to know. One of the game's first shortcomings is that there is little instruction, to the point of leaving out major, basic control instructions. Some of it I understand as exploring the game and having a good time with it as you learn its features. Obviously intended to be played over and over, so that's OK. But some of it is just... sort of bad or incomplete design.

*The W key will toggle your inventory. You start with inventory items, most importantly, the Jump Potion. If you press 1 you'll activate it and its effects will stay active until you use it (press X midair).
*The UP button interacts, so you can press it in front of the upper doors to enter them.
*There are cauldron-stirring crones that will take your collected red berries and make potions out of them. The Revive potion gives you an extra life upon death which is absolutely necessary.
*You are not killed by staying underwater for a time.
*Blue berries are instantly consumed when walked over. You can stack up to 4, allowing you to do up to a quad-jump, but if you get 5 it kills you.
*Hitting X jumps. Holding UP while jumping toward a wall or ceiling will allow you to climb it. Unfortunately, UP will also activate interactable things nearby.
*There are certain enemies (worms) that can occupy the same space as other level objects, making them undetectable. This leads to unfair deaths.
*I don't know if rats kill you, but I've safely walked over them when they appear to be sleeping or lying down.
*If you start a level and a question mark appears above the avatar's head, it means lava is going to rise and kill you. You must climb quickly. Wall-scaling is slower than the rising lava, so you need to jump to gain height, probably by using jump potions.
*You can be killed by fall damage.
*You can walk next to spikes, but cannot fall on them from a height.
*The game is unstable and seems to crash more if you hit the X button at the wrong moment at the title screen.
*With no front end to speak of, it appears there's no sort of meta objectives to satisfy, like the holy grail Spelunky. Having unlocks and ways to motivate continued play is something the game needs to work on.

[Josiah]

I know for certain now that rats kill you.
Corrosive potions can destroy enemies and blocks. Keep them around for when you're being chased by lava or gas and you need to gogogo! This is the player's ONLY offensive ability.
If you get to one of the top doors and it does not open, gas is coming down from the ceiling soon. It behaves very similarly to the lava that comes up from the floor, but it stops chasing you once you get about halfway down the tower. You must then climb back to the door, and it will then be openable.
Revive potions will not revive you after being torn apart by a piranha. Even if that piranha leaped two squares out of water to get you. (Ending my top score at 4009ft)
Revive potions -can- revive you if you fall into lava. You can continue playing the level as normal after you are revived, but the level will look as though it is under lava.
If you are within "grabbing distance" of a wall or ceiling, you cannot use a mid-air jump. It's the worst and has killed me.
I have never been killed by bees, but I am still cautious to keep them from stinging me too much.

As you get further in the game, there will be many more circumstances where you can't get anywhere without a jump or teleport potion. I can appreciate the fact that the game requires the player be prepared by consistently spending his berries on these potions, but honestly, I haven't been screwed by this yet and I could see it being very frustrating.

I'm still enjoying the game. The player is much slower and much more powerless than the Spelunker, but the difference in controls bring a totally different sense of danger that the random level generator provides. There are lots of great moments when you play, just like Spelunky. For instance, climbing up a wall and scaling across the ceiling with a pit of lava 3 squares below... you continue off the right side of the ceiling edge and fall towards a wall just one square away. You catch yourself on the wall, just inches above the lava and then continue climbing up the other side to safety.
It's those kinds of moments that make you really feel like you're on a dangerous epic adventure, and because you know it's all random, it feels epic every time you make that kind of encounter.
Just another brief example, pushing a block into a convenient spot that lets you jump up onto a wall without needing a jump potion. It lets the player feel resourceful by making his own solutions.
GO GO GO procedurally generated content! I believe in you!

[Walker]

Not being able to jump off a wall feels very limiting.

I do like the ceiling hang bits a lot but they don't come very often and wall climbing is SO slow. Combined with the steady pace of rising lava...it just makes the game seem unfair.

The fact that there is frequently no way to go without using items seems like poor design to me. Every once in a while Spelunky did this by starting you in a completely enclosed space that you had to bomb your way out of. I forgave it because it happened so rarely and the rest of the game was so polished. Here however, it happens once every other stage, sometimes a couple of times in the same one. If berries appeared more regularly it would be OK, but I've had lots of no-berry stages. It just seems like bad stage generation.

I thought the rats were demon dogs. Anyway...don't try to crush them between a movable block and a wall. They will clip through the block and kill you.

Bees wont kill you no matter how much you are stung but three-four stings in a row will knock you off a wall or ceiling. On a wall, you immediately grab it again...no biggie. On a ceiling...this could mean death.

I like the concept, but overall the game is too rough around the edges for me to enjoy it much.

[Walker]

It's amusing when spikes spawn at the bottom of lava pits. Like the lava isn't enough...they have to make sure you're REALLY dead.

[Walker]

Corrosive potions also destroy movable blocks. The last time I played there were two blocking the exit door to the first stage.

[Josiah]

The super-deathtraps are quite hilarious.
Also, the only reason I say they're rats is because of the squealing noise they make. The sound files seem to show that there is a creature called a dog, so it looks like you're right about that.

The developer has stated that the game is in the pre-alpha stages, so I'm willing to forgive him for a lot of the design flaws (no berry levels, resource dependency, unfair monsters), and I've started to send him bugs via Email. He replied and said that the release was very rushed to meet a contest deadline and there's a lot of things that he's already fixed and he enjoys getting feedback.

[Walker]

I noticed the pre-alpha disclaimer as well. It's nice to here that he's so open to feedback.