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rocketfactoryDe Toren is by Kevin Oke, who also did Consumer CULTure and The Last Ace. Both those games had an off-kilter retroness about them; De Toren seems to be more of an effort to do something self-contained and reasonably polished in Game Maker.
Graphics are still quite retro -- pixellated tiles -- but this is a straightforward puzzle game. Some rows above you is a rest area; you must climb up the tiles of the tower to it while satisfying two conditions: time, and score. Each tile you traverse once earns you points, but retracing steps costs you, and some enemies will also cost you points if intercepted. If you get to the rest area in time and with adequate score, the next "level" begins, which is just more of the tower.
A simple structure, but not bad. And the music is pretty nice lounge-influenced drum-and-bass.
This is a nice concept, and
This is a nice concept, and mostly well-executed. A couple things I'd love to see in a version 1.1:
1. From what I can tell, there's no way to manually advance past the opening block of text. The first time I tried playing I assumed it was broken. The only keypress that has any effect while on that screen is esc, which brings you to the highscore table and then back to the menu. The second time I decided to let it run in the background while I went and did other things, and it's clear that *eventually* it moves on to the actual game, probably after whatever length of time the developer thought it would take for a slow reader to get through the text. This is *way* too much time for an average reader to wait -- and, on top of that, it *strongly* discourages replayability.
2. Also about replayability, this is a puzzle game with, I assume, distinct non-procedurally generated levels. (see number 1 for why I haven't tried playing a second time to find out for sure). It's also a bit slow-moving, in that one has to wait for the climbing animation to play out at each step. This isn't a problem in itself, but this game is certainly a candidate for improvement by the addition of a simple save-game feature. I don't care about my cumulative high-school. I care about advancing to the next level. And if I have to take a break, I don't want to have to start at the beginning and play through the first 20 minutes again (not to mention, to beat a dead horse, having to wait for that intro text screen to play out yet one more time).
That's it. My tone might come off more harshly than I feel. Honestly, I just enjoyed playing so far, would like to play more, but don't want it to waste my time in the process. (And in case clarification is necessary, I'm not concerned by the speed of the game itself, just the wait on the intro text screen and the inability to continue later where one had previously left off.)
Not enjoyable.
It was slow, tedious and frustrating. Having to do levels over and over again until I can do it perfectly infuriated me.
In certain games, like N, this mechanics work, because the action is varied and fast-paced, but here it feels like a never-endingline that you have to follow one slow and painful step at a time.
I wasn't entertained by this game. It only made me angry and reaching for the escp button, which I hope I had done earlier.
Don't play this thing.
The first commenter has it right.
I was going to make my own comment, but se said it much better than I could.