This week at Bungie, we’re rallying to our favorite faction.
Anytime your favorite faction is brought up, some friendly smack talk follows. With Faction Rallies, we get to settle those old scores and declare a winner based on which garners the most Guardian support. Right now, millions of Guardians are seeking out and destroying enemy supplies, completing public events, competing in the Crucible, and tackling the endgame. They’re doing their part. Would you like to know more?
Many of you are asking, “Who’s in the lead?” We won’t report on the race while it’s still in progress, but next week, once the winning faction rules the Tower unopposed, we might give you some insight on how things shook out. We will announce the winner on Tuesday, October 3, as soon as the scheduled downtime to deploy Hotfix 1.0.3.1 ends. That will be your chance to purchase the weapon from the winning faction in the Tower. There will be a significant discount if you pledged your loyalty to them during the event. The winning faction’s weapon can be purchased anytime during victory week, which lasts until the next reset.
Faction Rallies is set to become a new ritual that visits the Tower periodically. Once the event is over, tokens can no longer be earned, but you can still redeem any that you’re still holding to receive packages. Any engrams that are waiting to be claimed from a faction vendor will be auto-decrypted and placed in your inventory at the reset. Make sure you turn in all of your tokens before the end of victory week. They will reset before the next Faction Rallies event returns… sometime in the near future.
We are eagerly waiting, along with you, to see who prevails. You have until the weekly reset to make your mark on this event, and earn some loot to help define your identity. Get back out there and fight!
The Sands of War
Destiny 2 has a brand new sandbox full of weapons and abilities at your disposal. The community is already discussing what they believe to be the best tools of destruction to dispatch both alien combatants and other Guardians in the Crucible. Our team has been monitoring these conversations, along with the constant flow of data, to continue supporting the live game as we learn more from the millions of players playing it. We asked Senior Designer Jon Weisnewski to give us a brief update on their mission to keep your box full of sand fun.
Jon Weisnewski: Hello, Guardians. Since the launch of Destiny 2, we have been reading your feedback, spectating streams, and watching YouTube videos. Very recently, we received our first real batch of player data from our analytics team. We’ve also been shoulder-to-shoulder with you in the trenches daily, playing the ever-loving crud out of this game. We’re not ready to go into detail about any weapon or ability tuning at this point, but there is an ongoing process in play, so we did want to drop a quick line and say…
We have heard your feedback. Thank you!
Destiny 2 will get updates that tune the sandbox experience.
We are aware of MIDA Multi-Tool’s popularity and are looking at it very closely. It is popular, but according to our data, there are options out there that match or exceed its effectiveness in all activities. Have you found one?
It’s only the first month of a long adventure. Many players are still gathering weapons for their arsenal and we have a handful of guns that haven’t even hit the game yet. We’re excited to see how things evolve. As always, thanks for playing, and keep the feedback rolling in.
Thanks for being part of the process. If you want to make your voice heard, but you’re not sure where to jump in, I’m always keeping a sharp eye trained on our #Feedback forum. Constructive criticism and war stories are shared with the entire development team.
Patch Notes Preview
Next Tuesday, October 3, we are deploying Hotfix 1.0.3.1. It contains some fixes for issues some players are experiencing. Here is a preview of some of the changes you can expect to see when you download the update next week.
Fixed an issue in which players could lose access to the Veteran’s Transmat Effect by deleting characters
Fixed an issue in which clan engrams would grant Trials of the Nine and raid rewards at only 10 Power
Fixed an issue in which progress for the Exotic Quest Step “His Highness’s Seal” was not incrementing properly
Quest progress will still increment by 1, but the Quest Step now only requires 10 Seals to be collected
Fixed an issue in which raid milestones would not show for some players after the weekly reset (This didn’t affect any raid rewards)
Fixed issues in which players could enter a state where they are continuously killed or unable to resurrect if encounter complete and failure events occurred simultaneously
If you’re still experiencing an issue not listed in the fixes above, check the list of known issues we are still investigating. If it’s not included, let us know. There will be more updates in the future. Destiny is always evolving.
