Tower 57
When retro-futurism meets pixel destruction
Retronator Games Watchlist
Cyangmou is a well-known name in the pixel art scene. Thomas Feichtmeir, as his parents would say, regularly appears in the monthly top 10 awards at PixelJoint and is a moderator of the just as famous Pixelation forums.
In 2014, the young Austrian artist joined forces with Marco ‘Benitosub’ Pappalardo — I’m guessing from Italy, which makes me giggle, since I was born in the country between these two — to work on Tower 57.
The game aims to join the best of top-down shooters Alien Breed and The Chaos Engine, two classic Amiga games from Team17 (of Worms fame) and The Bitmap Brothers (of, well, just fame) respectively.
“A dystopian future in which humanity has found refuge in self-sufficient mega towers … A retro-futuristic setting … A government conspiring to keep its citizens subjugated …”
Master of the colorful 16-bit style and a fan of steam and dieselpunk, Cyangmou doesn’t have a problem bringing Art Deco (read Bioshock) styling into pixel art.
The pair is currently developing a demo focused on the various weapons that showcase the destructible environment powered by a custom engine built by Marco.
Kickstarter has seen this pixel art & destruction combination before with Confederate Express, but the project became infamous and defunct. While Tower 57 doesn’t yet suggest such an advanced lighting engine, the weapon physics is already proving to be state-of-the-art, gory a la Fallout included.
When the upcoming demo and trailer hits crowdfunding, I wish the guys a 1000% brighter outcome than the Confederate Express drama.
Speaking of Fallout, I particularly like Tower 57’s trimetric parallel perspective, as opposed to the isometric standard.
Instead of tilting both diagonals at the 1:2 angle, Cyangmou uses 1:1 ratio on the left. Fallout, for comparison, drops the view even more, with about 1:4 ratio on the right.
While we’re still waiting on numerous gorgeous pixel art (shooter) games funded on Kickstarter (Witchmarsh, Steel Assault, Chasm … the list goes on), I’m excited to see them joined by Tower 57 and its fast-paced gameplay.
As for Retronator Magazine, thanks so much for the very warm welcome to Medium with all the love for the Pixels Huh feature. I spent a bit more time writing this one than I can afford, so expect something in the range between these two in the future. Whatever the amount of text though, the images will always be front and center.
— Retro