Tower Lab

Unfortunately, the game just barely didn't make the cut for me. It's generally great! I love the concept, it runs super well considering the amount of enemies and particles that can fill up the screen, and I must admit that the roguelike gameplay kept me busy for a good amount of time. However, despite the fun I did have with the game, its flaws are currently too big for to ignore. Those being: The balancing in all sorts of ways needs a lot of work. Spending an upgrade point to give a tower +5% power feels underwhelming and doesn't even let you properly scale up because most upgrades max out at 3 levels at most. It would be really fun to just dump four dozen points into projectile size and make a missile that'd make Kim Yong Un proud, for example. The game can also feel unfair in a few ways. One example is that you can't see the upcoming map while in the shop, so unless you remember the levels by heart, you're stuck in the preperation screen without know what tower/strategy is worth investing in. An even more prominent example you'll probably find in a lot of the other reviews is that the physics can really screw you over. I had a build I wanted to make since I first started the game: trap all enemies in the middle and hit them with a big explosion. Unfortunately, while scattering those enemies in all directions looked awesome, it also chipped down my shield and health every round because enemies were launched right into or right before my exit portal. And there's nothing I could do about it. The mine tower can stack its mines higher than the Burj Khalifa and if a single enemy steps on all of those, it'll fly like 2cm into the air and make it to the end anyway, the fabricator takes ages to pop out a single robot that doesn't even make any enemy bigger than 1.0x flinch and if there's some sort of kinetic forcefield to prevent fast enemies from flying in, I got too frustrated by this very issue before I unlocked it. There's also a couple of minor things, like the game only having one music track that gets stale after the first 4h of gameplay, that aren't exactly dealbreakers, but still slightly drag down the fun you can have with the game. Even if it hasn't been made too clear in this review, I like the game and the core concept of it and could easily see myself recording a triple digit playtime and leaving a positive review once it's been worked on a little more. I'll keep an eye on development and can't wait to jump in again once things are going better.

I was really looking forward to this one: a physics-based system for killing enemies sounded great on paper. In practice, the physics are more frustrating than fun. With explosions especially, enemies get launched at random and fly straight through your portal, and there's nothing you can do about it. That's a real problem, because the physics are the core mechanic. Everything around them is solid: the game runs smoothly, the graphics are nice, and it feels polished overall; this is not a rushed early access. But in its current state it plays more like a fun sandbox or a prototype than a game. Your opinion may vary; some people will find it cool and fun. Personally, I didn't enjoy it as it stands.

Graphics look amazing but that's about all this game has going for it. Gameplay is very slow and boring. The tutorial is short and does not explain combos. Ended up only using one type of defence because it was the only one that would work to knock them off. Also with bigger maps the enemies would get stuck not on the path and you would painfully have to move them off one by one.

Tower Lab is an 8/10 idea with a 4-5/10 execution. Having physics be your way of taking down the enemies feels great. There's just something so inherently satisfying about blowing robots to their deaths, instead of plinking away at health bars. In that regard, I feel like Tower Lab succeeds with flying colours, by just having inherently fun game mechanics. But the roguelike stuff? That's so lacking. I already don't think that tower defence and roguelikes don't mix nearly as well as the amount of games trying it out would have you believe. There's just not nearly enough content in the vast majority of tower defence games to make the variety of roguelikes work. And the same is true here. There's just not enough interesting changes between the towers and their upgrades. Now, to be fair, I do actually think the towers are different enough when compared to each other. A Fan feels noticeably different from a Pulse, despite both just pushing things. It's just that there's not enough different towers to make different runs feel, well, different. Especially since some towers, like the "Grow" and "Shrink" towers don't accomplish anything by themselves, so you'll be seeing a lot of repeats. Pair that with the fact that levels end up being both long enough to where you can start really spamming towers without them feeling as uniquely valuable anymore, but also short enough to where you can't properly manipulate the level too much with things like the "add/remove platform" cards, and those towers end up feeling much more repetitive than they initially appear. I should be looking to place Fans or Shrinkers in the most opportune spots, not place them wherever there's an empty space. It is true that, because of the physics of it all, it can be more valuable to leave a spot unoccupied, so as to make sure the tower you would have placed there doesn't actually block enemies from falling into the void, but it doesn't do enough to stop the game from feeling like you're placing down more towers than you probably should. And I think a major contributor to that is the energy and card system, as if this is a real roguelike deckbuilder. I feel like, if you had a limited amount of energy for the entire level, rather than refreshing your energy every turn, that would make for a much more engaging game, where you have to consider where your towers are truly most effective, and making them synergise. I don't generally rate games based on the future potential they have. I think you should only ever purchase games based on what they are worth to you now, and in that regard, I would say that Tower Lab is a bit overpriced. I paid €9 for it, with the launch discount, and I think it's worth something more like €7,80, as it currently stands. I don't regret my purchase at all, I'm happy to support such an inventive and fun idea, but I think what this game needs is more towers, especially more basic ones - that nonetheless feel different from the already existing towers. Maybe something like a platform that launches enemies upwards, because I'm pretty sure I saw that shown off on the side of one of the levels, but did not see it as a tower - a bit of an overhaul of the energy system, so that you don't have so much of it that you don't know what to spend it on, and ideally, more complicated levels. Tower Lab feels like what Early Access is supposed to be all about. Being able to show off a good idea, that is still clearly in progress.

This game has potential, but atm it's just not that fun. There's no permanent upgrades to anything so each run is just starting over, which makes it feel like there's no form of progression at all. The tech tree is a great idea, but with it resetting every run it just feels dreadful and makes you just upgrade the same thing every time with no experimentation. This will become a recommend if they add any form of progression, such as the tech tree, but atm it's just and arcade mode game, which isn't very roguelike.

game

Great game go play it rn

This game is dumb fun and I love it. Call me easy to amuse, but seeing a bunch of robots get blasted off of a platform is super entertaining. Great stuff.