Tempest Tower is a tower defense game where the player is much more involved, and the intensity of each level ramps up hilariously fast. Under its cutesy exterior is a frantic yet fun gameplay loop, and I’m enjoying just figuring out how to “solve” each wave while working with its fairly unique mechanics.
Full disclosure: I received a review copy from the developers and gave it a spin for a few hours. This review will go over the basics of the game, what I liked, and what I think could be improved in the future.
Strategize and Adapt
The game’s basic premise is that you have to defend a central tower that has to be charged up every wave. It’s not as simple as it sounds though, because the map will gradually open up and add new enemy spawn points.
It features a unique spin on the genre by letting the player physically run around the map and contribute rather than just being a spectator. You can blow gusts of wind to push enemies towards your towers or environmental hazards, or even goomba stomp them like you’re Mario.
You’re pretty much required to actively participate, as there are various mechanics designed to get you moving. The tutorial doesn’t do it justice, because even the first real level can be incredibly challenging when you’re still learning the ropes, which was a pleasant surprise.
“Why Should I Move?”
Over the course of a run, you’ll have the option to plop down speed pads or trampolines that launch you high up. You’re gonna want to use some of these to help manage your defenses and earn some extra upgrades.
I absolutely adore how much stuff you have to micromanage in order to survive, and here are just a few example of what the game will have you thinking about throughout each level:
Peeper Herding
Whenever you activate the central tower, peepers (cute little eyeball creatures) will spawn all around the map. You can herd these lil guys to the tower, and every five peepers rescued will reward you with a chance to pick one of three random upgrades for either your turrets or yourself.
Crowd Control
Your towers are usually not powerful enough to take on large crowds of enemies, at least at the moment due to the lack of AOE defenses.
Some of those purple creepers will eventually manage to slip away from your towers, leaving you as the last line of defense. You can try your luck pushing them until they’re within range of your towers again, or you can pick up bomberries and blow ’em up with a carefully aimed throw.
If all else fails, you can try and sweep enemies aside at the central tower for as long as the timer permits. I hope you can click fast, because holding back the horde this way is gonna hurt!
The Central Tower Itself
Did I mention that the central tower will start attracting dangerous lightning bolts once it’s fully charged? Yep, you have to manually end each wave by flipping the lever beside the tower. Failure to shut it down in a timely manner may result in the destruction of some of your structures.
I’m not a huge fan of the lightning mechanic, but I suppose it prevents players from just endlessly farming souls. Maybe just turn off soul drops once the tower’s done charging instead?
Tower Troubles
Towers in this game require an energy source to function, and some of them require manual input to actually provide juice. You gotta feed coal to your furnaces or manually blow air at (maybe intentionally) misplaced windmills to power up your defenses.
On top of that, there’s at least one enemy type that can disable your towers, and you need to sweep off the gunk with your broom to get them working again. I think they’re a bit too oppressive, but I think the devs are already working on addressing that, so yay!
A Solid Foundation
To be honest, there really isn’t too much else to talk about yet, at least with the preview version I played. The game’s already a blast in its current state, but it could use a bit more variety in towers and levels. At the very least, an AOE structure would be a massive boon to players due to how overwhelming later waves can get.
A few more tooltips to prepare new players for special enemy types would be great too, just so people don’t get caught completely off-guard by enemies that disable towers or eat peepers (yeah, that’s a thing). It doesn’t even have to explicitly state what they do. Just a little hint should suffice.
Luckily, the devs are very receptive to feedback. In fact, Tempest Tower‘s Steam page does talk about how the community will have a direct effect on future updates, so the game will surely get even better over time.
Although Tempest Tower is still in early access, I’d say that it’s definitely worth trying out just so you can experience its wild and deceptively challenging take on the genre. You can easily sink hours into it by just experimenting with various starting loadouts or maybe even attempting a no-tower run!