If you're feeling nostalgic for local multiplayer and couch co-op, you may want to turn your attention to the indie development scene. Besides the critical and commercial success of madcap kitchen simulator Overcooked, a lot of recent ID@Xbox titles have been combining their retro inspired visuals and gameplay with that good old fashioned ability for your friends to pick up a second controller and hop straight into the action. TowerFall Ascension is one of the latest games to play into this nostalgia. Conceptually, this could have been made in 1994. Its successes and frustrations will be familiar to anyone who has dusted off their old consoles with friends and tried to relive a time when games were simple, chaotic fun. Even from the main menu, there is no doubt that TowerFall has a multiplayer focus. Although it's possible to play the limited campaign mode solo, even the button you press is called 'Co-Op', making you feel like a bit of a loser for playing it on your own. The campaign consists of eight initial levels, plus four bonus levels that are unlocked by meeting obscure requirements. Each level is a static map of various platforms. The maps wrap around, so if you drop through a gap in the floor then you'll appear in the ceiling, and exiting left brings you out on the right; it's a very basic setup. In the campaign, you'll face up to eight waves of various sprite-based monsters. Some fly and some walk, while some shoot arrows or lasers. All are classic platforming archetypes and while it's not very inspiring to look at, you'll at least feel like you're on familiar ground. The real challenge is keeping out of the way. One touch from an enemy or projectile and you lose one of your five precious lives.

With enemies continually spawning and falling through the wrap-around edges, you'll want to take them out quickly so that you aren't swarmed. Your primary weapon is a bow and three arrows, which you'll have to retrieve from the map or a dead enemy after shooting. Such a scarcity of ammo seems unfairly balanced in the enemy's favour, given that there are so many of them, but that balance quickly swings too far the other way when you realise two key tactics. Firstly, you can stomp on enemies like a traditional platformer, negating any danger from enemies without projectiles. The other option is to use the dash. Not only are you protected from damage while dashing, you will also catch any enemy projectile in the path of your dash. It completely changes the game. In the campaign you'll also notice that the spawn locations and types are static, meaning that you can memorise the wave, take out the more significant enemies before they become a problem and simply stomp on everything else.

The other single player mode is Trials, hidden away in the corner of the main menu, and its the least entertaining mode in the game. Instead of spawning enemies, you just have a series of target dummies to try and hit as quickly as possible, turning the game into a typical trajectory based puzzle you've played a million times over on your smartphone. The diamond medal times aren't impossible but they are punishing. There's simply not enough entertainment value in the Trials mode to put yourself through the frustration.

Power-up chests will continually spawn, turning the action into a race to claim the prize. This might be a shield, a pair of wings, additional arrows or special arrows such as a Bomb or Laser. There's a decent amount of customisation available here too. Beyond setting the score target, you can limit which maps you play, what kind of power-ups will appear and how arrows will react in the environment. It's all cleverly balanced to favour lightning-fast rounds where one mistake can cost you the match, reminding me of Wand Wars or even Super Smash Bros. in its frenetic turning of the tables with every action. It's just unfortunate that TowerFall lacks the same level of charm and character.

The audiovisual design is quite charming if you like retro pixel art, with dynamic lighting giving a little flavour to the level design. Each arena has its own art style and theme tune and it's quite immersive. The soundtrack will get stuck in your head if you spend a good amount of time in the game, but it's a great homage to some classic 8-bit scores so you won't mind too much. There's certainly nothing here that offends the eyes or ears, but given the huge proportion of ID@Xbox titles already pumping out pixel art and 8-bit tunes, TowerFall fails to stand out from the crowd.

Positives

Negatives

Ethics Statement

The reviewer spent five hours shooting blobs with arrows, earning nine of the game's 17 achievements. An Xbox One digital copy of the game was provided by the ID@Xbox team for the purposes of this review.

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TowerFall Ascension Review - TrueAchievements