Hotter Fixes
Speaking of known issues, our Player Support Team is in charge of monitoring our help forum for any player reports and making sure our team has the info they need to diagnose and treat any ailments in the game.
This is their report.
Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.0.3.1
Destiny 2 Services will be taken offline on Tuesday, October 3, in preparation for Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.0.3.1.
Players will no longer be able to sign in to Destiny 2
Players will be removed from all activities at 9 AM PDT (4 PM UTC)
We advise players complete raid and Nightfall activities well before this time to avoid a Cabal victory
Maintenance expected to complete at 12 PM PDT (7 PM UTC)
Players may encounter the Destiny Server Queue when attempting to sign in after maintenance
For vital information concerning Destiny 2 Server and Update Status, please see this Help Article. Stay tuned to @BungieHelp or monitor our support feed on Help.Bungie.net for status updates throughout the maintenance window.
PlayStation 4 Crashes
We are continuing to work with our platform partners at Sony to address an issue where players encounter PlayStation Error CE-34878-0 when attempting to visit the Tower, or during general gameplay. Stay tuned to @BungieHelp and @AskPlayStation for updates.
Cayde’s Stash, Lost Sector, and Planetary Chest Reward Issues
We are investigating reports of players opening rewards chests and not receiving loot. If you are encountering this issue, please post a report to the #Help forum detailing the following:
Which type of chest did not grant rewards?
Had you interacted with alternate chests or planetary materials prior to this issue occurring?
It is expected that if too many planetary chests are opened within a short amount of time, players may not receive items. Cayde’s Stash and Lost Sector chests should not follow this functionality. We will provide updates on our investigation when available.
Leviathan Raid Keys
Through our investigations with internal teams, we have identified two instances where Leviathan raid keys are erroneously removed from character inventory.
Signing in with alternate characters will remove raid keys if the character had not been signed in since the weekly reset.
If a player earns Raid keys and creates a new character, raid keys are removed from inventory.
To prevent this issue, we advise players sign in with all characters or inspect all characters on the Destiny Companion App prior to completing checkpoints within the Leviathan raid after the weekly reset.
Please note: Leviathan raid progress, including key rewards, are reset each week. We are looking to address issues where keys are removed erroneously with a future update. Stay tuned to @BungieHelp for future announcements.
Lens Flair
You may have noticed the new MOTW Gif above. That’s because the new MOTW emblem arrived with Update 1.0.3.0 earlier this week. All MOTW winners since the launch of Destiny 2, including honorable mentions, will be rewarded with the Lens of Fate emblem.
This week, we have three more winners receiving top honors for multimedia storytelling. If you would like your shot at winning it in the future, submit your video to the Creations page.
At Bungie, we’re all having a great time playing Destiny 2 with you. We’re also enjoying reading everyone’s ideas on how to keep making the game better. Keep the chatter coming.
Tomorrow, I’m heading back to Texas for a week, to surround myself with the ol familial fireteam. That means DeeJ will be back in the pilot seat for the next TWAB. I’ve told him you prefer my conversational writing style, and that he should keep the purple prose to a dull roar. Maybe you can talk him into hiding some Bungie dogs in it? I’ll still be online, but you may not hear from me as often. I’m technically supposed to be off work. In reality, I usually can’t help but keep an eye on things.
Play Destiny 2 Free on PC August 29–31 During Open Beta
UPDATE 8/29/17:The Destiny 2 PC Open Beta has begun! Guardians everywhere can now play for FREE until August 31.
EARLY ACCESS – AUGUST 28
Players who’ve pre-ordered or pre-purchased the PC version of Destiny 2 will be able to play the Early Access phase of the PC Beta beginning August 28 at 10 a.m. PT. If you pre-purchased directly from the Blizzard Shop, you should already have a Beta Early Access license, so you’ll be ready to play when the time comes. If you pre-ordered or pre-purchased Destiny 2 through other means, please visit www.destinythegame.com/beta. If you haven’t pre-purchased Destiny 2 for PC yet, you can do so through the Blizzard Shop.
