As far as the term ‘arcade’ goes, Tower Bloxx Deluxe fits the bill far truer than many of the bigger games on release through your chunky green Microsoft interface: the likes of Epic’s Shadow Complex, Battlefield 1943 or Konami’s Zombie Apocalypse are not far off being shop-worthy games in their own right as opposed to mini distractions in the mould of Pacman or Space Invaders, and in this respect, Tower Bloxx Deluxe is an arcade game in its definitive form. It’s simple, archaic and, if my atrocious scores are anything to go by, really damn difficult.
The premise here is tower-building. The building of towers from blocks – or Bloxx, rather – and that’s it. No messing, no real purpose, but the game’s simplicity offers a good deal of entertainment from a relatively stale proposal. Starting from the grounds of a particularly vibrant building site, players are required to stack blocks on top of one another while the crane shakes around doing whatever it feels like: timing is the key, and believe me, reflexes will be tested and quite possibly, like mine, embarrassed. A tap of the A button drops the block from the crane, and the player will have to account for speed, distance, etc. in order to land the thing directly on top of the last. Accurate positioning is rewarded with bonus points, with perfect drops generating big multipliers.
This simple mechanic is clothed in a lively aesthetic that sees the blocks evolve gradually into chunky buildings of varying size and luxury for Xbox 360 avatars to house in – very twee, and no doubt this would not look remotely out of place on the Wii, especially with the inclusion of the avatars. With each block set down, little avatar men will fly into your building and score you points – pretty, yes, but with so much colour bouncing all over the screen all the time, it can become a strain on the eyes even after a short period of play.
Tower Bloxx Deluxe has a modest selection of game modes, offering only Quick Play, Time Trial and Build A City. The first is straightforward enough: build a tower as high as you can before you miss the blocks and break it. How high you can go I’ve yet to find out. I got as high as Jupiter (where the avatars flying into the buildings turned into astronauts…) before it all came tumbling down, but where the boundaries stop is anyone’s guess. Alpha Centuri? Probably.
The Time Trial option offers little more than the previous, and it’s only the Build A City mode that offers a more complex gaming opportunity. With a short cutscene of a stranded mayor wishing to expand his dwindling city, you are called in to undertake the Tower Bloxx Deluxe – hey, guess what that involves? With the city divided into four sized grids, each one holding one building – you must populate it with as many residents as possible by making the best towers you can. Earning upgrades along the way to boost scores, the city gradually expands and things become a little more challenging. Different sizes of buildings become available – ten-story blue towers, twenty story red towers, and so on – until you unlock the mega tower, and up to one hundred available stories.
Things get a little complicated from here on out – the bigger buildings must be situated next to smaller buildings as well as other requirements, and some serious land-management is required to gain an optimum population. This is where the puzzle element of the game takes hold, and the player will soon find themselves toppling buildings to replace them with other variants, until the required population targets are met. To put it shortly, this reviewer is no where near finishing this mode. It is difficult, and what’s more, it can become more than a little strenuous having to build and rebuild towers just to gain an extra few citizens – the game mechanic quickly becomes exhausted, and it’s not long before the enjoyment of tower building comes to a standstill, and your city will soon follow.
True to the nature of the arcade, then, Tower Bloxx Deluxe sticks rigidly to its formula and offers little differentiation. This is no bad thing: the gameplay is enjoyable, the visuals are charming, it’s just a shame that the Build A City can so quickly sap the joy out of building towers as you find yourself staring at grid of colours looking in desperation for a way to improve your score. Difficulty is one thing, but the Build A City mode offers little motivation to challenge it. Tower Bloxx Deluxe is at its best when you’re stacking a building up past the Moon and surrounding spaceships, in front of on looking crowds of astronaut-avatars, and where the lifelessness of grids and strategies are taken out of the equation.
VideogameUK verdict: 6/10
