Project Tower
Project Tower’s inspirations are clear, firing the first brightly colored projectile in what could be a barrage of "third-person bullet hells" chasing after the success of 2021’s Returnal. For fans of that arcade hit, there is a lot to like in Project Tower, so long as they can excuse a certain amount of budget-tier jank.
The game fits you into the suit of an unnamed protagonist after an alien race has enslaved the Earth’s population, forcing survivors to fight through the titular environment. Their reward? Serving as fresh meat in their captor’s galactic army. It’s a narrative that has about as much nuance as you would expect from a game called Project Tower, but you're not here for the narrative and the game title, are you?
Rest easy then, because the game shines best with a blaster in your hand, as you're diving, ducking, and dashing through a relentless onslaught of projectiles. For a game assembled by a team so small they can be acknowledged in a blink-and-you-miss-it credits screen, the gunplay feels surprisingly tight and responsive. It’s quite a feat considering this is Yummy Games’ first major console release after years of creating mobile titles. The only feat more incredible? The achievement you will feel as you topple the game’s challenging, and well designed, boss encounters.
Outside of the traditional combat loop, Project Tower also features an interesting alien morphing system that allows you to transform into certain baddies you’ve bested. This system allows you to confront various environmental puzzles, or in one case, makes you OP enough to tear through the alien hordes in a delicious rampage. It’s a good system, but unfortunately it’s bizarrely underutilized compared to how often Project Tower throws a generic, thematically questionable puzzle in front of you, or a frustrating platforming sequence. The platforming in Project Tower is simply not tight enough to warrant such emphasis, leading to some unnecessary deaths, and the puzzles only serve to make you wonder why you’re not already on to the next gargantuan boss fight.
In addition to some of the unfortunate design choices the team made, there are a few visual issues and gameplay bugs that sour the overall experience. Foliage in certain levels has a distracting flashing effect as you move through the environment, the frame-rate can dip on higher quality modes when the action becomes frantic (I chose to play on Balanced mode on a PS5 Pro where this is mostly resolved), and lack of death transition cuts are awkward and abrupt.
Apart from the bugs and jank, the sound design leaves much to be desired. Traversal through environments is either too muted or completely silent, and while bullet fire sounds great emitting from your weapon, it makes no sound when impacting your foes, sometimes making you question if you’re doing damage. The music can feel poignant at times, especially with the relative silence from the rest of the game, but poignant isn’t necessarily the first association I’m looking for in a game about shooting big aliens with lasers.
In spite of these issues, Project Tower should be a fun, challenging experience for those devoted Returnal lovers looking for their next fix. It gets the most important things right in a game like this. The combat and immaculate boss design are wonderful, even if the team should have focused more effort on refining the audio and fleshing out their transformation system than building in some immersion-breaking puzzles. Expect about 5 hours to see this one through to completion, but more if you want to dive back in to collect the trophies.