Tower Demo

Shooting at things in video games can be quite the relaxing activity, especially since there are no real consequences for your actions, or for your terrible aim. On the other hand, most shooters are quite demanding and they require a great deal of concentration, not to mention the fact that there is usually a story you need to follow at the same time.

Tower is a game in which all the drawbacks of a classic shooter are eliminated and you can focus on blowing stuff up, rather than anything else. The purpose of the game is to destroy as many colorful blocks as you possibly can, without letting the tower reach the upper limit. In return, you are rewarded with points, which keep on coming until you lose.

In order to make matters a bit more complicated, your gun rotates between the available colors and you can only shoot the blocks that are of the same color with the one from your weapon, which is not as easy as you think. The entire tower ascends toward the upper limit at any given moment, so every second you waste not shooting and thinking about a plan is not always recoverable.

There are two modes to choose from when you start the game: Adventure and Gauntlet. While the first one is basically a career mode that takes you through multiple levels, the latter is actually a survival mode, which means that the goal is to hold on for as long as you can. The final score goes into the hall of fame, where all of your best scores are kept.

From time to time, certain power-ups drop from the blocks you manage to destroy. These usually grant you with various bonuses when it comes to hitpoints, or even rockets to be used whenever you need to blast a lot of blocks at once. The visual quality is quite poor, but the game is liable to catch you in its spell regardless of how basic it might appear at a first glance.

All things considered, Tower is way too basic to be considered a serious video game, but that doesn’t mean you cannot lose a few minutes with it, at least until the magic dissipates. The thought of beating your own high scores always makes for a good incentive to pick it up again, but probably not in this case.