Tower of Madness by Eduardo Yukio

A challenging platform game, inspired by Celeste and I Wanna be the Guy. It has 30 small levels: about 15 minutes of gameplay.
In this game, you control a young boy who is bored of his repetitive routine. One day, he finds a small, simple-looking tower. Seeking for adventure, he hops right into it, ending up stuck in a mad loop!
Do you have what it takes to break out of the Tower of Madness?
🎮* This game supports gamepads *🎮
PLAY IT ON THE BROWSER: https://eduyukio.itch.io/tower-of-madness
Changelog: v1.0.1 - Add Up arrow as a valid jump button
Ratings
| Overall | 493th | 3.053⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 434th | 3⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 591th | 2.436⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 473th | 3.167⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 584th | 2.359⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 184th | 2.971⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 543th | 2.441⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 55🗨️ |
@zachary-barbanell I appreciate that you played my game even without liking the genre! I put a lot of effort on trying to replicate the difficulty of those hard platform games, so your comment made me happy, thanks!
I couldn't play very far, really bad at this genre. What comments I can give based on my short playthrough is:
* The controls felt nice and precise: I could control the height of the jump and stop moving horizontally to land exactly where I wanted. I would maybe increase the walking friction or simply remove deceleration altogether. I'm not very versed on platformer movement though.
* There should be a more immediate feedback for death. I often would keep trying to move asking myself whether it was lag or collision, only to be respawned and finally understand I had hit a spike from the side.
* On that note, maybe the art could be improved to help antecipate where collision bounds are with more accuracy. Also I love *tsukkomi* characters.
* I enjoyed the color palette used.
* The small remarks from the character were really funny and were my main motivation to keep going - like, what'll he say next? It was a good idea to have this comic relief in such taxing gameplay.
* I would maybe autosave even more, since - at least with my horrible game skills - the spot I died most was the very first jump that was always the same every stage. You can tell me to git gud though, I'm aware I'm not quite the target audience.
All in all, a solid entry for the compo!
Did you draw the assets? I think it looks cute :) I also like the silly remarks made by the player character. I think it's a pretty all-around game, congrats and great job!
@kazuo256 @makiyoshi Thank you very much for the kind words! It means a lot to me that you guys liked the humor and the art <3
I would ask though, if a tower is going DOWN instead of UP, isn't it technically a cave?
@cryptomnesic This was the best short compliment that I have ever received, thank you hahaha
@judgezedd I playtested with some friends a couple of hours before the deadline and they mentioned that it was frustrating to respawn at the beginning everytime, so I thought about adding checkpoints. I'm very glad that you noticed it and extremely happy with your kind words <3.
About the tower thing, you are right hahahahaha. I only noticed the incoherence in the middle of the jam and decided to shrug it off. If I made the player start at the top of the tower, would it be better? hahahaha
I feel frustrated from some time to time, but levels are fair. Some levels are very creative. I've attached a screenshot of a level I like the most.
At the beginning I thought it would be good to have an indicator of a current level, but you've added dialogs and it is brilliant as they give you a sense of progression.
I played with a gamepad and it works just fine, but I don't know how the game feels with a keyboard.
The physics of movements is true to genre. Custom and feels responsive. It has some vibe of Celest as you wanted.
I really like that you've added checkpoints I felt granted when I used them.
Overall, I think the game has very good level design and physics just works right. Well done!

@szabe I understand, I actually intend to do less difficult games next time, more like *Super Meat Boy* and less like *I Wanna be the Guy*. I think these types of games are too frustrating for the majority of people and I want everyone to have fun!
@thewinrawr You are right, when I was making the spikes I saw that *Celeste* have more thinner spikes but I chose to go with the *I Wanna be the Guy* spikes and they are, indeed, much more cruel hahaha. I think on my next games I will stick with the *Celeste* ones. Thank you for the kind words!
@dmitry-mozgin Hello!! I agree with you on the art aspect, those visuals don't help to sell the game. I really intend to work on my art skills for the next one. Thank you very much for the compliments on the gameplay and level design, I worked veeery hard on both of them and it makes me very happy to see that it worked! About the gamepad, actually I have forgotten entirely about it!! I implemented the support to it, but forgot to test, so, I'm glad that you did hahaha. Now that I've played the game with a controller, I noticed that a huge coincidence happened: in the dialog that teaches how to dash, I wrote "Press X to dash" and X functions both for the keyboard and for the X Box controller lol
I appreciated how you kept the changes to the level interesting, and you put generous checkpoints exactly where they were needed. I don't normally enjoy these sorts of games but this was fun!
One thing about the interface, it feel weird to use the mouse for clicking the "Continue" buttons. Why not closing the text by pressing a button?
@toulou Ohh, I didn't know *This is the only level*, but it's very similar to *That level again*, which was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the theme hehe. Actually, to close the dialog window, you can click on the *Continue* button, press *Jump* (Z, Up), or press *Dash*(X). I think I should have made it more clear, putting it explicitly on the text like "Press any button to continue". Thanks for the feedback!!
The controls felt good and you get many additional points for mid-level saves. I liked that the character commented on his adventures and I totally agree with him: Who would put all those spikes in the tower? It's a very clever and nice idea to take exactly the same base and create increasingly difficult levels on it - very nicely done. I bet your game will satisfy platformer aficionados!
I didn't like the background graphics much. The colors, while compatible, work together to create muddy, dull environment. Your own game character put it best "The interior design was not very creative" :wink:
Platformers are not my genre, so I couldn't really finish it. This is the level that finally defeated me :). Does the boy get out of the tower and all ends well? Or does he finally die on a loopy spike?

I'm very happy that you liked the controls and the level design! I worked very hard on them!
Ohh this level is very hard indeed. About the story, **SPOILERS**: The boy eventually finds an opening to break the descending loop and gets out of the tower! Then, he continues to walk to the right and eventually gets bored of his repetitive routine; until he finds a small tower! Hehehehe.
Thank you very much for your valuable feedback!
@ubershmekel Yes, those were all programmer art hahaha, I intend to learn proper art and music creation someday. I'm very glad that you had fun! Thank you!!
I had the red box fly off through the ceiling on some occasions. Helped me a lot :D
Nevertheless, great job.
I love the idea behind the level design and my greatests thanks for checkpoints on different stages of levels.