Tower 57

Developer: Pixwerk | Publisher: 11 bit studios | Release Date: 2017 | Genre: Action / Indie | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

For anyone who spent a lot of time playing Amiga games, it doesn’t take long for Tower 57 to start feeling familiar. Its colourful pixel art, top-down perspective, unusual collection of playable characters, and hordes of enemies immediately bring back memories of games such as The Chaos Engine. This is entirely intentional, with Tower 57 designed as a modern take on the type of action games that were common on the Amiga while adding twin-stick shooting, destructible environments and both local and online co-op.

The setting is a dystopian dieselpunk future where most of civilisation now exists inside enormous self-contained Megatowers. Players control a team sent to infiltrate the supposedly prosperous Tower 57 and discover what is actually happening inside. The story provides enough motivation to keep climbing through the tower, but this is first and foremost an arcade shooter where most problems are ultimately solved by pointing a weapon at them.

Before starting the mission, players select three characters from a roster of six. Each has their own appearance, personality, starting weapon, gadget, and special ability, making the decision considerably more meaningful than simply choosing a different sprite. There are some wonderfully strange designs among them as well, including The Don with his Tommy gun, The Officer and her shotgun, and The Diplomat, who looks suspiciously like Abraham Lincoln.

Characters also have their own voice lines, which add considerably more personality to the roster than we initially expected. They aren’t merely interchangeable extra lives, although the way the team system works means they effectively serve that purpose as well. Only one member of the three-character squad is controlled at a time when playing alone. Each character maintains their own health and ammunition, and players can switch between them by spending half of the Special Meter. Switching is free while inside the central hub, and designated closets provide another opportunity to manage the team while also functioning as manual save points.

The Special Meter has another important use, however, as filling it allows the current character to unleash their unique special attack. Switching therefore creates an interesting little trade-off. Bringing in a healthier character or somebody whose equipment is better suited to the current situation can be extremely useful, but doing so sacrifices energy that could otherwise have been used for a powerful attack.

Losing a character is considerably more serious than simply waiting a few seconds for them to respawn. When the active character dies, another member of the squad takes over, and losing all three sends players back to their previous save. Fallen characters can be resurrected, but doing so requires one of the relatively scarce amber balls found during the adventure or purchased later. Taking one to the appropriate resurrection point returns the dead squad member to the team.

This makes keeping all three characters alive important, particularly because their progression is separate. Spending heavily on upgrades for one character can leave the others considerably weaker if your favourite suddenly gets killed.

Combat follows the familiar twin-stick formula, with movement handled independently from aiming. Enemies frequently attack in large groups while projectiles, explosions and environmental destruction rapidly fill the screen. A dash provides an important evasive option and quickly becomes essential for escaping concentrated fire or repositioning when enemies begin surrounding you.

The actual shooting is responsive and generally satisfying, helped considerably by the variety between characters and weapons. Ammunition is limited, however, so spraying bullets at everything that moves is not always sensible. Health and ammunition can be purchased from machines found throughout the tower, while weapons encountered along the way expand the available arsenal.

Weapons can also be improved at upgrade stations by spending the coins collected from enemies and destroying objects such as crates. Upgrades can improve properties such as damage and ammunition capacity, while other enhancements can alter the behaviour and effectiveness of a weapon. Investing heavily in a favourite gun can make a substantial difference once the difficulty begins increasing, although losing upgraded equipment can be painful enough to encourage a little more caution than the chaotic combat otherwise suggests.

Money is also used to improve the characters themselves through one of the game’s stranger systems: cybernetic body parts. Arms, legs, and the torso can be upgraded, providing permanent improvements to different aspects of a character.

This system is not merely cosmetic either. Characters can actually lose limbs during combat. Having a leg removed doesn’t immediately kill them, although suddenly crawling around a battlefield is obviously less than ideal. Replacement cybernetic limbs can be fitted at the appropriate stations, and there is something wonderfully absurd about emerging from a difficult battle missing half our body before stopping at a machine to purchase better legs. Of course, playing with a friend makes it easier to reach the vending machine as they can carry you on their back instead of leaving you to crawl around. 

