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.

Players will be able to choose between characters, each starting with a different primary and seconday weapon as well as a unique ability.

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.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen many games with orange water yet.

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.

Well then, looks like it’s time to blow shit up.

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.

Limbs do fall off when coming into contact with sharp objects. And heads. And torsos. Players that have used an SMG up close and personal in Fallout know what I’m talking about.

When the upcoming demo and trailer hits crowdfunding, I wish the guys a 1000% brighter outcome than the Confederate Express drama.

The train intro sequence from the work-in-progress Kickstarter trailer.

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.

Tower 57 assets (left) and comparisson of projections (right, by SharkD [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons)

Fallout 1, Interplay Entertainment, 1997 (screenshots by William Shawn McDonie)

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.

Designed with online co-op from the get-go, the game is also planned to be cross-platform for Windows, OS X and Linux. Thank you, indie developers!

It’s time to chew bubble gum and burn everything in sight.

If your heart gets happy when looking at GIFs of mass destruction, you can follow Tower 57’s development on IndieDB, TIGForums or Twitter.

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