Flip tower defence on it’s head and try to escape the tower of lots of nasty stuff being fired at you. There’s even a story. You’re a necromancer who has been locked up by elves. Something something, escape, and hopefully reign terror upon them later. Okay, so there’s little need for a story but I do like the good natured set up for this game. I doubt this is the first example of this type of gameplay but it’s the first I’ve seen and has been cleverly implemented. I’ve never been particularly into tower defence games. Ironically this might be the game that makes me give that genre another look.
As a necromancer the path to freedom comes from summoning minions to do your bidding in the face of elven terror. The route to victory is through a dozen floors of the tower. The minions must collect items on each floor, treasures for purchases in the store and the required number of keys to move on to the next floor, living long enough to carry them to the exit. Provided at least one minion survives it’s possible to revive all your minions for another attempt at retrieving the items you need. However, on the next wave there will be more enemies and the previous enemies may have levelled up from their earlier hits and kills. More items will also appear but in fewer numbers with each fresh hell, I mean wave. Due to the number of keys required and the frequency of their drops, floors consist of between 2-4 waves but obviously can go higher. I’m not sure how well I’ve explained that but the game does a great job of teaching how to play with in game info and tips. It’s easy to learn.
In the style of tower defence, but reversed, the minions move in single file along a predetermined route. This is explained as the necromancers magical snake body which needs be laid out before releasing the minions. It can go all over and back on itself and looping into near infinity if so desired. The key is to choose the least lethal path by noting the range and damage per second of enemies, and weighing up the necessity of collecting every available item. These items also include potions which will top up health and give speed boosts.
The way to get minions is of course to buy them in the store. Makes no sense but it’s in good company with games like Resident Evil Village and it’s nonsense store. In my head canon the necromancer gets their power through the ritual of sacrificing coins. Different amounts of coin power result in different minions. Perfect. Minions can only carry one item at a time; always picking the most valuable one – keys are top priority. So the number of minions in your party is an important strategy and part of the overall resource management. More types of minions are unlocked over time from scored points on each attempt.
Tactically the main choice is between health or speed. Either tank it with high health and don’t worry about speed. Or try to dash through and take as few hits as possible. To complicate this the minions have a third stat called delay. That is the time it takes for each minion to enter the room. Minions enter one by one, so a delay causes a gap between each minion as they run. It is better to have minions close together because enemies can only target one minion at a time. Safety in numbers. Delay can be managed somewhat through the order you decide to RELEASE THE MINIONS! (sorry)
There are other ways to influence stats and strategy. Gems can be added to a minion to improve their stats. Relics have broader effects, one of my faves are the boots that make the last two minions run faster. And spells which are manually trigged while the minions run. Some minions can have interesting special effects, such as when dying they spawn an item or even another minion. This can make sacrifice part of a strategy. Even more stuff includes levelling up minions, re-rolling the store, different clans, choices of floors through the tower, shields, and use of aggro.
Phew, that was a lot of detail. Hope you’re not too bored. Is all this any good? For the most part yes. I’ve played and beat the tower on easy, medium and hard. In fact I did it the first time for each difficulty. This isn’t a boast. I think the only reason I made it through hard was from a lucky early relic which permanently reduced the price of minions. I’ve not had a second stab at hard yet. Don’t be worried about it being too easy though, because it unlocks even harder modes which appear to go up infinitely. And trust me it was no cake walk finishing hard. I only just made it by focusing all efforts on getting one specific minion across the line for a final key on the fifth wave of the last floor. It was pure carnage at that point. Only two minions survived. There is also a permadeath (for minions) option available for all difficulties which I think will be very challenging.
While there are a lot of variables and potential strategies, and despite having beat the initial difficulties and played half a dozen winning runs, I don’t feel like I’ve needed to fully explore everything. I’ve barely touched spells, often relied on the same relics, and largely used simpler strategies of health versus speed with some dabbling in delay. For anyone well versed in the genre I’d say jump in with the medium and hard modes quickly so that it forces you to use all of the tactics to the fullest. It will also have the bonus of unlocking things quicker.
I’d like it if there was some more variety in the environment and enemies, maybe the addition of some other threats. Something to encourage the use of more tactics. As it is, to appreciate the full range of what’s on offer I think I will need to up the difficulty. I’ve enjoyed pondering the strats and the thrills of pressing the button and hoping it all works out but can see for some people it risks becoming overly repetitive too soon. I will probably unlock some more stuff and try going harder before moving on.
A run takes me about 90 minutes and it could easily be done quicker. My tendency is to agonise over maxing things out, for better or worse, although it seems to work for me. Graphics are simple and effective pixels. The music, while a little generic, is suitably hyped. Tower Escape is priced well at the lower end of the spectrum. The dev looks to be active and in process of adding more content.
Available from Steam.
mishmash 