PEGBRJE: Stick Nightmare and Towertale
2D Time.
Stick Nightmare is a puzzle platformer made by indie dev Nonamefornowsoft, utilizing Godot for many of their work including this very title. Players are following the beloved stick figure protagonist who only wishes to return home after a night on the town (boy do I wish I remember what that was like). The issue? Well, it appears something has caused the route home every night to be a bit more difficult than making a left turn three streets down.
Within the path home are perilous dangers and traps that our protagonist must avoid through the simple act of platforming. It’s purposefully simplistic in its approach, as there is only the ability to jump once with the momentum always moving in the last direction viewed. This creates a lack of constant needing to press directions, but also causes precision to be more difficult to achieve as the protagonist won’t stop just because the button isn’t pressed. This is less difficulty and more a minor frustration for certain audiences (myself included), although it ties in quite nicely with the traps and level designs that are the backbone of the difficulty. Each level has its own string of traps involving timing-based movement, retrieval of items to ensure certain events occur or pressure plates that tie in to timing-based movement; sometimes it’s all three of the above. Since levels can get a bit lengthy, checkpoints are placed along the way represented by a glowing red beacon that illuminates upon arrival. Their double use, however, is as a warp gate. If players get stuck, pressing X will warp back to the last checkpoint; this allows for more fancy movements such as purposefully acquiring an object and getting stuck to rewind back to a better location. Some can also warp to another location completely, and act more as a beacon to light another to allow for warping across maps which is an interesting twist on the checkpoint system.
Unfortunately for our protagonist, Stick Nightmare isn’t going to let them get home very easily; even then there are dangers lurking within the house as well. My lack of confidence and aptitude in platforming lead to many deaths and more than a single rage-quit, so I can safely say that I’m most likely not the target audience for this style of game. However, I can definitely see the appeal, especially in the rather unique stick-based artstyle, as if the entire events were occuring within a notebook drawing. If you’ve always loved challenging platformers that can destroy you instantly with applecore axes while trying to reach your cellphone, then definitely gives this game a look and see for yourself.
Towertale is a sidescrolling boss-rushing narrative adventure made by MiSou Games, an indie studio based in the Phillipines. Within is a tale following four distinct adventurers drawn towards the mysterious structure known only as the Tower, rumored to grant those that reach its summit the ability to change fate. Unfortunately everyone who has entered has been destroyed, so who knows what may be at the top besides danger?
Players entering the Tower will be equip with one of the four adventurers of their choosing before jumping right in to the boss fights to make their way to the top. To be victorious, players have an arsenal of abilities uniquely flavoured and tailored to each adventurer asside from a few core abilities such as the dodge (yet even that is different for each). For example, Attack 1 is the main source of damage done by characters, while Attack 2 attempts to give a variant of some kind to fit the character’s theme. Dark Echo’s Attack 2 (and Lionel’s to an extent) gives a dash forward to attack to fit with the ‘fast slashy’ playstyle, while Faindrel fires three shots instead of one in a higher arc. Attack 3 is the ‘special’ of sorts, giving both melee based characters a ranged attack while offering Faindrel a piercing shot. Lord Snicklefritz is wholy unique to this system as master of the elements, who instead charges up different elemental attacks to reach a numbered attack, which alters the elemental magic. His takes the most getting used to, as learning what each element does is imperative to understanding exactly what spell to switch to and how long to charge it for. All of these abilities for every character costs an increasing amount of stamina in direct correlation to its ‘number’, so Attack 3 will chew through more stamina than Attack 2. This management is crucial to survival, as running out of stamina means that dodging is suddenly out of the question; sure stamina regenerates over time, but the pace is relatively slow unless attacks are paced properly. If players want to regenerate stamina quickly, then crouching is the only way to do so, which as expected can be dangerous if not prepared. This leads in to some very interesting ability weaving, for knowing how long one can recover extra stamina for before returning to the fray becomes essential to combat.
I talked about the unique aspects of each character, but Towertale takes that one step further by making them all individual characters within their Tower narrative. See, while they all have their own reasons for reaching the top, from Snicklefritz’s need to investigate to Dark Echo’s pure unabashed narcissism, they aren’t all attempting this tower at random time; they’re all within the same timeline. Choices given and made will effect how the others that may have or may be attempting to the Tower in different ways as players have the ability to play each route on their journey upwards. Some even run in to each other depending on the chronology, which is given at the character select as Lionel/Faindrel, Snicklefritz, Dark Echo. Too bad I didn’t realize that was there and immediately jumped in to Dark Echo, but I don’t believe that it creates too much of a negative impact. Probably. The point here is that instead of just choosing a character that can fit a playstyle, Towertale has created four different narratives for each playstyle to explore and absorb, rather than the story remaining the same with some tweaks to fit the backstories of each. They want each adventurer to show their emotional connection to their journey, complete with graphics that are included in the gallery afterwards and dialogue that connects with other characters (for the most part, anyway, seeing as Dark Echo doesn’t really talk to people as much as ‘at’). At the end of the climb, however, only one can be crowned victor and take the reward that may alter their fate, and it isn’t looking like it will be an easy choice.
Towertale does a fantastic job of blending hacky-slashy gameplay with its narrative elements, opting to focus primarily on the boss fights to keep action exciting and enclosed — it also helps narratively that the tower is the same all the way up so there’s no fear of the players going different ways. If you’re feeling like you’d wish to see what would happen if all four adventurers teamed up together, then have no fear; there’s a four player co-operative mode to allow for just that. Other game modes include an arcade mode for those wishing to avoid the plot and just fight their way up, a Freemode that opens up the bosses to your own pace and a Boss Rush mode which does the exact opposite and crushes you underfoot with infinite bosses. All of these variations of ways to play leads to multiple ways to experience the endings, and combined with the pure polish that is the art style and soundtrack it’s hard to ignore. If you’re looking for a 2D slashy action title that wants to tell a story, then this is definitely one to give a whirl.
