cool, VERY short (<30 minutes) platformer that periodically changes how you're allowed to progress

the entire OST is just one song and a couple remixes of that song

but goddamn, it do go hard doe. luna ascension in particular changes lives.

Edit: nvm about the remix thing, just learned what a leitmotif is

a idiot cynic tries to write with an open heart. in our current landscape it is only prudent to suspect that every word uttered is a form of engagement bait, and i hope the following is not coloured as such. i write only for myself, not you. sometimes we just need a spot to unload, particularly if we are the type of person built without a release valve. i guess an anonymous, parasocial, gamified tracker website is as good a place as any.

as i type, i am preoccupied with thoughts of a decade-long companion awaiting the outcome of a coin flip. to think they could be gone at any moment, stuck in a hospital i can’t reach quickly enough to say goodbye, is enough to induce a fresh heart attack every other minute. so i wanted to feel something, anything, beyond a drip feed of negativity.

our tendency to use media as a salve for despair is frankly stupid, a sign that we can no longer relate to our real, lived environment in a meaningful way (like come on just go for a fucking walk and look at a bird or whatever). nor does it provide much reward or tangible relief. let’s say we want to min-max our distraction therapy: open world game #642 could easily occupy my idiot brain for 100+ hours with its garbage (which, at a time like this, i cannot pretend to be above). no offense to open world game #642, of course; this truth would as easily hold for something good, engaging. all for what, though? is it just to forestall the levee breaking? so rarely, if ever, can consumption act as tourniquet. for now, though, let’s try.

i booted tower of heaven for the millionth time in as many years. mainly to hear the music. but why not see it through. a game whose runtime you can count in minutes is good for the soul—at this time, at any time. i can only wonder (rhetorically) why games struggle to be this efficient, succinct. in no way does this hamper it: this is a flawless game in the only sense that means something. an instance where a creator simply made the thing they wanted to make, expressing what existed in their own mind.

i do not wish to discuss the game too much. i could not care less about some gamereviewese bullshit right now. i would just implore others to try - it’s pretty fun! it is a short, ostensibly difficult platformer with a game boy sheen and fantastic compositions. as we know, flash games were required by law to have loose, questionable notions of momentum and inertia, and this one does not disappoint. all told, you should be done in thirty minutes or less. maybe longer if you want to find a secret ending. it is the exact kind of game i wish i was young enough to experience as intended: playing in your high school pc lab while ignoring your work.

the tower of heaven itself, allegedly insurmountable, at least mirrored my predicament to the extent which i have rationalised my circumstances. it has been a while, and i had somewhat forgotten about the laws and their broader lessons. i should have my ass beaten for using a phrase like “mechanics as metaphor”, but fuck it. where so many games contort themselves to chase this paradigm, usually failing, and even where games handle this gracefully (let’s say bloodborne), tower of heaven manages to capitalise on this in a handful of minutes, elegant, efficient, and convincing as ever.

i reached the point where ‘luna ascension’ plays and shed a couple of tears. to be fair, i would do the same in any state. even as sucker for silly midi orchestrations, i cannot think of many which carry such richness and emotional weight. this stands for much of the soundtrack. the use of motifs, even in a game with so few tracks, each part recalling and referencing another, could put toby fox to shame. i realise i’ve found a small sense of lasting catharsis.

upon reaching the end and [redacted], i ponder the laws once more. i’ve seen this sequence countless times, i won’t pretend they offer any novel or deep insight (at their most trite and simplified they can amount to, for example, ‘don’t look back, live in the present’). that’s fine: sometimes we just need a reminder of the basics. the fact these are here at all, ingrained in the entire game flow, and deepened further through some surprisingly consistent allegory and visual symbolism, all within a tiny fifteen year old flash game, astounds me. right now, this is just what i needed.

god is in his heaven. i will keep climbing.

It's fine. Struggles with the same problem a lot of platformers do where all the cool ideas are dwarfed both in time spent and mental real estate by the silly precise stuff.

I really don't like the last level though; I hate how it makes a big deal of the rules being broken, but then you still have to continue following the first rule (but none of the others). It's also the first rule the player would be given the opportunity to break, but then if the player tries to, they might infer that the rule book being shattered was a metaphor of some sort and continue playing with all of the game's restrictions (I made this assumption, but luckily tried moving left out of curiosity a couple attempts in).

I probably like this about as much as This is the Only Level (which flirts with some of the same design ideas), but only because of the music and art direction, I think the game design here is worse.

I wasn't expecting to fall in love this hard with this game to be honest. It's probably the first game trying to appeal to Game Boy nostalgia i actually enjoy; a unique and intriguing concept accompanied by great art and a short but iconic sountrack with a leitmotif that fits the game atmosphere perfectly. The devs also knew the moment to stop instead of prolonging a gameplay that doesn't have much to offer long term, i feel like if the game extended too much i would probably not like as much as i did. May heaven grant you fortune.

I wish I had played this when it came out, but for now Tower of Heaven is a worthwhile little game.

Little isn’t a slight, in fact I’d rather the experience be brief than bloated, but I don’t feel like the game lived up to its full conceptual potential. Tower of Heaven left me not exactly wanting more, but wishing it had been. Even the narrative is prototypical and stripped-down to essentials, but it’s justifiably and inextricably tied to the gameplay. Through no real fault of this game’s own, I wasn’t wowed by the conceit; I suppose in the context of the time in which it released it might have been more groundbreaking.

The level-creation suite unlocked upon completion reminded me of a bygone Conman era, when I constantly play flash games and was positively ravenous to make levels. I say bygone, but I did make an entire Super World in Mario Maker 2 within the last couple years. That fire burns within me, but not this day, and maybe not with this game... but it would have at the time.

I think you should give this a shot if you haven’t played it, as I got through it in about a half-hour and since I thought it was good you will too. Obviously.

Thanks to MendelPalace for the recommendation!