Warlock’s Tower Review

Ratalaika Games are back with another title, Warlock’s Tower which will make Platinum trophy hunters come in droves. This time round you play as Tim, who is effectively a postman that needs to deliver a letter to an evil warlock, the contents of the letter basically saying that everyone likes the warlock so he shouldn’t carry out his world ending plan.

Warlock’s Tower is a puzzle game played out on a single screen. You could argue it is distantly linked to the Lara Croft/Hitman Go games in the way that you are required to play. You have a set number of steps that you can take to get to the door thus exiting the level, if you exceed those steps you have to start again. Luckily there are numbered jewels that increase the steps you can take to reach your goal, the idea is that you plan your route to be the most efficient it can be, otherwise you’ll have to replay the level. Bear in mind though that when you pick up a new set of steps, they replace the steps you had. There are only two numbered jewels in Warlock’s Tower which give you either 3 or 5 steps, so if you had 5 steps remaining and walked into a 3 step jewel then you’ll only have 3 steps left.

As you progress through Warlock’s Tower, the warlock will appear and make you aware of a new object on a level. There will be times when you need to pull levers, step on buttons, traverse escalators and moving pots. Later on, enemies appear which move at different intervals, this increases the amount of strategy you need to employ because if they catch you, then it’s back to start of the level again. There are times when a second character comes into play and you have to jump between her and Tim to complete a stage.

All these elements are slowly introduced into Warlock’s Tower and it doesn’t overwhelm you too early. When you get to the later stages there is a lot happening on-screen but because each element has been added in at the right time you welcome the challenge. There are other characters within Warlock’s Tower who you can meet, however, besides popping a trophy they don’t actually add anything to the game.

Graphically Warlock’s Tower feels like a Gameboy game, it’s simple pixel art and pixelated characters work well with the simplistic controls. The different stages are represented with slightly different colour schemes. In simple games like Warlock’s Tower, there usually isn’t much in terms of menu options and how they are presented, which is the same with Warlock’s Tower and what is present is easily navigated. Musically Warlock’s Tower contains the usual upbeat puzzle tunes you would expect. Depending on your skill level Warlock’s Tower could take between 1 to 5 hours to complete.

Warlock’s Tower is a decent puzzler, which is helped by the almost silly warlock and other character interactions as you make your way through each increasingly challenging level. Warlock’s Tower is a retro game but it is a title that will tax your brain. If you fancy challenging yourself then Warlock’s Tower is worth a couple hours of your time.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Playstation 4 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.