Tricky Towers

Tricky Towers is Tetris with spice! This local and online multiplayer party game gets everyone on the edge of their seat with a healthy dose of anxiety and laughter. It combines the classic tetromino stacking with spell casting and physics-based environmental effects like wind. In this post we play and review Tricky Towers offering brief how to tutorials and some simple strategy.

Now a modern classic, Tricky Towers offers up to 4 people simultaneous play either locally or via online multiplayer. It is available on Nintendo Switch, XBox One, Steam for PC along with both Playstation 4 and 5.

There are three primary modes of play: Race, Survival and Puzzle. Unlike Tetris where the objective is to efficiently stack tetromino pieces to complete and clear rows earning points and ascending levels of difficulty, in Tricky Towers you are trying to build a tower higher, better and faster than your opponent. As your tower grows in height you will gain magic spells that can be used to either benefit your play or penalize your opponent.

Race mode is a vertical sprint to get your tower across the finish line. At least one piece must clear the line for 3 seconds to secure victory. Tricky Towers has a physics engine with active environments that affect your tower as it grows in height. Without a solid foundation and build quality you may find that your tower begins to sway. Too much greed for speed can result in a catastrophic tip putting you behind. If you take too much time building the perfect column (like a good Tetris player) you will lose to more aggressive players every time. Balancing these two considerations is paramount to success, and magic spells add enough variability to make every game unique.

In survival mode the stated objective is to stack all bricks without dropping them. We find that with actual play it is quite rare for someone to actually stack all of their bricks before the game is over. The real angle in this mode is to eliminate your opponents by getting them to drop three pieces into the mist. Magic spells play a major role in this mode with immediate consequence.

Puzzle mode really leverages the physics engine of the game from a statics and dynamics standpoint. The objective is to play as many pieces as possible without dropping them or crossing the horizontal line/laser. Dropping a piece shifts your entire structure up one block, and if any landed piece crosses the line the game stops for that player. Only landed pieces completely below the line/laser count, and whoever lands the most pieces wins. The vines magic spell can be cast to link a piece to others creating a larger platform, but cantilevering too many tetrominos will result in a tip and greedy failure.

Tricky Towers has spread across all major gaming platforms and people continue to download and play it years after upgrading systems. We did the same when moving from Playstation 4 to Playstation 5. It is timeless, and it's fun rests not with intense graphics or shock value but with player interaction. A game can be 5-10 minutes for people picking up a controller for the first time or hours of strategic competition for diehard fans. It is a top-pick for us!