The Open Beta phase will begin on August 29 at 10 a.m. PT. All PC players will be able to play for FREE during this period. To play, you’ll just need the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app and a free Blizzard account—no additional sign-up or code required.
For more detailed information, including what content will be available and how to submit feedback, please visit Bungie’s latest PC Beta update on Bungie.net.
INSTALLATION AND PLAY INSTRUCTIONS
When the time comes, you’ll first need to download the Destiny 2 PC Beta through the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app. To install and play on August 28 (for Early Access) or August 29 (for Open Beta), please follow the instructions below.
Blizzard esports competitions have a cutting-edge, live-event destination with the opening of Blizzard Arena Los Angeles. The Burbank, California venue was custom-designed and built with amenities to accommodate top esports competitors and their fans. With high profile events for Hearthstone esports and Overwatch esports already scheduled, Blizzard Arena Los Angeles will be the hot destination for premier esports competition.
Multiple broadcasts and events can be run out of Blizzard Arena simultaneously, thanks to the multiple sound stages, control rooms and player lounges throughout the facility. The on-site Blizzard store will open during events and feature a rotating selection of gear and goods based on the event taking place at the time.
The Overwatch Contenders Playoffs will run the weekend of October 7–8 and serve as the grand opening event of Blizzard Arena Los Angeles. The top Overwatch Contenders teams from Europe and North America will arrive to battle over prize pools and regional dominance as they take center stage at the Arena.
On October 13, the Summer Championship for the Hearthstone Championship Tour takes over the Arena for a full weekend of championship competition with $250,000 on the line. The players left standing will be the final entrants in the Hearthstone World Championship, scheduled for early 2018.
When the Overwatch League launches later this year, Blizzard Arena Los Angeles will be the home for the inaugural season, bringing players and fans together for a celebration of professional Overwatch esports.
BlizzCon® 2017 takes place November 3–4, but we’re kicking off the celebration early with the BlizzCon 2017 Virtual Ticket—available to order starting today through the Blizzard Shop!
The Virtual Ticket is your personal online and mobile warp gate to BlizzCon from wherever you are—and this year, we’ve upgraded the Virtual Ticket experience to bring you closer to the show than ever before.
For starters, the Virtual Ticket unlocks live access to all the stages at BlizzCon 2017—and in addition to the game updates, developer discussions, and community contests you’ve come to enjoy, you’ll also get access to events featuring community creators, voice actors, and more. Our new BlizzCon All Access channel will act as your guided tour through the event and around the show floor.
We’re also getting the party started early this year with several series of weekly pre-BlizzCon videos that go behind-the-scenes with Blizzard and our talented community. The first of these are available NOW—head over to the BlizzCon Watch page to start exploring.
For the whole lowdown, watch the new BlizzCon 2017 Pre-show Global Event featuring your BlizzCon All Access channel hosts: Michele Morrow, Alex Albrecht, and Malik Forté.
BlizzCon® 2017 Virtual Ticket – What’s Included
The BlizzCon 2017 Virtual Ticket offers comprehensive live HD coverage of Blizzard Entertainment’s gaming celebration via live stream. With more than 60 hours of programming, you’ll have plenty to watch live and via on-demand replays for more than a month after the show.
With the BlizzCon 2017 Virtual Ticket, you’ll unlock access to:
Developer and Community Events: Witness the latest game news live, get firsthand developer insight, and watch your favorite community creators in action on four stages. Full schedule to come!
Costume and Talent Contests: Get a great view of the creativity on display in the legendary BlizzCon Costume Contest and epic Talent Contest on Friday night.
Closing Ceremony: Be there for the closing festivities on Saturday night, celebrating two full days of Blizzard gaming and community.
