I grew up playing classic point and click adventures. I suspect part of the reason I played so many was that my computer could handle them better than it could the earliest 3D games. Yet despite an element of necessity, I was also fascinated by the absurd item combinations and characterful writing of those (mostly) LucasArts and (occasionally) Sierra games.
It is the spirit of those early adventures that I find in Lucky Tower Ultimate, a game that is as silly as it is deadly thanks to its fusion of cartoon comedy and roguelike permadeath.
Lucky Tower the Third
The Lucky Tower series originated as an old Flash game from back in 2010. There are two such games out in the wild, and like Ultimate they star an oafish knight with striking hair called Von Wanst. His is the gormless face you can see in the screenshots, and together you must escape the eponymous tower.
Ultimate is the third game in the series, and it once again features Von Wanst and a tower that is far from lucky. At the start of the game, our hero is in the local tavern, stripped down to his undies. Upon a visit to the bathroom he is transported to the tower and must then escape. How inconvenient.
That means dropping through holes in the floor, opening random doors, slipping on banana skins, and freeing fellow prisoners during your attempted escape.
Death Wanst You
Death is a frequent occurrence in Lucky Tower Ultimate. Von Wanst is not a particularly hardy hero. In fact, just a couple of whacks or a simple misstep is enough for him to shuffle off this mortal coil and return to the top of the tower.
You’re going to die horribly, and you’re going to die a lot. This constant death and rebirth is part of the gameplay loop, but the experience is designed in such a way that you won’t be horrified about restarting. The levels are short and procedurally arranged, which makes up for the fact that anything can and will kill you. And when I say “anything” I really do mean it.
Monsters will kill you. Hooks will kill you. Blobs of slime will kill you. Falling off a platform will kill you. Sometimes a door will have little spikes on it, and they’ll kill you, too. I could go on but I think that would see me veering into spoiler territory because I think experiencing all of these grizzly deaths for yourself is all part of the experience. In fact, the brevity of each run means that you can even, dare I say it… enjoy… death.
A Tower Worth Waiting For?
The question is: should you climb into Lucky Tower Ultimate right now, while the game is still in Early Access, or should you wait for the finished experience? I frame it that way because in this instance, a content complete experience might well be worth the wait.
While waiting is an option, I should also say that what’s there feels quite polished already. It doesn’t feel especially like an Early Access game, although I haven’t completed a run yet so I can’t say for sure if the latter stages are in the same shape.
What I can commit to is the following: Lucky Tower Ultimate looks brilliant thanks to its comic art style. I really did feel like I was in some sort of Nickelodeon-inspired late night cartoon, but an interactive one with roguish mechanics and plethora of ways to kick the bucket.
I’ve played for a couple of hours over the weekend and during that time I didn’t get bored of the dialogue. However, this is one aspect that might not hold up over an extended period of time, so we’ll have to wait and see how that shakes out.
I want to finish by saying how intuitive everything is. The controls are simple but they’re effective and traversal is very easy to grasp. What’s more, the visualisation of health and armour is brilliant. The combat isn’t particularly nuanced but it does the job, and the platforming is similarly straightforward.
All in all, Lucky Tower Ultimate is proving to be a rather enjoyable distraction and a real palette cleanser in a genre that famously takes itself quite seriously. I look forward to returning for another look once the tower has finished being built.
Lucky Tower Ultimate is out now in Early Access on Steam PC (Win), and I played the game via access provided by the publisher and their PR friends – thanks for that!
