Tower Princess is a lighthearted roguelike in which players assume the role of a knight tasked with rescuing eight princesses (and princes!)Tower Princess is a lighthearted roguelike in which players assume the role of a knight tasked with rescuing eight princesses (and princes!) from an evil dragon before slaying the beast itself and living happily ever after. Its simple premise is supported by a highly animated art style, straightforward combat, and a sprinkle of humor pepper into NPC dialogue and item descriptions.
In my time with the title, I raised both of the playable classes to maximum level, unlocked the majority of their upgrades, and vanquished the final boss multiple times, once with each princess/prince by my side. I enjoyed the goofy, not-too-serious tone of the game and found it refreshingly more difficult than its visuals let on, which led me to sink roughly a dozen hours into exploring the tower and slaying its denizens. I was eager to see what kind of princess or prince I would find next, what special ability they would have, and how it would affect my playstyle. The real highlight of the game, though, are the boss fights. The final enemies in each of the game's two areas involve a unique mechanic that must be mastered to win, and learning the gimmick on top of the boss's attack patterns is a satisfying challenge. Unfortunately, the final boss lacks this feature. It was a shame to have the game end with a glorified HP piñata, but getting there was still fun.
However, the toughest obstacle to overcome in Tower Princess aren't the bosses. It's not the traps or the platforming section. It's the bugs. At time of writing, the game is riddled with bugs and glitches that range from purely aesthetic (typos in English dialogue) to temporarily frustrating (a princess's special ability failing to recharge until you leave the area) to run-ending (the "reverse controls" gimmick of the second boss lasting after the fight has ended). The worst of these was a game-crashing bug that not only prevented me from progressing in the game's second area, but eventually corrupted my entire save file, forcing me to start over from scratch*. These issues sit on top of the non-technological shortcomings of the game, such as imbalanced difficulty between the classes, shallow NPC interactions, a lack of postgame content, and a couple of unintuitive systems.
With a little more technological polish, Tower Princess would be an easy recommendation. The game's charm never outstays its welcome, its combat and platforming are simple but demanding, and a player can see all the game has to offer in reasonable amount of time. As it exists today, all of those commendations still stand...right next to a warning sticker for the game's many rough edges.
*This issue has since been resolved with a patch. It is mentioned here in the interest of a full and honest recollection of my experience.… Expand