Exclusive Interviews: Dig deeper into our game universes through exclusive interviews with Blizzard developers on the BlizzCon All Access channel.
Behind the Scenes & From the Floor: The BlizzCon All Access channel also gives you a closer look at the show floor so you can experience the more of BlizzCon from the comfort of your home.
Pre-show Video Series: Starting today on the Blizzard Watch page, enjoy multiple series of weekly videos leading up to the show, including Inside the Blizzard Vault, Casual Cosplay, and Artist’s Journey. Watch some for free, and unlock them all with the Virtual Ticket.
In-Game Goodies: Unlock this year’s BlizzCon in-game items for World of Warcraft®, Overwatch®, Hearthstone®, StarCraft® II, Diablo® III, and Heroes of the Storm®.
Heroes of Azeroth can show their BlizzCon spirit in World of Warcraft with the Stormwind Skychaser mount (for the Alliance!) and Orgrimmar Interceptor mount (for the Horde!)—available in-game starting today!
Enhanced Esports Viewing: The epic esports competition is always free, but this year, Virtual Ticket holders can watch without third-party commercials on BlizzCon.com and in the BlizzCon mobile app. During regular ad breaks, Virtual Ticket viewers will see alternate Blizzard content—including during Opening Week. Full esports schedule to come!
Goody Bag Discount: Get $10 USD off this year’s BlizzCon Goody Bag—visit the Goody Bag blog for all the details.*
The BlizzCon Virtual Ticket is available through the Blizzard Shop in the Americas, Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Korea, and Southeast Asia (pricing and availability varies by region) and is also available in China (sold separately). The Virtual Ticket live stream is available in HD (720p) and in English only.
Subtitles for On Demand Videos BlizzCon is an epic celebration of Blizzard’s universes and our global community that truly brings them to life. This year, in order to bring that experience to more people across the globe than ever before, Virtual Ticket buyers will get access to subtitled VODs of the events on ALL four BlizzCon content stages, plus BlizzCon All Access Channel VODs, in the following languages: English, German, Russian, Korean and French. You can buy the Virtual Ticket now on the Blizzard Shop.
Be sure to make your purchase on the Blizzard Account you wish to use to watch the show, receive the in-game goodies, and get your BlizzCon Goody Bag discount. If you don’t yet have a Blizzard account, you can create one free now.
If you’re attending BlizzCon 2017 in person, you should have already received a code (one per ticket purchased) which can be used to unlock the Virtual Ticket and associated perks on a single Blizzard Account. These codes were emailed directly to the BlizzCon ticket purchaser, so check with the person who bought your ticket if you haven’t yet received your code.
Goody Bags Are Back!
The BlizzCon 2017 Goody Bag is a backpack chock full of collectibles, including an exclusive Eidgenossin Mercy backpack hanger and a treasure trove of real-world loot based on your favorite Blizzard games. You can pre-purchase* this sack o’ goodies now through the Blizzard Gear Store for $45 USD, but Virtual Ticket Purchasers can pre-purchase the Goody Bag at an automatically discounted price of $35. You also have the option to get an Epic Upgrade for your Goody Bag to get even more gear.
People attending BlizzCon in person will receive the standard Goody Bag with their ticket. If you’d like to purchase the additional items from the Epic Upgrade for your Goody Bag for $25, stay tuned for details.
The BlizzCon merchandise is also coming back, with early access for ticket holders. Stay tuned for more details.
Free Pre-Event Content, Opening Ceremony, and Esports Streams
This year, you can catch tons of BlizzCon content online for free. Catch a selection of pre-event content free on BlizzCon.com, where new videos will be added each week until the convention starts.
And as always, coverage of the BlizzCon opening ceremony and this year’s esports tournaments—including the global championships for StarCraft II, Heroes of the Storm, and World of Warcraft; the Hearthstone Inn-vitational and Tavern Vs. Tavern finals; and the finals of the Overwatch World Cup—will be streamed for free in HD at www.blizzcon.com
The Overwatch League™ Signs Final Three Teams for Inaugural Season
The World Could Use More Win
The Overwatch League is on a mission to celebrate fans and afford them opportunities to become champions through a professional esports ecosystem that embraces passion and rewards excellence.
