Xbox has shown or demoed several of its upcoming games as part of the Gamescom celebrations, including high-profile titles such as Obsidian’s ConfessorsSlot games Indiana Jones and the Great CircleActivision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6as well as upcoming DLCs for Bethesda’s Starfield and Blizzard’s Diablo IV. A smaller Xbox game that will also be featured during the event is Towerbornean upcoming side-scrolling hack-and-slash from the development team at Stoic (The Banner Saga).
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When Towerborne was announced last year, I was intrigued. I imagined it could be a fun co-op experience, similar to Castle Crashers or the classic TMNT side-scrollers; something that you can play quickly and easily with friends. The original announcement discussed that the game would have “seasonal” content, although it wasn’t entirely clear at the time what form this would take.
During Gamescom, Stoic revealed the release plans for the game, which begin with an Early Access period on Steam starting on September 10th. In addition, it was revealed that the game will be free to play, at least after leaving Early Access. For those who want to play the Early Access version, it sounds like they will have to purchase a Founder’s Pack (check out the game’s Steam page for more information). It’s a little unexpected that the game’s release structure, both in terms of pricing and content, would be revealed in this way. Personally, it raises concerns about how this game will be handled during and after release.
As for the combat gameplay itself during the demo, it was pretty much what I expected. At the Xbox preview event in Los Angeles, we played a single level of the game and had a choice of four different weapons: sword and shield, gauntlets, war club, and dual daggers.
In Towerborne, your weapon selection determines your effective “class,” referred to as Aces. Sword and Shield is the tank of the party and has a built-in armor gauge that prevents HP damage as long as any portion of the armor gauge is filled. Gauntlets is a much nimbler but more vulnerable Ace that has a higher overall DPS level but can’t take as many hits. The War Club Ace dishes out damage with slow but powerful attacks while maintaining a “super tank” stance that prevents attack animations from being interrupted – at least not as easily. In the limited demo time, I didn’t get a chance to try out the Dual Daggers Ace.
Each Ace can bring two active abilities into battle based on a pip system (fill up ability pips as you dish out and deal damage), as well as a third ability tied to a Navi-like familiar of your choosing. Unfortunately, while Stoic promises numerous available abilities as well as a variety of familiars in the game, the demo I played didn’t show anything outside of combat, like ability selection, character customization, equipment, the Belfry game hub, or level selection, so it’s difficult to say much about the potential for character development or the overall structure of the game.
The demo level ended with a fight against a giant pangolin named Pangojira. He primarily attacked with large claw slashes in front of him as well as AoE jumping attacks. During the fight, he summoned small minion pangolins that mainly served as a nuisance. The encounter felt right at home, like other multiplayer brawlers I’ve played, as my co-op partner while I learned attack patterns and coordinated to take down the boss and his thug squad.
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One thing the team at Stoic stressed during my hands-on experience with the game is that player feedback will be taken into account when the game enters Early Access – something that was also made clear in a lengthy blog post on Xbox Wire earlier this week. I was told that the team wants to be very open to feedback and may only need a few weeks rather than a few months to make adjustments. I was also told that monetization of the free-to-play game would be purely in the form of cosmetic things – things like outfits and emotes – rather than anything that affects the game’s balance or difficulty.
While I think feedback can be crucial for developers and should be taken into account to some extent, I’m partly concerned that Stoic’s plans for the game may not be as locked in as I’d like. I almost felt like I was hearing more about taking feedback into account than Stoic’s vision itself.
Another concerning aspect of the demo I played is how gear works. After playing the level, I saw that my character had a maximum of level 30 gear pieces in each of the available armor slots. I politely asked a developer during the demo if they could explain to me how the gear system works, since I wasn’t able to try it out in the demo itself. They told me to ignore what I saw on the screen, since the gear system in the demo was already completely overhauled and loot-based instead (Diablo was given as a comparison point). Regardless of what the final gear system turns out to be, I wonder what character progression will be like when I have a demo with an already outdated gear system less than a month before Early Access launches.
The live service nature of the game would see new levels and new Ace weapons being added to the game on a regular basis post-launch, although this was not elaborated on. Optimistically, the game’s F2P structure could work great, with constantly new content added over time to play with your friends in a quick and easy co-op session. But with so many details remaining vague, I’m still unsure about the game’s monetization and structure, so I’m a little hesitant about Towerborne’s development.
As it is, I like Towerborne conceptually, but I have concerns about how both the free-to-play components and the live service nature of the game will evolve. With an Early Access version coming next month, we won’t have to wait long to see the first reactions (and first adjustments) to this new IP.
