So recently I played both of the PlayStation plus games for August. One of them was Tricky Towers; a new release from indie developer WeirdBeard, which was an underwhelming Tetris style game with fun party game elements which kept me entertained for an hour; the gameplay was rather repetitive and frustrating. However, with friends it should keep you entertained for a bit longer.

The gameplay is simple; you stack Tetrominos to create a tall, tricky, tower. The original spin that separates the game from Tetris is that the stacking process isn’t exactly accurate, you can easily place a block lop-sided and cause part of your structure to topple. Mixed into the gameplay are fun power-ups that either aid your progress or hinder your opponent(s), other than that the game felt like a less fun version of Tetris, which is not an awful thing because Tetris is fun, but Tricky Towers often did not provide an original enough experience.

The single player trials weren’t really that fun. They were all right. My favourite was probably the race mode; which tasks the player with building up a tower as fast as possible within a time limit, which was contrary to the slower, more methodical gameplay of Tetris (Tetris is definitely not slow and methodical if you’re Asian. Those guys tear up that game like a cyborg). When I think more about it, Tricky Towers is not Tetris. It is the antithesis of Tetris. Well at least the survival mode is; Regular Tetris is all about perfect stacking, fitting each piece into its perfect spot and leaving no holes, like a strong wall. The puzzle mode felt underwhelming; as the player you need to stack your pieces carefully and not build higher than the limit. I didn’t like this mode since it felt limiting and frustrating since I couldn’t tell where my pieces were going to land.

As much as Tricky Towers tries to replicate Tetris with some elements it takes away from the incredibly satisfying elegance of vanilla Tetris which involves carefully stacking Tetrominos to build up to the rewarding feeling of clearing four or more lines. On the other hand, the formula of Tricky Towers felt a bit too chaotic and after an hour I got bored and frustrated, the game is just not fun enough for me, there was too much frustration and not enough reward when I was playing it on my own. You might enjoy it a bit more if you want to play a worse and frustrating version of Tetris.

I felt more enjoyment when I played the game’s multiplayer mode; however, you can argue that any boring game immediately becomes rather fun when you add a couple of friends to the mix; the local multiplayer was a welcome feature for me, without that feature I would definitely find the game a lot less enjoyable. If you’re looking for a fun little throw-away game to play with your friends on the couch I would give this title a go. The online multiplayer experience for me was a different story; I had some strange connection issues, lag and it took a long time to actually find some players which overall left me a little disappointed. If you’re playing on console give the online multiplayer a miss, it lacks the banter and reactions you’ll get from playing with your friends.

Overall Tricky Towers can be a fun, little distraction to play with your friends for a couple of minutes or every now and again while you wait for next month’s PlayStation Plus release. But as a game for PlayStation plus I am disappointed and slowly starting to believe that PS Plus might now be worth it. Alternatively if you’re a PC user I really wouldn’t recommend this title since the price is a little too high (£11.99). Additionally, since local co-op on PC is rather tricky unless you have the right setup and the online is underwhelming I’d recommend giving it a miss. Instead of this title I’d recommend Not Tetris 2 which is free, a lot more fun and has a great multiplayer mode to play side by side with a buddy.