Towerborne is just shy of releasing into Early Access on Steam. It’s a 2.5D looter adventuring game developed by The Banner Saga developer Stoic and is published by Xbox Games Studio. It feels like the console developer’s first big stab at the live-service genre since Halo Infinite undoubtedly failed to meet expectations.
I received the chance to play the game ahead of its launch on September 10th and while I don’t think the pair of studios has a game that will set the world on fire, they’ve at least got me invested in what looks to be my next “brain-off, headphones with podcast playing on” type title.
Towerborne is set in a fantastical medieval world where your home is, you guessed it, a giant spire in the middle of the land. This tower is known as the Belfry. Booting it up, players create and customise their hero, labelled as Ace, an adventurer that the people of the tower task to go out and chart the lands, taking care of nasty goblins and other mythical creatures. As is tradition for looter games, expect many a quest issued to you by the Belfry’s people, while your hunt for the next best bit of gear and upgrades is what’s driving you forward. Power levels affect what areas you can traverse and what missions you can undertake.
Being a relatively by the numbers an experience is a hard sell given how saturated the live service market is. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned about it making a splash in the space. Where it currently stands, Towerborne is an always-online experience compared to games of its ilk less reliant on servers such as Borderlands. Take the fact one of these sorts of experiences controversially closed just last week after two weeks of operating and I can’t help but feel the game must offer an offline version. Maybe that will come; It’s planned to be in early access for some time and lessons can be learnt there.
The good news is that Towerborne has at least some originality going for it. There are not many looter games doing the 2.5D thing, the closest coming to mind being the original Risk of Rain. Venturing out from the Belfry has players navigating Hexagonal tiles across the lands like a 4x game. There also aren’t ‘turns’ or limitations to how far out you can go in a session other than power levels. This is a simple but tactile addition that emphasises the feeling of charting the strange, foreign and fantastical world awaiting you in Towerborne. Yes, there are even Civilisation-esque resource tiles that you can loot from.
Illustrated beautifully, Towerborne does feel like an exciting fantasy world inviting you to explore every inch of it. Its art style is very clearly reminiscent of animations such as Saturday morning cartoons and children’s films. Stoic pulls off this style incredibly well, depicting cell-shaded characters that are so warm and full of light, much like the Belfry itself, a beacon of hope. Quintessential fantasy monster designs are present such as acidic mushrooms stomping towards you and lizard men with wooden shields and swords. In short, it’s peak comfort food fantasy setting goodness.
Now comes the big question: is Towerborne fun? Will it last? The answer is yes, but with a caveat. It doesn’t take long to see the ceiling and limitations of the game. The mission structure is quite one note thus far, largely summed up as (at least digestible, short-length) tasks that have you going into the tiles where a big baddie is situated. Loading into said tile, you’re working through side-scrolling set pieces with a flavour of varied 2.5D axes moment where you’re moving up or down. There are sometimes optional challenges such as ‘defend this villager’s cart’ or ‘defeat x number of enemies in y time frame,’ but these quickly repeat. It all concludes in a great big final boss fight which is thrilling and genuinely hard, requiring players to juggle additional foes and the great big bouldering beast that lies ahead of you, dodging and rolling between attacks and doing your best to get your flurries out when you can.
The issue is sometimes these moments feel too few and far between. Every tile you chart you have to enter an instanced level. Though these levels are never long, you’re often staring down the brunt of a good 10-20 tiles between you and that exciting boss encounter. The minutes stack up here and the grind begins. I can’t help but feel a means of combatting this would be to have some means of overruling being thrust into a mission with a resource or have some tiles be ‘random encounters’ that are 30 seconds long or so fights in one screen and over in a flash.
Thankfully, the minute-to-minute gameplay of Towerborne is so good that it won’t bother you for long. Employing a beat-em-up form of combat with several classes that you can swap between at any time (except mid-combat) helps to keep things fresh. These classes are Pyroclast (fiery staff/war club wielders), Sentinel (sword and shield arms), Rockbreaker (an ace class that uses gauntlet gloves half their size), and rogue-ish Shadowstriker dagger wielder.
Though all are melee and brawler-focused, each plays wildly differently from the other. Animations are fluid and slick as you throw your weight around the battlefield. The Pyroclast weapons are good for poking and prodding enemies and finishing it off with a devastating slam downwards. Depending on the skin of a class’ weapon your animations also cleverly vary. Following a windmill flurry with a Pyroclast staff, Explosive fiery blasts come from its base for added devastation and fire status.
A Shadowstriker has abilities that teleport them to foes, closing gaps with a powerful stab. Rockbreakers can go all primal monkey beast mode as they repeatedly slam their gauntlets on the floor to prevent anyone from nearing them. Sentinel has an AoE ability that stuns a group of enemies which is the perfect breathing room opportunity if you’re struggling to pull off their parry… the list goes on.
It’s rewarding and highly effective to memorise each class’s attack patterns and animations, especially if you’re playing solo. I didn’t get the chance to play with any other players in this preview period and aside from it feeling a little lonely, Towerborne also whooped me a fair bit if I wasn’t careful with how I was controlling launching enemies in the air and juggling them, getting that last attack of a combo off or dodge rolling in time. As a Devil May Cry-lover, I was thrilled by the focus on combos. I’m not going to pretend it’s remotely near that level of depth in its comparison, but tinges of it are always welcome.
You can probably now see why I’m both worried for Towerborne and also see its potential as a game to play while listening to my favourite podcasts. It’s a very one-note venture so far but of the same token, mashing buttons, jabbing, poking, prodding, slamming and devastating my enemies is so joyous and satisfying. It scratches an itch I haven’t addressed for quite some time.
If you want me to sell you on Towerborne, I’ll leave you with this. I’m not someone to play many grindy live-service games. I also rarely replay games. Yet at the publication of this article, my pre-Early Access period progress has been wiped. I have to start again with everyone else. Still, I’m thinking about this game. I’m counting down the hours til I can jump in on day one with everyone and start my adventure outside of the Belfry once more.
Towerborne is available September 10 for PC in the Early Access period for Steam. Check it out.
About the Author
Charlie Kelly
She/Her, They/Them
Charlie loves her video games as much as she loves dumb, charming JRPG protagonists: probably way too much. You can often catch her spending too much time being emotional over LGBT stories in games. She also thinks Yakuza 6 is the best one.
