Casual Friday – Knightmare Tower
Be sure to get your favorite breakfast sandwich, wear your cool video game t-shirt to work and duck out early for a beer. Because it’s Casual Friday, and this week I took a look at Knightmare Tower from Juicy Beast.
Knightmare Tower is a relatively simple idea that plays beautifully and had me hooked immediately. The player plays as a brave little knight hero who is propelled upward through the air. There are princesses a plenty to save, over 50 different varieties of monsters to mess up, and 70 quests to complete in this game. And did I mention you get to ride on a rocket? Well you do. You get to ride on a rocket.
You find your heroic little guy on a launch pad, ready to ascend to the top of whichever tower is the objective. After a successful launch (the game definitely makes fun of you if you blow it) you’ll go shooting skyward, maneuvering your way through a sea of baddies and some excellent loot. Gain momentum by bouncing off of the heads of any monsters floating by. The higher you go, and the more creatures you bop, the higher your score.
The difficulty gets progressively stepped up the higher the player travels and soon the monsters require more than a few pops and slices to get them to die. The monsters range from teeny annoyances to giant beasts that are difficult to kill and some of them even have spikes and shoot things. It gets a little frantic up there in the higher reaches of the tower, but it’s all worth it to save the 10 princesses that have been captured and being held there.
As if the monsters weren’t stress enough, there’s the added danger of a random lava spring that’s suddenly rising below the Knight out of nowhere and it makes for an exciting, squeal-worthy (if you’re the squealing type) experience. Why is there lava? I don’t know. Why are you even riding on a rocket? Who cares. It’s fun that’s why.
The controls for the game are fairly simple. Tilt your device (or use the directional keys on your PC) to move back and forth on the screen. Tapping the screen sends our tiny hero slamming downward atop the heads of whatever was in his path with a satisfying crunch, splat, or boff. It’s reactive and sensitive and I didn’t have any trouble with getting him to go where I needed him to.
If you feel like you need an extra boost or are dying too quickly, don’t worry. There’s a host of upgrades, weapons, and potions available in the in-game store that can help you throughout your quest in either campaign or survival modes.
I absolutely love the art style of this game. It’s charming and funny with a kind of oddness that really gets my attention. The Knight is cute and it’s just super fun to slice and smash these unique looking, interesting monsters.
The soundtrack is another highlight. The music comes from Hyperduck Soundworks, who also did the stuff for Dust an Elysian Tail. It’s fun and nonintrusive in the gameplay and made me smile.
Knightmare Tower, available on iTunes, OUYA, and several web sites such as Amor Games and Newgrounds is definitely a game I haven’t been able to put down just yet and as a result it gets a good 9.5 out of 10 from me.