TowerFall Ascension

[fastbilly1]

The game described as "the best reason to own an Ouya outside of emulation" is now on the PC, with all sorts of fanfare drowned out by the other T game that released on the same day, Titanfall.

Towerfall is best described as a combination of Spelunky, Nidhogg, and Super Smash Brothers but archery based. It has a simple control scheme of move, arrow, jump, and dash. But with this three button control scheme you can pull off an impressive array of combinations. You can slide down walls, wall jump, air dash, wall jump airdash, etc. Your standard game is deathmatch for 2-4 players, in an arena, not unlike a stage from Bubble Bobble, with random power ups that show up in chests, and a limited number of arrows for each player. Your arrows can be recovered, or even snatched out of the are by a skilled player dashing, and have a slight homing ability. However arrows are not the only way to kill your opponents. You can coerce them into traps, or simply jump on their heads. After two hours of playing it with my wife, it has gained a spot on my HTPC which is rare for me to do after such a short time with the game.

My only criticism is that there is no ingame way to change controls. You have to modify an ini file in your Steamapps folder. But it does recognize a dozen or so controllers natively, like the 360 and both the RetroUSB NES and SNES controller adapters. Sadly my Super Smartjoy registered every button as all three controls, but after some quick retooling all was good.

[cha cha]

It's also on PS4 and I believe you can change the controls there.

I am gonna play it a bit on Saturday and will share my thoughts. It has a very Raskulls-esque feel to it and I love Raskulls soooooooo this has to be good... right?

[fastbilly1]

Ive not played Raskulls, but looking it up, it does seem to have some similar elements.

I will be curious to how your fighting game bunch takes to it chacha.

[cha cha]

Raskulls is a bit more Mario Kart meets Mr. Driller meets Super Mario World. It's a racing game at it's heart with power ups, platforming elements and block destruction. (I highly recommend it btw, GREAT party game)

Towerfall adds a little bit more combat to the mix and is a brawler at it's heart (i'd liken it to Smash Bros meets Bomberman meets Metroid). But it looks like they share some similar mechanics and graphical flavor.

I am definitely looking forward to some 4-player actions in Towerfall, to see what it's group replayability is... it certainly looks high.

[fastbilly1]

The control thing needs to be fixed soon. I tried playing it last night with one of my arcade sticks and it kept defaulting to being a different combination of controllers everytime I rebooted. I tried for thirty minutes before I gave up and went back to working on my home networking issue last night.

[cha cha]

I will definitely let you know if the PS4 version is mired by similar issues... but I would certainly HOPE they have button/analog config options for it on a new console release.

[cha cha]

OK, first off this game is ridiculously fun and is super easy to pick up. Immediately I felt I was able to compete with others as soon as the button layout was explained to me. Very smooth and the gameplay has a gravity that just pulls you right in.

@fastbilly- You can reconfigure the buttons on PS4 to be what you want. Just an fyi there.

I endorse this game as a 4-player party game that truly pulls you in and the time will fly by. The gameplay is super fast paced, the game mechanics have a ton of depth....HOWEVER it's the kind of depth that won't make you mad/upset for having to figure it out when playing the first times. You can win a match with good ol' fashioned firing of an arrow and jumping on ppl's heads, the rest of the advanced stuff you learn along the way; it's all very easy to understand and has a ton of classic and features a ton of familiar mechanics that you will recognize from other classic party games.

Just a fun as hell game. Get on it people!

[fastbilly1]

Rebindable keys on the PC is apparently coming. So is four players on one keyboard - which is needed for keyboard encoders in arcade cabinets.

I am gonna sit on it until that comes around.

[Jmustang1968]

Picked up a 2nd ps4 controller and downloaded this today. 4 hours later and I am hooked. Really fun and addicting game.

[Violent By Design]

This game have online play on PC?