There is a space in digital gaming for reimagined, ported, or fresh ideas on games that would work as a traditional board game. Whilst they might lack the physicality of moving pieces and rolling dice, they can take advantage of next to no setup times and animation. Walls and Tower Party plays like a game I’d have been bought from the Argos catalogue in 1989 by my parents for Christmas. I mean this as a positive. There’s a fun idea and gameplay loop here. It just lacks a scope and quality of life elements to be a firm recommendation.
Walls and Tower Party is a competitive race from one side of the board to the other for 2-6 players. The board is full of walls and paths, but crucially, all the walls can pivot at 90-degree turns from either end, thus changing the layout and road to victory. reminds me of two board games I still have from my childhood – The A-Maze-Ing Labrynth and Ghost Party. In this game, players take turns rolling a die. Four sides of the die have numbers on, allowing the player to move their token that number of squares in any compass direction. The fun begins with the two remaining faces of the die. One face is a wall face. This allows a player to select two walls and turn them at a 90-degree angle. This might block a path, build a cul-de-sac, or open up a previously closed-off route for the player to attempt to escape down on their next go. Obviously, if another player rolls the walls, they can quite easily flip them back again! The other face on the die is the tower face. On the board is a giant 3×3 square tower. If a player rolls the tower, the player can move the tower twice, either horizontally or vertically. The tower can slide across the entire width and length of the board with one move, though, making it incredibly powerful. It will slide as far as the player wants to slide until it hits a wall… or a player. Any players the tower touches are sent back to the start to try again. So the game continues until a player reaches the goal and wins.
As a simple retro board game, Walls and Tower Party works well. There’s an element of strategy to use walls to safeguard yourself or block others. Rolling the die is inherently a luck-based metric, and whilst that is part of the charm, it is also where games can become frustrating. If you get a few tower moves close together, almost everyone can easily be wiped out. I’d played a few games where everyone was stuck at the start of the board because the tower was repeatedly rolled and kept knocking players out. Similarly, the wall mechanic means that players can easily get stuck in dead ends, and when combined with tower rolls, that can mean an unfair death knell to any chance of victory. Too often, the game ends up being about the one player who can escape the early game trudge and run free unopposed.
Whilst some light balancing could improve the early game battles, there are other issues that impact usability and replayability. Players can move the camera, but strangely, the die doesn’t seem to move with the board. This means that rolling the die will usually happen off-screen and you’ve no idea what is going on. For the best experience at the moment, leave the camera on its default top-down view. The biggest issue for me is that there is only one board. The game mechanics are ripe for various board layouts and wall structures to play with. This would have increased the value proposition and kept the game from getting stale with the added variety. If the game does get any post-launch updates, I hope it focuses on this, as the possibilities are huge.
With its limited scope and somewhat sludgey early game phase, Walls and Tower Party is a bit of a tough sell. Despite that, I do think gamers looking for straightforward board games in a digital format will find some fun here. It’s just that the fun is tempered with the aforementioned issues, so I recommend this as a palate cleanser rather than a long-play focus in your multiplayer gaming sessions. Steam Remote Play will come in handy and works well if you do pick it up. Fingers crossed for some post-launch polish.
Review copy provided by the developer. Walls and Tower Party is out on PC.
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