Ever hear of an “elevator pitch”? The premise is simple: you’re an independent developer of a product – and it could be any product. You’ve been waiting for your big break to show the world what you have to offer. And now somehow, you’ve lucked into being in the same elevator as someone who would be able to distribute your product. You only have the length of the elevator ride to verbally explain what your product is and entice them into scheduling a proper meeting. It’s the “first impression” of a product. I’ve always made a bit of a game of coming up with elevator pitches for my favorite titles, and I’ve noticed that the games with the strongest core mechanics always have the best elevator pitches.

I bring this up because Tricky Towers has a fantastic elevator pitch. “Tricky Towers is a competitive, arcade puzzle game. It’s like Tetris, except there are no walls, gravity physics are real, and your goal is to expand your structure rather than clear rows”. At its core, that’s it. That’s Tricky Towers.

Knowing that Tetris has remained the premier competitive puzzle game for over 30 years, Tricky Towers may really be on to something. So the game holds up to the elevator pitch test. Simplicity is in its premise, and fun is its promise. It’s intriguing and entices us to ask for more. But how will it do as we examine the experience that this game can provide in practice?

Developer: Weird Beard

Publisher: Weird Beard

6 Hours Played // Review Copy Provided // $14.99

While an elevator pitch provides a basic understanding of what to expect from Tricky Towers, the game includes three primary game modes. These are race, puzzle and survival. Race tasks players with building their tower as tall as they can as quickly as they can. Lost blocks only count for lost time in this mode, so a single block falling off your tower is largely unimportant.

Puzzle presents a different challenge. This mode encourages you to stack blocks below a set point – which gets higher as your tower grows – without losing any blocks. The player is expected to find unique ways to stack blocks without losing them, as you can’t simply build upwards.

The final play mode, survival, falls somewhere in between. You get three lives and lose one every time you lose blocks. Players are encouraged to build a structurally sound tower, rather than an impressively tall one.

Race seems to be the core game, but each of these game modes are well developed experiences.

Each game mode comes with a pletheora of ways to play, as well. There’s single-player endless challenges, where you compete to obtain a high-score in a mode that continually generates blocks. Then there are single-player trials: preconstructed scenarios which encompass all three play styles. Race trials task you with building a tower of a certain height in a given time limit. Puzzle trials give you an exact set of blocks to fit in a given space without losing any. Survival trials require you to place a large number of blocks without losing more than three while combating a variety of conditions. 50 such trials exist, with 10 unlocked initially, and more unlocking as you play. While I only completed the first 15 or so, I found myself failing a number of times. These trials offer a reasonable challenge, but haven’t yet become frustrating.

Competing for high scores have always been a staple of games like Tricky Towers, and now you can compete with the world!

You also have the option to play multiplayer, which seems to be the “core” Tricky Towers experience, and with good reason. My roommates and I found ourselves audibly laughing as a single misstep led a smugly built structure to ruin. We certainly weren’t lacking interesting modes to compete in either.

Multiplayer can be played in any of the three aforementioned game modes in three different difficulties: easy, normal and special. The easy mode minimizes the amount of messing with each other available in a match. The special mode, on the other hand, adds unique twists that can easily total a confident player’s tower.

Moments like this one made Tricky Towers a hilarious experience.

Additionally you can play single games or a full competitive cup with your party of up to four players. These cups reward points depending on the position a given player ended a match in and tallies these points. The matches continue until one player reaches the set number of points. Completing a max-point, random game type, random difficulty match didn’t take too long and was a blast as my friends and I taunted each other and talked nonsense about our ability to succeed – or fail – spectacularly. And if you don’t have friends, don’t worry: Tricky Towers supports online play for both single matches and cups, complete with rating and matchmaking systems.

Tricky Towers’ online lobby has a sleek modern feel to it. Thanks for showing up, Nerraw!

Some of you may be thinking, “Sure, that all sounds fun, but the game seems pretty simple”. You would be wrong. Despite being an indie title, Tricky Towers subscribes to Nintendo design philosophy: build a simple mechanic, and create as much depth inside of that mechanic as possible. Getting a feel for the weight of different blocks and learning to piece together a stable tower can be a complicated and involving task. In my short playtime, my understanding of what I can and cannot get away with improved immensely. This vastly improved my ability to build an efficient tower. The game presents the player an opportunity to really develop and show mastery – a mark of a truly great game.

Matches can become unique and intense once you have a strong handle on the physics mechanics.

Game knowledge matters too. Tricky Towers sports spells, which provides players with unique ways to reinforce their tower or complicate their opponents efforts. Depending on the game mode, you’re occasionally given the opportunity to choose a spell to cast. Supportive spells can wrap clumps of blocks together or remove mistakes. Offensive spells, on the other hand, can make opponent’s blocks slippery or shift around their tower. These spells are utilized in the single player trials and the special game modes as inherent effects, which are used to create unique challenges for the player. Being knowledgeable of the intricacies of these spells is another aspect of mastery available to the player.

Understanding how the ice spell effects your blocks change have a huge impact on a match.

Positive review aside, I can’t pretend the game is flawless. When I started playing, I faced some control issues that led to scattered moments of frustration. From what I noticed, there are no options to tweak the controls either. If you don’t like that “up” also rotates blocks much like the bottom button, there’s no option to change that.

One of my friends also had minor complaints that the physics didn’t feel intuitive to him. Ultimately, I think this issue was more of a personal learning curve problem then an actual design problem. But if you’re someone who finds yourself easily frustrated, then it’s possible that this learning curve may dissuade you. But I digress, I included this short list of issues only for the integrity of the review; Tricky Towers remains a fantastic game.

My Verdict

Tricky Towers is a masterpiece among arcade block-puzzle games. It takes many of the core concepts introduced by age-old titles like Tetris to a whole new level. With numerous single and multiplayer game modes available, the title is well worth the price of entry. If you’re particularly fond of the game, you can further support the devs. There is cosmetic-only DLC available at a couple dollars per purchase on the eShop. With deep single player, local multiplayer and online multiplayer experiences that work as both casual senseless fun and competitive action-puzzling, I have little else to say other than Tricky Towers is a masterpiece within it’s genre.

It’s been a while since I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing such a fantastic game. If you’re interesting in other much-loved titles, check out Mikey’s 2-part review on Wasteland 2:Director’s Cut. If you’re looking for a different style of couch multiplayer party game, check out Samy’s review on Light Fingers. Either way, I want to take a second to thank you for your continued support. Nindie Nexus is an ad-free work of passion by some very dedicated people, and we appreciate all the support we get. Please check out our Youtube, Discord or Subreddit, or consider a donation through our Patreon.