![towerfall ascension towerfall ascension](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rs1DnTZiVLE/maxresdefault.jpg)
I fall from the top of the screen, and my enemy doesn't follow as he's trying to reach two other arrows embedded in the ground. He fires it back at me as I dash for the bottom right exit of the level, and I catch that same arrow back. In this situation, he begins without any arrows to fire at me. The red enemy I'm fighting operates similarly to the player-controlled characters, in that he has a bow and arrow. It's the dash maneuver that best exemplifies this. If you're playing against just one other person, it'll initially seem slow, but eventually comes to feel deliberate and skilled. If you're playing against three other people, it's frantic and thrilling. The second reason I can't help but think Towerfall revels in its gameyness - its status as a plusgame, jumbogame, hungergame - is that from these elements and details players are able to pull tremendous finesse. It's a game in which you can relish every button press. Towerfall is Vlambeerian and that's a high compliment. Videogames can be similarly recognised based on the feels of their jump animation. Movies can be identified by their camera angles and lighting, their theme and mood, revealing themselves as recognisably Hitchcockian or Lynchian. My friend Marsh Davies lauded the game's quality based on the "Vlambeeriness of its feels," and that puts it perfectly. Every part of it has been lavished with attention.
![towerfall ascension towerfall ascension](https://images.pushsquare.com/screenshots/56954/large.jpg)
Everything in this world feels tactile and fun to touch. There's a kick of dust from the surface you just left and when you land again your character is briefly squashed, selling the solidity of the geometry. When you leap in the air, your character's shape elongates, giving the impression of momentum. I can even wax lyrical about the jumping animation. You only ever have one hit point and so if you're alive, no real interaction has happened between you and the flames, but the animation helps sell the dramatic close call you just experienced. If you're just on the periphery of an explosion, there'll be a tail of fire clinging to the rim of your clothes. The quantity of animations in here is absurd. They also introduce tactical considerations: if you fire at a flame enemy directly above you, there's nothing for your arrow to embed inside and so when it falls back to earth, it'll skewer you if you haven't moved out of the way. These animations make the world feel physical and alive. If you fire an arrow and hit an enemy made of flame, the enemy vanishes and the arrow falls to ground, now on fire. If you fire an arrow and hit a flying eyeball, then the arrow lodges in that eyeball, the wings drop away, and the skewered meatball falls to the ground. You can also use the dash maneuver to not only dodge, but to pluck fired arrows out of the air.įrom these basic elements, a thousand little details spring forth.
![towerfall ascension towerfall ascension](http://gametransfers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/TowerFall-Ascension.jpg)
It has gamey physics: you can wall jump and push against surfaces to slow your slide down them, and you have a significant amount of air control while falling. It has screen wrap: enemies spawn in fixed locations and if you're fighting the computer-controlled waves, begin to trickle down the screen, wrapping bottom to top like a persistent waterfall. Towerfall embraces the existing, most traditional vocabulary of videogames, with all its particular weirdness. This is wot I think.Ī lot of games aim to expand the vocabulary of videogames, stretching what the medium is capable of to find new experiences. In execution, it's exquisite and has me chuffing on about ubergames, ultrogames, megagames.
![towerfall ascension towerfall ascension](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/W2fwveA_IQw/maxresdefault.jpg)
TOWERFALL ASCENSION SERIES
Towerfall: Ascension is a single-screen competitive and co-operative local-only multiplayer game for 1-4 people in which every player is armed with a bow and arrow, and in which your objective is to kill everyone else before they kill you by whittling down their lives or, in the new Quest mode, to work with your friends to kill waves of enemies across a series of increasingly difficult levels.Ĭonceptually, it's unremarkable and easily described. They're as modern as Call of Duty, as vital and current and new as Rust or DayZ, and Towerfall: Ascension could be the genre's fig. These gamegames, supergames, hypergames might normally be called arcadey, but they're not retro. If we're intent on having ungames and notgames, then we need the opposite category to classify those which seem especially comfortable in their own gameyness.