The destructible environments complement the combat particularly well. Crates, furniture and numerous other objects can be blasted apart, leaving battles looking suitably chaotic by the time the final enemy has been dealt with. Environmental systems can interact too, with elements such as fire spreading and electricity travelling through water.

Unfortunately, all that carnage occasionally becomes a problem. Enemy projectiles can be difficult to distinguish once explosions, bullets, enemies, debris, and effects begin covering the screen. Taking damage because we made a bad decision is one thing; taking damage because we genuinely couldn’t see what was heading towards us is considerably more frustrating.

The hand-crafted levels are another aspect that separates Tower 57 from many modern games inspired by classic arcade shooters. There is no procedural generation here. Instead, the tower consists of deliberately constructed floors connected by elevators, with a central hub containing shops and terminals between excursions.

Levels can become surprisingly maze-like, with multiple rooms, passages, and occasional hidden areas to investigate. The maps reward exploration, although navigation can sometimes become slightly confusing when several corridors begin looking similar. The upside is that locations feel like actual places rather than collections of randomly assembled combat rooms.

The Spy also has access to a hacking tool that can interact with certain terminals and machinery. Hacking launches a small timed minigame where players compete with the security system to claim electronic pathways, adding another brief diversion from the shooting. It isn’t particularly deep, but it fits the character and gives the Spy an additional role beyond simply carrying a different weapon. Other mini-games, which can be played for fun or cash in the hub area, include familiar ones like darts and cup-and-ball as well as a humorous hammering one. 

There is a decent selection of enemies and bosses throughout the campaign, with encounters becoming progressively more hectic as players climb further into the tower. The limited lives and relatively sparse save points can make mistakes expensive, especially when a badly timed death removes a heavily upgraded character from the squad.

That old-school structure is both part of the appeal and one of the game’s weaknesses. Tower 57 clearly wants failure to matter, much like the games that inspired it, but repeating a sizeable chunk of a maze-like level because all three characters died can become frustrating rather than challenging.

The campaign can be played in local or online co-op as well as solo, and several mechanics were specifically designed with cooperation in mind. Players can flank enemies, combine certain weapons for additional effects, and even carry a partner who has lost their legs. The campaign remains completely playable alone, although the team mechanics naturally make considerable sense in co-op.

Visually, Tower 57 is easily at its best. The pixel art is beautiful, packed with tiny details and wonderfully expressive character designs. Environments manage to combine retro 16-bit influences with considerably more animation, destruction, and visual detail than the games it is imitating could have managed at the time.

The dieselpunk aesthetic also gives the tower plenty of character. Industrial machinery, neon lighting, strange inhabitants and increasingly elaborate locations make exploring new areas worthwhile simply to see what the artists came up with next. The destructible scenery makes everything even livelier, with spent casings, debris and bloody footprints recording the aftermath of particularly messy encounters. It is nostalgic without simply looking old.

The audio complements the presentation nicely. Weapons have suitably punchy effects, explosions contribute to the chaos, and the soundtrack fits the energetic retro atmosphere. The individual character voice lines are another welcome touch, helping distinguish the six playable characters beyond their weapons and abilities.

Unfortunately, there are some technical rough edges that are harder to overlook. We completed the game successfully once, but a subsequent playthrough ended considerably less happily when we encountered a softlock near the end and could no longer progress. That is particularly frustrating in a game where save points are deliberately limited, and progression-blocking bugs have unfortunately been reported by other players as well.

Replay value otherwise comes primarily from experimenting with different teams and weapons, tackling the campaign cooperatively and searching for things missed during an earlier run. Six characters with different starting equipment and abilities provide enough variety to change how certain encounters are approached, although the relatively short campaign means players will quickly begin revisiting familiar environments.

The upgrade system also creates some interesting decisions about where to spend money. Concentrating upgrades on one favourite character can create an extremely powerful squad leader but leaves the backups vulnerable if that character dies, while spreading money across all three provides more security at the expense of maximum firepower. Combined with limited ammunition and resurrection resources, there is slightly more resource management involved than the frantic shooting initially suggests.

It is a shame that the technical problems and occasional readability issues prevent everything from coming together quite as cleanly as the beautiful presentation deserves. There is a very enjoyable shooter underneath those frustrations, particularly for anyone nostalgic for the days of The Chaos Engine and similar top-down action games.