Towerclimb is a game I've been struggling with for around 3 years. I've put in about 100 hours, I play it often, and still the end is not even within my grasp. The fact that a game can be this difficult (I play it only on easy mode), and I can be this awful at it, and yet I still come back over and over again: that's the sign of a good rogue-like. In the sagely proverb relating to Dwarf Fortress: "losing is fun." This game is analogous to Slay the Spire, another rogue-like that I'm hopelessly addicted to, where I climb a dizzying tower, that I play all the time, and that I'm awful at (I don't expect I'll ever get the "true ending"). Yet I still come back, because losing is fun, and the gameplay loop is so compelling.

The concept of Towerclimb is simple: you have to climb the tower. This tower is broken up into themed zones, and each zone is broken up into levels. It starts off with some basic dungeon-style areas inhabited by rats, insects, lava pools, traps. And as you climb higher, things become stranger and more surreal, and you start to uncover scraps of lore (why is this tower here, why are we climbing it?). As you scale the tower, it becomes exponentially difficult. Death is always millimetres away, and the slightest miscalculation or accidental press on the controller will send you straight to the game over screen. But death rarely seems unfair, because the controls and the game mechanics are so tight and responsive, giving the player as much opportunity as possible within the rules of the game.

The controls are standard platformer controls, except that you can grab and climb on any surface. Further mechanics are introduced with bombs and jump potions (allowing a double-jump) and various other strange items like swords, boomerangs, various berries/powerups. In the first 10 or so levels (when I was a climbing novice) I mostly ignored all these items, but as you grow more experienced you learn to utilise them all very carefully. By the later stages of the game, the odds are stacked so far against you that you need every little advantage you can gather. I really want to beat this game, hopefully this year, as it's easily the most-difficult game in my Steam library that I haven't yet beaten.

It's hard to point out flaws in this little gem. The pixel art is absolutely gorgeous. The soundtrack is some delicious synthesized chiptune sounding thing, like from an old SNES/Amiga game. The attention to detail is remarkable with all the little peculiar features, death animations, mini-games, mysterious lore/secrets, hidden mechanics. The devs are still working on the third and final chapter to the game, and a level editor. I've played many games in the random-gen rogue-like platformer genre (Spelunky, Dead Cells, Vagante, Caveblazers, Catacomb Kids, Downwell, Gonner, XenonValkyrie, Sundered, etc.) but this is my favourite by a mile. I would warn anyone: it has an extremely steep learning curve, but it's one of the most enjoyable and satisfying platformers in my library, and one of the few games that I've played consistently for years.