Millions have answered the call to Overwatch, and the excitement of all those scientists, soldiers, adventurers, and oddities led directly to the creation of a new kind of esports program. Teams will have stability, players will have careers, and fans will have a new set of heroes to take them into the future of Overwatch.
Surviving the unexpected in indie development to make Ruiner
Ruiner is a new twin-stick shooter from Reikon Games that’s dripping with atmosphere, a pulpy murder-filled story, and intense action that’s…well, admittedly rather difficult. It’s another feather in publisher Devolver Digital’s cap, and we were lucky enough today to get to talk with Reikon co-founders Magdalena Tomkowicz and Jakub Styliński on the Gamasutra Twitch channel.
It was a fun time, and a great chance to look at a game that mixes pulpy, polished violence with an interesting revenge story. You can watch our full conversation with Tomkowicz and Styliński up above, but in case you’re already on your way to KILL THE BOSS right now, here’s a few noteworthy takeaways.
There’s storytelling power in top-down spaces
Tomkowicz, the game’s narrative designer, was kind enough to explain her philosophy for fitting a proper revenge story inside a twin-stick shooter. She shared some practical tips, including making sure no line of dialogue was longer than 3 lines, but also she said part of the goal was to make sure much of the game read “like a comic book.”
In comic books, Tomkowicz said, readers still take a long time to read pages even though there’s less dialogue than prose. So with Ruiner, she attempted to paint the game’s story through images the player can process as they move through the environment, helping add flavor to the top-down perspective.
Be prepared for ANYTHING
Styliński spent a lot of time talking about how, despite years of experience at companies like CD Projekt Red and Techland, the Ruiner development team couldn’t have predicted the challenges they’d run into. The worst of them (which they survived) was when it licensed a track for Ruiner’s announcement trailer…which had to be promptly taken down because the musician they’d licensed the track from had used music they didn’t own.
As Styliński said (in exasperation), there was literally no way to predict this happening, so the journey to make sure they could have an announcement trailer for PAX East was a huge challenge that they hadn’t anticipated. If you’re going indie—even with experience—Styliński advices you to get ready for challenges like this, along with the normal creative and technical ones.
Faceless characters don’t have to be generic characters
Lastly, Styliński and Tomkowicz talked about the main character’s design, and how his faceless LED helmet gives players a character they can project their own ideas onto. We asked how they felt about their hero compared to the supposedly “relatable” generic shooter heroes of years before, and they said that there’s still something specific about Ruiner’s violent hero that rewards player’s imagination, instead of depressing it. If you’re working on a game in need of an interesting hero, Tomkowicz’s insights might help you make something memorable.
Watch Q-Games’ Dylan Cuthbert share stories of coding Star Fox
Veteran game dev Dylan Cuthbert appeared today in the latest episode of Double Fine’s ongoing “Devs Play” series of design-focused Let’s Plays videos to share game dev trivia about the making of the 1993 Super Nintendo game Star Fox.
It’s worth watching because while Cuthbert is now well-known as the founder of Q-Games (The Tomorrow Children), in the ’90s he was working at Argonaut Software as one of the core programmers on Star Fox and its canned sequel.
This week Nintendo released its SNES Classic mini-console, which counts both Star Fox and the never-released (before now) Star Fox 2 among its library of 21 SNES games. To mark the occasion, Double Fine (in conjunction with 2 Player Productions) published the video of Cuthbert telling stories about his time working on Star Fox and Star Fox 2 as someone else played through the original game.
Devs who enjoy the video might want to check out its companion piece, another Devs Play video published today in which Cuthbert chats about working on the (Japan-only) 1992 Game Boy shooter game X, which is much akin to Star Fox. You can find both videos and many more like them over on the Double Fine YouTube channel.
