Rating of
3/5
From OUYA to You
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/18/16
“Towerfall Ascension” has a very unique life story for a videogame. It began as simply “Towerfall,” and originally appeared in 2013 on the ill-fated OUYA Indie console as a solely PvP experience. Developer Matt Thorson of his own studio, Matt Makes Games, later added the ‘Ascension’ moniker with some single-player/co-op content in the process of porting the game to PC, PS4 and PS Vita in 2014 (ironically, the ‘Ascension’ update didn’t hit OUYA until 2015). Even in its early form on OUYA, “Towerfall” was praised for its skill-based gameplay.
As someone who hates PvP and never participates in it, I was pleased to see that “Towerfall Ascension” did have single-player/co-op missions, and was further pleased to see a well-received Indie game make it onto Steam.
Presentation
“Towerfall Ascension” is a typical throwback Indie title that attempts to emulate the looks, sounds, and general aesthetics of a game from somewhere in the late 8-bit period to early 16-bit period. The pixel art and chiptune soundtrack are good, but at this point simply emulating an older style isn’t really enough to impress.
I am particularly annoyed by one intentional decision built into co-op missions that causes enemy archers to spawn as dopplegangers of one of the player’s archers. These AI opponents are difficult enough with their aimbot-caliber aiming, but adding friendly-fire to the mix is just annoying.
Story
Unfortunately, “Towerfall Ascension” doesn’t have anything like a story. The single-player/co-op content in ‘Ascension’s’ Quest Mode is wave-based survival with the occasional boss thrown in. The ‘Dark World’ DLC does add a stage-based mode that feels more ‘normal,’ but it is incredibly short. Of course, neither ‘Ascension’ nor ‘Dark World’ have any kind of narrative structure, nor do any of the playable archers have any kind of backstory or personality. Even “Street Fighter” did a better job than this!
Gameplay
At its core, “Towerfall” is a simple arena-based deathmatch game involving a stationary single-screen stage that laps around from bottom-to-top and side-to-side populated by a number of player archers. These archers can shoot arrows at each other or stomp on each other’s heads to score a KO. The key gimmick in “Towerfall” is that arrows are finite, and in order to continue shooting, players must scramble to pick up spent arrows from the arena floor/walls/ceiling or the corpses of their enemies. The arrows in “Towerfall” are also completely agnostic, allowing players to kill teammates or themselves with a poorly-aimed or physics-manipulated shot.
Thus “Towerfall” closely resembles the homebrew deathmatch game, “Super Mario War,” only with arrows (some of which even have special properties) and without IP infringement. And if “Super Mario War” and “Towerfall” resemble any more well-known games, the similarities can’t get much closer than to the ‘Super Smash Bros.’ franchise. And in another unfortunate decision by the developer, the Wavedashing glitch from “Super Smash Bros. Melee” that is perpetually exploited at tournaments has been built into “Towerfall” as a central gameplay mechanic called Super Jumping (or Hyper Jumping if you do it right).
Because of the twitchiness, constant full-arena awareness, and semi-glitch-exploiting gameplay, “Towerfall” isn’t nearly as friendly and open to pick-up-and-play enjoyment as its looks imply. “Towerfall” is, in no way, shape, or form, a game that is ‘easy to play, difficult to master,’ it is simply difficult to get into and REALLY difficult to master. Even the single-player content starts hard and simply gets hard-er. In addition to the extremely short stage-based ‘Dark World’ mode and the longer, more annoying wave/stage-based Quest mode, there is a Trials mode, which includes a large number of maps that challenge the player to destroy stationary target dummies quickly, first by beating a par time, then by beating a developer time. I cleared all of the stages fairly easily, but only cleared par on half and the dev time on two before I got tired of the muscle-memory repetition the game required. I have never liked games with steep learning curves or repetition-focused gameplay, and while “Towerfall Ascension” still manages to be fun despite its ridiculously high skill cap, I can’t help but think it would train more players to become better if it included more stages that didn’t ramp-up quite as quickly.
Overall
Those looking for a high-skill PvP experience could do far worse than “Towerfall Ascension.” On the other hand, those looking for a fun single-player or co-op experience with archery as the central gimmick won’t get a whole lot out of the game’s sparse content and design mentality that delights in esoteric mechanics and steep difficulty curves.
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story: 0.5/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
