The Tower at Tortenna

Every adventure game must feature a great atmosphere in order to keep the players engaged, because it’s difficult to follow the story and be interested in the characters if the game doesn’t draw you in. Whether it’s through gorgeous graphics, great level design or a memorable soundtrack, there are multiple ways to set the mood and make people believe they are part of a different world for a few hours.

The Tower at Tortenna is a first-person adventure game designed and created in a matter of days for a game jam competition, yet it feels and plays much nice than you would expect. On top of that, the level design is staggering sometimes, especially since the area open to exploration is quite big and you are never really forced to follow a linear path through the rooms ahead.

In short, the tower is some kind of relic from a long-gone civilization, yet its machinery can still be brought to life if someone were to find the instructions. Naturally, that is exactly your goal, so over the course of the adventure you have to unravel the secrets of the tower and somehow bring it back to life. Most of the clues are hidden in codes and drawings, on the other hand, so it’s not an easy task to achieve.

Although there are a handful of puzzles to tackle along the way, exploration is your main activity, so the game feels a lot like a walking simulator most of the time. On the other hand, the whole thing was produced in a couple of days, so it’s only natural that there’s not a lot of actual content. Many of the riddles can be solved by simply paying attention to your surroundings, because the clues are literally written on the walls.

Lastly, the most impressive thing about The Tower at Tortenna is the graphics quality, even if the whole thing is practically soaked in all the post-processing effects you can imagine. The landscapes are very memorable, on the other hand, and the tower itself is quite massive. All the machinery looks pretty intriguing too, even if the designers clearly ran out of ideas after a point.

All things considered, The Tower at Tortenna is much more impressive than your average game jam production, especially in the design department. Thus, it’s worth a try if you like exploration games, and we can only hope that there’s more to come after this.