I don’t play many mobile games often, and when I do, they tend to the same ones that I have played for years, such as Jetpack Joyride or Flow. However, as of recently I have tried a simple game called Once Upon a Tower, where the goal of the game is to dig down as far as you can in order to flee from the dragon that is holding you hostage, after a hero that came to save you died, leaving behind your tool of escape. The gameplay is simple, yet fun, revolving around a simple loop of analyzing your current position, and then moving within the environment, whether that is through running side to side or digging down.
So how do you play it?
The mechanics of the game are simple, but can be a bit addictive once you’ve managed to make your way down the tower, and want to try and beat your score. For the game’s core mechanics, you are simply moving left, right, and down. If there is a block in your way when you move, either you break it if it is destructible, or you cannot pass, and if you move into a space without anything beneath you, you fall straight downwards.
Alone, these mechanics provide player with their passage through the game, but do not offer any sort of risks, which is where hazards come into play. The most obvious hazards in the game are the different types of enemies. At the moment, I have only descended down to the point where I have met three different types of enemies. The orcs that wander left and right on their platforms, the boars that charge in your direction and will jump off of cliffs, and the spiders that wander across the walls. Taking them out can be a matter of strategy, as while you can easily kill them with a swing of your hammer, it can sometimes be easier to wait until they wander under you, and then fall on top of them.
Other hazards include the firebolt-spewing statues that can be destroyed with either your hammer, or throwing the fire back at them; the various poles that move back and forth to block your path, provide a platform to stand on, or to crush you if you do not time your movements quite right; as well as the dragon that will breath fire towards you through grates in the towers side if you remain idle for too long. The final one is especially deadly if you are not paying attention to where you are standing (which has happened to me on occasion), but you are given enough of a warning as the dragon swoops in that you should be snapped out of your idle standing and quickly move to safety.
Lastly, there are a number of power-ups that can be purchased after you finish a level, ranging from bombs that destroy everything on the screen, a parachute that allows you to control your movement in midair as opposed to falling straight down, and even a magnet that pulls in nearby fireflies for you to collect and increase your score. Some of these are bought with points you earn from your current run, but you’re also given the option to watch a short video for one of them. Sometimes, the game will also offer you a free power-up at the start of the game, which you can choose whether or not to take.
Making your way down
When I played, I would not go for the power-ups and instead attempted to get down as far as I could on my own skill. While I have no doubts the power-ups would make it easier to get lower in the tower, they also reduce your total score for that run. This presents a trade-off between whether you think it is better to try and play to the strengths of taking certain power-ups to help you break through, or if you are like me and prefer not to drop your score at all in favor of something your will use only a handful of times before its gone. While they can certainly be helpful (the bomb especially when there are 4 boars charging at you from different directions), as long as you are able to fend them off yourself, then you can forego spending your score and attempt to keep going without them to keep your end score high.
Another large part of when I was playing the game would be looking over the current environment and trying to find the optimal path to a) collect as many fireflies as possible, because they gave the highest score bonuses, and b) defeat enemies simply by dropping down onto them. The latter was to remove the risk of getting hit, and thus ending the run. A lot of the time, it would come down to moving between two different paths that were cut down the middle by a large wall, and whether each path would give me the highest score in the end, regardless of whether or not it was the safer option. While taking the safer options might have led to progressing further down the tower, it was the fireflies that I was after most, and attempted to maximize my intake of fireflies.
Simple, but effective
The game’s cartoonish art style feels very fitting for the type of game it is trying to be. It’s just meant to be a fun arcade-style game that you play in your free time, and does not need high resolution graphics to try and sell itself. Similarly, the sound effects are very simple, and no music plays except to signify certain events, such as dying or completing a level. The game also includes a number of playable characters to choose from, which can be purchased for real-world currency, or can be randomly unlocked each time you earn enough score across multiple playthroughs. I do appreciate being able to earn each of the characters through just playing the game, as that allows everything in the game to be purchased by progressing through, rather than being strictly locked behind a paywall. Even if they’re only cosmetic differences.
One major issue
Of course, no game is perfect, and there is no exception to this rule. As I played through the game, I did feel that there was a major problem that kept creeping up in my mind. Between runs, you are given a list of tasks to complete. These tasks do not give you any rewards, but are there for something that the player can work towards. Some of these quests are simple, such as killing two enemies with a bomb, or reach level 4. But it is many of the other ones that I started to have issues with, especially as it came to level generation.
Once upon a Tower randomly generates its levels, to the point where I have found several points where a hazard is placed in such a way that it is pointless or near impossible to get passed. Nowhere is this more evident that with many of these challenges. One such example was the quest “Complete a level without collecting any fireflies.” I would play the game over and over again, and would usually end up picking up at least one firefly in each level. While it would sometimes be my own poor planning in the path that I chose to move, it would sometimes be impossible to completely avoid fireflies, as there would be only one place to jump, but you cannot move yourself in mid air.
A few quests I completed through sheer luck, which does not always feel good if you are working towards trying to complete them. The quest “Run over an enemy with a cart” require the game to generate the perfect scenario for you to be able to push a cart into an enemy, as you cannot break blocks to an enemy and then jump over the cart and push it from the other side, as you cannot backtrack back up the tower. I managed to get the quest finished through luck from the random number generation, but it was not as rewarding as beating a level without killing any enemies, as with the latter quest, more effort had to be put in on my part than on the game’s generation.
So what is the verdict?
At the end of the day, even with a few issues with a reliance on randomness to complete some quests (or just making your run much easier overall), I do think that Once Upon a Tower is a fun game that I’d recommend people try out, if they are looking for a small arcade-style game to play. The core mechanics themselves leave a fun game to climb down the tower, but the inclusion of hazards, power-ups, and a high score to try and always beat personally lead me to think that the gameplay feels meaningful. There’s always another run to descend lower, to raise your score higher than last time, and more fireflies to collect to unlock more characters.
Cole Atkinson Games 