DEC 27, 2025
Recently I've been getting back into Towerclimb. I initially discovered this game through an insane hour-long youtube documentary about it that I now only half-remember. If I recall correctly, it was by Dosh Doshington. (I'm right...) Towerclimb is a rougelike platformer game about climbing towers (shocking, right?) and is notably very punishing and very hard. After a good few hours of playing without making it past the third zone, I swore the game off for good as too difficult even for me. Little did I know, I would several months later be going through my steam library looking for anything fun to play with a friend, when I find Towerclimb, denounce it as evil even though it supports multiplayer, and successfully pique my friend's curiosity. And horror of horrors, It's really fucking fun! Here, lemme describe the game in detail. Each area is divided into three randomly generated floors, where your goal is to get to the door at the top without dying. The bad news? Everything wants to fucking murder you, and you die in one hit. Luckily, you can carry a single revive. Now, it won't save you if you fall into lava or off the tower itself, but it'll save you from almost all mistakes. But there's more. Not only can you die from falling, you can die in many other delightful ways!
That's the game's way of communicating what ways I've died and how many ways I have yet to die. As you can see, there's a lot. It ranges from overdosing on magic berries to getting eaten by fish to getting eaten by worms to getting eaten by a dog to getting eaten by rats to touching a drop of flying lava to falling on spikes. Spikes are fun, they show up on random blocks and if you fall on them from almost any height you die. On the first floors of the tower, your main enemies will be dogs and rats, as well as lava and spikes, of course. You do have some way to deal with them, of course. You have potions. You start with 4 jump potions, 4 corrosion potions, and 1 teleport potion. Drinking jump potions gives you a consumable double jump that is much more powerful than your main one. Corrosion potions basically act as grenades, and teleport potions let you teleport freely in a small radius once. But potions should be saved, as you can't get any more unless you find a witch. It's hard to adequately describe the joy of Towerclimb though, as the game is slow, the inventory feels clunky, and there are too few buttons. Having your character do what you want them to do is one of the first big hurdles in the game, and it is a frustrating one. But if you push through, they begin to be a lighter burden and you see the cleverness behind the limited control scheme. For instance, holding an item in your hands forces you to sprint, as grab and sprint share a key. This makes carrying an extra item outside your inventory risky, as you gain an inventory slot but must deal with less flexible controls. Deciding if you want an item on quick access or if you want to be able to move precisely is a difficult choice, and just one of many Towerclimb forces on the player. I'd argue that the genius of Towerclimb centers on how the game forces you to make many decisions of routing and resource management constantly, while punishing mistakes harshly. A single slip could (WILL) send you back to the beginning of the game, and hazards like rising lava and wizard muggings put immense time pressure on your choices. But over the course of the game you improve, learn, and adapt. Rising lava turns from a run ender to a mild inconvinience. Very few other games (and especially not games as complex as this one) can so easily cause me to breathe funny to calm my nerves. I haven't gotten far in it, but Towerclimb is a game I intend to complete, and even after 24 hours of playtime, I don't know what's in store for me next.
FINAL VERDICT: Absolutely Awesome
Oh, by the way, sorry for the long pause in site updates. Was busy with school, then busy with lying face-down on the floor playing games, then busy visiting relatives.
-Y