I played Tower Fortress as a kid almost a decade ago around release and remembered it as a fun but unforgiving vertical roguelike. But coming back to it after playing similar games, such as Downwell, Tower Fortress just feels clunky, inconsistent, and heavily luck-based. For any game, especially for an unforgiving roguelike, inconsistency makes playing it extremely frustrating, with losses almost completely out of the player's control.
For starters the hitboxes feel clunky and inconsistent. Your double jump in-game is like a sonic spin jump where most enemies cannot hurt you, while you can hurt them. The problem is that if you touch a platform, or wall, you will lose the spin and become vulnerable. This should be fine, but some enemies can go through the walls or floors, making certain situations where you just barely touch a wall or floor instead of an enemy, even if it looks like the enemy is sticking out of the floor/wall. Sometimes you can shoot while spinning, sometimes you will stop spinning for the frame you shot, it feels so inconsistent... Can we safely shoot while spinning or not?
Standing too close facing the outer walls makes your bullets completely not register. This makes no sense for certain weapons, such as the homing rockets that are designed to go through anything, or the rubber bullets that are designed to bounce off walls. Touching the side of a spike for some reason will hurt you, even if you are sliding off the wall of it. I have even seen glitches where my bullets are going completely through enemies, and they aren't taking any damage. Also, you can take damage DURING A CUTSCENE...
Some of the enemies are designed to be inconsistent as well. It seems that the frogs jump at a random distance, flies will move randomly. The green ghost will appear out of nowhere forcing the player to move away from the ghost, and for some reason it is the only enemy that highlights itself (where you cannot safely spin hit it) after you've hit it? A lot of the enemies in the game have janky hitboxes as well.
The upgrades for this game are so poorly designed it makes the game extremely frustrating to play.
In-game there are chests that contain a weapon upgrade, when they are shot enough they open, allowing the player to pick the upgrade by touching it. The problem is that picked up upgrades are irreversible. So if you had a gun upgrade that you completely based your character upgrades on, and accidently picked up another weapon upgrade that completely goes against what you had centered your run around, you can see how this is annoying, and just simply bad game design. It also doesn't help that a lot of the upgrades are either overpowered or literally worse than the default gun. The saber sword has great range, and can even hit enemies above. Whereas the laser, has an extremely low fire rate, and cannot even go through walls. For a roguelike that can become chaotic it shouldn't be where accidently opening a chest and touching the upgrade ruins your run.
When you play this game, you will also realize that weapon upgrades typically do more damage to enemies. For some reason it seems that certain weapon upgrades don't scale properly when trying to break open health drops. This causes the player to sometimes use an absurd amount of ammo and time to open a health crate for its gems, which can also ruin your combo, and make you lose your weapon upgrade from the wasted bullets.
Another issue I have with this game is how the levels are generated. Sometimes a level will be extremely easy, with enemies spread throughout with plenty of room, while others will have all of the enemies clustered up, and certain situations where it is seemingly impossible to not take damage. Sometimes the game will give you almost nothing but easy enemies, while others only give a lot of harder ones with projectiles and high health. Some premade generations completely favor vertical weapon upgrades, sometimes a saw will deceptively barely go through a platform, sometimes a saw will completely block off where you need to go. As mentioned earlier spikes can hurt you even if you slide off the side of them. Pair this with enemies that move randomly like the frog or fly, and you have a cluster that is almost out of your control. Also, sometimes the previously mentioned chest will be in your way forcing you to pick up the upgrade, sometimes by accident. It comes down to the combination, and if everything lines up against you, you will have to take damage and break your combo.
If you combine all of these issues together, you get this clunky game that is depicted by complete randomness; clunky inconsistent hitboxes, enemies with randomness, game-defying weapon upgrades almost out of the players control, and generated levels that depict whether you chose the correct upgrades, or if you will get stuck taking damage. Good luck trying to get the 100 combo achievement, considering there can be a drought of enemies, or an impossible combo that'll either make you run out of time or get hurt. I've had runs where I instantly kill the boss during their start animation, because I got lucky, or ones where I actually have to fight them with 1 HP, with the literal worst gun.
I would recommend Downwell over Tower Fortress. It has actual consistent hitboxes, the game clearly shows what enemies you can stomp on, the generated levels are actually balanced, the different levels have unique hazards that doesn't favor certain upgrades, the combos are actually rewarding, and you can revert your weapon upgrade. Downwell can visually get clustered up, but I always find myself at fault when losing on Downwell. It just doesn't feel the same on Tower Fortress.