If you’d like to hear more from Cuthbert about what it was like to work on a Star Fox sequel and see it mothballed until this week, check out our recent chat with him about Star Fox 2.
Speedrunners Love Splasher, Available Now on Xbox One
It all began at the Stunfest Festival, an arcade gaming event for which a lot of players, fighting game pros and speedrunners, save the date each year. It was not only the perfect place to organize a massive playtest session, but we also met the godfathers of the French speedrun scene: speedrunners Realmyop and Prospere. So we asked them to talk about their collaboration with the Splashteam for making Splasher a speedrun friendly title.
Realmyop: I met Romain during a French video game festival. We played the demo a lot, talked about Splasher and we agreed on the great opportunity provided by the game in terms of speedrunning.
Prospere: Splasher is made of the best 2D platformers, and for me it was very natural to work on integrating a whole speedrun system inside the game. It’s simple: today I can’t imagine a good arcade platformer coming up without any descent “competitive” features.
Realmyop, the “88 miles per hour” guy, has built a team with speedrun experts Prospere, Twyn and Kilaye. These dudes speedrun games for more than a decade, and incarnated the perfect crew to help us. Some of them even made a lot of speedrun on the last Rayman Origins and Legends platformers, games I’ve worked on too!
Realmyop: Our main goal was to make the game “Speedrun Friendly”, we were not there to tell how to build the levels, the gameplay mechanics, or the graphics and sounds. We wanted the speedrunners to feel at home but also welcome newcomers to the genre.
Prospere: Speedrunning games have always been a niche thing, with their own patterns, dedicated websites and unofficial leaderboards … it’s an underground community. But I think It’s about time that a wider audience get introduced to this very cool kind of eSport.
It’s not easy to achieve this goal, and there is a lot of parameters to work with. First because the speedrun is a way of playing that requires special tools. Realmyop and the runners shared a lot of precious advices during our collaboration.
Realmyop: In many games, there is no timer and most speedrunners are using external tools to time their runs. Even worse, sometimes the timer is buggy and can’t be used as what the speedrunners call the “in-game time.” So, our first work was to build an accurate stopwatch, useful for speedrunners which provides rigorous information at the right time. We took our inspiration for the stopwatch from metrics used by the speedrunning community such as “splits.”
Prospere: Splasher is our second speedrun design mission, right after last year’s indie hit Furi. It was a great experience to work with Romain, and seeing our features integrated in the game a couple of days right after our meetings. The cool thing is that we took time to iterate a lot, with a very reactive and passionate developer, and the results were there.
As long as we’re adding and tweaking these speedrun essentials into the game, we also started to design different modes, or let say different ways of speedrunning Splasher. We had to ask ourselves this question: What are speedrunners used to see?
Realmyop: We worked on what speedrunners call “categories.” For example: most games can be played in two main categories, “Any%” and “100%”. There is way more categories, every game can be different and the categories are made by the speedrun community. In Splasher, we tried to anticipate the categories that could be played, and we implemented 3 of them directly in the game.
Prospere: As our knowledge of the game was increasing with time, we were able to tell “this path is slightly better than this one”, “here you can optimize by doing this or that” etc. We were the high end playtesters, haha.
What speedrunners are used to see, and comfortable with, was not our only concern because attracting neophytes was part of the plan too.
Realmyop: All racing games are using Time Attack to record best times and some are even using medals as a reward to get the players to play again and again the same track to improve their time. Using this mechanic, we pioneered a full run of the game, and coupled it with the more typical achievements.
And building a community around the game was also something we were willing to do.
Realmyop: One important thing is the community, you need to follow it, to listen to it and stimulate it. We’re still following the runners and their progression, we’re always surprised by the performances and seeing gamers being so dedicated.
