First Impressions: TowerFall Ascension

TowerFall Ascension is another of the indie games that I played at EGX and this is one of the few multiplayer games that I lost. I only got to play the multiplayer mode (a four-player fighter) so this First Impressions will only be about that.



TowerFall Ascension is a fighter in which you play as a pixelated royal archer and have the same freedom of movement as in a Super Smash Bros. game. The multiplayer mode limits the amount of arrows you have which you can then pick up from the ground after you or other players have fired them. From what I could see, the way to kill someone was pretty simplistic. As in, you shoot someone and they die. Although, there were occasional circumstances where the arrows appeared to bounce off of the players shield but I'm not sure if this works all the time. You could also jump (or, more likely, fall) onto other player's heads to kill them but, again, this didn't seem to work every time.

There were also items to help you in your fight for victory and the ones that I saw ranged from wings (that made you able to fly) to bomb arrows (self-explanatory) to a shield. These items appeared in chests and appeared to be randomly generated. I would also expect there to be more items than the three I saw.

The stage was set out like a castle (although I'm not sure if there were any more stages to go with this or not) with platforms and gaps in the screen that let you travel from one side of the screen to the other. This lead to some strategic planning as players lay in wait on the middle platform for someone to fall off the top ones to their certain doom by arrow. My dad and I fought for the winner's trophy by continuously falling through the top and bottom holes in the screen until one of us decided to fire an arrow (he won).

Rounds were unlimited until someone killed enough players to bring their skull count up to total. This meant that there were many very tight wins (for instance the battle I talked about in the preceding paragraph was won by one skull) as well as some brilliant comebacks.

Overall, TowerFall Ascension is a brilliant little retro platformer/fighter that is great to play with friends and family and I can see it being used to settle and create many a grudge.

Goodbye for now, Harry