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Phantom Tower is a new action roguelike title from developer Horien Studio. We first reported on it a couple of weeks ago when the Steam release date was announced. Since then, we’ve had the chance to try Phantom Tower and played through the first few hours. The game was originally released on mobile devices, where it was free to play and had adverts to cover the cost of development. On Steam, however, the game doesn’t have adverts and can currently be bought in an early access state.
Mentioning that Phantom Tower is in an early access phase of its Steam development is important because this game is still very rough around the edges, and it feels as though some aspects are either missing or haven’t translated well from mobile to PC and require fixing. That said, what is here so far is fun and the game feels like a blend of traditional ARPGs such as Diablo and modern roguelike action titles.
You start the game by picking one of the usual fantasy type charcters, and we went for the ranger. The player starts in a town where you can manage inventory, use ingredients to build things, and generally oversee your characters’ build and equipment. We found this area quite confusing and couldn’t work out how to use many of the shops or services, and this felt like one of the main aspects of the game that needs a lot of work to translate from mobile to desktop.
Then we headed for the tower where the main action takes place. The tower itself is broken down into different floors that are cleared once you destroy the boss. Along the way, you’re rewarded with buffs for your character that determine your build and loadout. While taking down enemies and exploring the different rooms of each level was quite fun, we had lots of trouble using the menus when equipping items and trying to upgrade our character. This, again, just feels like a mobile hangover and will need patching out.
During our run on Phantom Tower, we got to the eleventh floor and decided to go back to the town to sort out our equipment and items. Up to that point, we hadn’t died once, and our ranger felt very powerful compared to the enemies we had faced. We also switched from the traditional tower levels to a set of woodland levels about halfway through and couldn’t find a way back to the tower. We assume you can just switch between themes at certain points in the game.
Overall, Phantom Tower shows a lot of promise but will need to drop a lot of the mobile-style controls, features, and menus to ever be considered a competent experience. We don’t like to point out too many negatives of a game, but this is hard to recommend as it is in the current state. The menus and controls need lots of fixing, and there needs to be a tutorial at the start to explain a lot more about crafting items, as we just couldn’t work out how to do any of it. There is a good game in Phantom Tower; the graphics and premise are good, it’s just let down by a lack of polish in important areas.