Not a great deal has been said about Tower of Babel; the game seems to have found its way onto the Switch’s eShop without anyone noticing where it came from. There isn’t even the slightest mention of the game on the official website or Twitter feed of its publisher, EnjoyUp Games, which is very odd indeed. EnjoyUp published multiple games across the Wii U and 3DS platforms (which, for the most part, happened to be rather average affairs), so it is strange that they wouldn’t be kicking up a fuss about their first Switch release.
Tower of Babel is an auto-runner that sees the protagonist (a knight in shining armour) tasked with collecting gems that can return light to the top of various towers, effectively saving the world. The plot isn’t important here, though; it is all about the gameplay itself. To collect these gems, you will have to survive dangerous trips to the top of spiral towers – by pulling or pushing the control stick you are able to speed up or slow down, and you also have the ability to jump or crouch with ‘A’ and ‘B’ respectively. These are used to dodge various obstacles that stand in your way, as well as jump over any perilous gaps between platforms.
Your first goal is to reach the top of a tower, collecting the required amount of gems, and surviving its traps. Once you get there, though, you then have to run back down the tower to escape as it crumbles to the ground. This effectively means that each tower actually contains two levels – one concerned with grabbing a set amount of collectables, and the other focusing on pure speed. For each duo you can view an online leaderboard of the fastest times achieved so your speed is important on both sections. Later on in the game you will face levels that provide you with a jet-pack and, thanks to this item’s double-jump ability, the speed-running aspect of the game intensifies slightly as you attempt to completely hurdle platforms rather than slowly jumping across each one.
Overall there are five sets of three towers (depending on the skill of the player, you’ll likely find yourself completing the main game in a couple of hours, give-or-take). Each of these five sets is made up of its own theme meaning that your surroundings and obstacles change to match the environment. These new obstacles are introduced at a pleasing rate and many behave in different ways to the ones you are used to from previous stages. The game’s most interesting feature comes from the layout of the three towers in each set – the first tower has just a single lane for you to run in, the second has two, and the third has three. Each tower becomes slightly more complex as a result of this, resulting in a rather satisfying growth in difficulty as you progress.
You’re probably thinking that everything is sounding pretty positive, right? Well you’d be correct, which is why it is so frustrating the game lets itself down with some unforgivable problems. The worst of these problems is an issue with the frame rate; at times it can drop so drastically that any kind of auto-running precision is impossible. As well as this, every now and then we would notice our character narrowly miss the edge of a platform, only to find that pressing the jump button allowed us to carry on as if we had made it. Another time, we paused the game and were presented with a different screen to the usual pause menu which showed a different button layout for the “quit” and “resume” options. We pressed the new button for “resume”, which used to be for “quit”, and were thrown out of the game, losing our progress on that level. Great!
The overall presentation of the game is quite weak too, and has some odd design decisions. The art style has a quirky quality to it that could have been successful but eventually starts to feel bland and, unfortunately, there are times when it just looks plain ugly. The soundtrack is made up entirely of electronic dance tracks which could have been fine – in fact, some of the songs that crop up are great – but when you’re playing as a knight, running up and down medieval towers with a sword in hand, futuristic beeps and chirps aren’t exactly the kind of sounds that come to mind. The music is good; it just feels so entirely out of place.
Tower of Babel could have been a great little game; there are moments of brilliance in its auto-running, especially in its later levels where you’ll find yourself whizzing from lane to lane, avoiding obstacles at almost blinding speed. There are just too many issues plaguing the game, though – leaving us in a position where we simply cannot justify a full recommendation. If a particularly nasty stutter in the frame rate happens just as you are about to land on a tiny platform you will inevitably fall to your death and, if we’re being brutally honest, that is unforgivable.
Conclusion
At its best, Tower of Babel has some great auto-running action that will have you flying around the screen at breakneck pace, firing yourself to the top of the speed-running leaderboards. Unfortunately, though, the whole thing is let down by some game-breaking issues and a rather lacklustre aesthetic that maybe answers the question of why there has been so little mention of the game prior to release. A frustrating case of a game that could have been excellent but shoots itself in the foot with its many problems, Tower of Babel is best left for another day.
