Tricky Towers (Switch eShop) Review

Tricky Towers cleverly preys on the fact nearly everyone on the planet knows how to play Tetris, providing accessible party-starting block-stacking mayhem. However, Tricky Towers doesn’t quite have enough substance to keep the party going all night.

Featuring three distinct variants, all of Tricky Towers’ puzzles begin in much the same fashion; you begin with a small base which remains static throughout and, like Tetris, an assortment of different-shaped blocks fall from above, one at a time. These variants offer a decent amount of variety, beginning with arguably the headlining mode of Race, which sees you trying to build your tower of blocks to a specific height before anyone else. Following Race is Survival, where you’re given a set number of blocks and three hearts, with each fallen block removing a heart – the last one standing or the tallest structure after exhausting all blocks wins. Finally, there’s the Puzzle variant, where you’re given a very limited amount of vertical space to place as many blocks as possible.

Tricky Towers’ best aspect is its somewhat realistic in-game physics. Although I don’t think we’ll be building real-life skyscrapers using Tetris-like blocks anytime soon, the way lop-sided creations in Tricky Towers teeter precariously feels satisfyingly realistic for what is an otherwise non-realistic game. Ill-made structures wobble at weak points and will topple off the stage if your weight distribution is off. This creates many moments of hilarity and agony (perspective-dependent), seeing a teetering tower finally topple over after trying helplessly to correct its fall into oblivion. Collapsing towers wipe a lot of progress off, often requiring you to start almost from scratch again – much to your dismay or glee depending on who’s on the receiving end of a catastrophic construction blunder. This is particularly important in Race mode, as you need to strike balance between being first, but ensuring your tower will hold strong – the victor’s structure must hold at the finish line for a full three seconds, otherwise, the game continues.

Across all game modes are power-ups which can add a positive effect to yourself, or hinder an opponent. For example, the vines power-up helps to solidify your structure, holding blocks rigidly in place. On the other hand, you can subject opponents to misery by messing up their carefully constructed towers; one such power-up enlarges their next block to a gargantuan size so it doesn’t fit properly, ruining the balance of their structure. Thankfully, there’s a bit of skill involved in earning power-ups, as they are awarded to players who build to a certain height, rewarding you for speedy building.

You’ll likely be playing Tricky Towers for the multiplayer, but there’s a morsel of single-player content to consume. Taking the form of brief, self-contained trials, the single-player mode gives you various goals to complete, such as building to a height within a time limit, or Survival and Puzzle scenarios to navigate. There are about 50 trials all up, providing a decent challenge and acting as a proving grounds for what really matters – belting your “friends” in local multiplayer.

While there’s not a heap of multiplayer content, what’s there is great fun while playing against friends in the same room. Using a mix of the Race, Puzzle and Survival modes, you’re able to customise the difficulty of the modes, in addition to a nifty little tournament mode, offering a seamless method of testing your mettle over a series of rounds.

Testing out online play was relatively painless, although I couldn’t see a way to play with friends online. Currently, Tricky Towers is wired to matchmake you against random players online which, while I never waited long for a match, is not how I would ideally play this sort of game. I would much prefer to party up and play against friends, as Tricky Towers is best when the veil of anonymity is lifted, encouraging smack-talk and reacting to others’ hilarious tower collapses. Online also features a rather arbitrary levelling system; in my time playing online, I levelled up multiple times but did not unlock anything or receive incentives to continue playing beyond a change in title alongside my name.

Conversely, Tricky Towers excels at being approachable, enticing you in with its cutesy slick visuals, and the fact it’s based on the well-known concept of Tetris. Tricky Towers provides small doses of multiplayer fun, even for those who don’t normally play a lot of video games. However, it just lacks a bit of oomph to keep you coming back for more beyond a surface-level play. As a party game, Tricky Towers is a solid game to add to your rotation – creating some brilliant moments of tension, elation, and the agony of defeat at seeing your tower collapse at the last moment.

Tricky Towers is a refreshingly modern multiplayer variation to the globally-known puzzler Tetris. Although it may not keep the party going all night due to its light content offering, Tricky Towers’ block-stacking action provides great local multiplayer moments – especially when the whole room reacts raucously to someone’s last-second tower collapse.

Score: 3.5/5