Evil, as it often tends to do, is starting to reign throughout the kingdom. Thankfully we have you, a brave young wizard determined to put an end to all of this. And you have only one way to do so, it’s to conquer the Arcane Tower, where the the powers and secrets required to defeat all the evil are kept.
One thing you will quickly notice is that you will die. Often. And each death will make you realize that the various floors of the tower are randomly generated.
Even if it’s a darkly colored game, it’s not too difficult to identify correctly the obstacles, the power-up tiles, as well as the enemies apart from each other.
While I haven’t had the pleasure of playing the 2 predecessors in this roguelike trilogy, but I can tell you one thing, Arcane Tower is not an easy game to play! You’d think a tower with only 12 floors would be a piece of cake to defeat. Well don’t be so sure! Reaching the final door is definitely not an easy task.
Arcane Tower is all about strategy. It’s definitely simple enough for your iPhone to control. You swipe to move, tap and hold to get information on a rune, and tap to use spells, but it is a bit challenging to position enemies correctly to annihilate them.
And speaking of runes, as you can only have 3 of them per level, you will need to choose the ones you take with your on your adventure wisely. You will need to acquire the runes by simply bumping into them, which is easy enough. Some others spells you’ll acquire by defeating an enemy. A good example that comes to mind is the spiderweb spell, used to keep a monster in place for a couple of turns, that you will get from defeating spiders.
Sometimes you will find it easier to stand in place instead of moving. And it took me a few deaths to figure the best strategy to do so: you can use a collect action, move a shadow while you are next to a wall, hit an enemy or get hit by a spiderweb.
On top of the normal mode, you will also have the chance to compete in the CHALLENGE mode of Arcane Tower. This is a daily map, the same for all participants, and you need to get as many points as possible. The top 10 scores of the day will have their playthrough viewable, so you can see why they beat you so easily!
All in all, with it’s minimalistic approach, Arcane Tower is an excellent game. I enjoyed playing it a lot.