Back to Home
TowerFall Ascension
game
•8/1/2026

TowerFall Ascension

byMaddy Makes Games Inc., Extremely OK Games, Ltd.
SteamNintendo Switch
8.8
The Verdict
"TowerFall Ascension is what happens when a designer trusts subtraction. No unlock treadmill propping up thin mechanics, no netcode compromising the feel, no visual noise obscuring the read — just four archers, a handful of arrows, and the purest competitive loop of the indie era. The lack of online play is a real cost, and the solo modes are supporting acts that occasionally forget their lines. But judged on what it sets out to be — the game that fills a living room with shouting — it has no modern equal. Eleven years on, nothing has dethroned it. Buy it on Switch, hand out the Joy-Cons, and watch a room full of adults revert to twelve-year-olds in under a minute."

Gallery

Screenshot 1
View
Screenshot 2
View

Key Features

Arrow Economy: Every archer starts with a finite quiver. Arrows stick in walls and can be scavenged — or caught mid-flight by the person you fired them at. Ammunition isn't a resource; it's a conversation.
Quest Mode (1–2 players): A wave-defense co-op campaign across the towers of the game's world, fighting monsters and enemy archers. It's the answer to "what if nobody's over tonight" — a partial answer, but a real one.
Variant System: Dozens of togglable rules — bomb arrows, drill arrows, laser arrows, shields, wings, screen-wrap tweaks — that let a group tune chaos to taste without breaking the core game.
Switch-Exclusive Extras: Six-player battles, the Dark World expansion bundled in, and Madeline and Badeline from Celeste as guest archers.

The Good

The arrow-catch mechanic creates genuine risk-reward tension unmatched in the genre
Instantly readable for newcomers, endlessly deep for veterans
Variant system keeps long-term groups from going stale
Switch version adds six players, Dark World, and Celeste guests

The Bad

No official online multiplayer — the best content requires bodies in the room
Quest and Trials modes thin out quickly for solo players
Keyboard controls on PC are an afterthought; controllers required
A decade old, and the base Steam SKU sells the expansion separately

In-Depth Review

Bottom Line: TowerFall Ascension is the sharpest local multiplayer game of its generation — a design so lean and readable it makes Smash Bros. look baroque. Its only real sin is assuming you have friends within arm's reach.

The Catch Is the Whole Game

Most versus games are built on offense. TowerFall is built on the catch. Dash into an incoming arrow at the right moment and it's yours — the projectile meant to kill you becomes your ammunition. This single mechanic transforms every exchange. Firing an arrow is no longer a safe bet; it's a wager. Against a skilled opponent, a panicked shot is a donation.

This is what separates TowerFall from the pile of pixel-art party games that followed in its wake. The design doesn't just reward skill — it makes skill legible. When someone catches your arrow, spins, and puts it through your skull, everyone on the couch sees exactly what happened and exactly why. There's no damage math, no frame-data spreadsheet, no hidden state. The screen is the whole truth. That readability is why matches between a veteran and a first-timer stay entertaining: the newcomer loses, but they understand their loss, which is the precondition for wanting a rematch.

The Loop

A round of TowerFall runs maybe twenty seconds. Spawn, scramble for position, trade shots, someone dies, reset. Treasure chests punctuate the rhythm — crack one open and you might get bomb arrows that reshape the terrain, drill arrows that punch through walls, or a shield that buys you exactly one mistake. Screen-wrapping stages mean there are no corners to hide in; the arena is a torus, and the player who internalizes that geometry first owns the match.

The variant system deserves specific praise because it solves the party-game death spiral: staleness. When the group's meta calcifies — when everyone knows who wins straight matches — you flip on wings, or infinite arrows, or no-dodging, and the hierarchy scrambles. It's not content in the DLC sense. It's re-randomization of skill, and it's why TowerFall sessions survive past the honeymoon.

Quest and Trials: Necessary, Not Sufficient

Here's where the critical eye earns its keep. Quest mode is good — genuinely tense in co-op, with enemy archers that use your own toolkit against you. But it's a side dish. The wave-defense structure runs out of surprises before it runs out of levels, and solo players will see the bottom of the content well within a weekend. Trials, the time-attack mode, is a leaderboard-chaser's diversion built on the same movement tech, and it's fine. Fine is the word.

The structural problem is unavoidable: there is no built-in online multiplayer. Thorson designed the game around the latency-free, trash-talk-rich environment of a shared room, and that purism produced a better game — but it also produced a game that a meaningful chunk of buyers can't play as intended. In 2014 this read as principled. Today, with the game's community having built its own netplay workarounds, the absence reads as a moat around the game's best content. If your social life doesn't include regular physical proximity to three other people who own controllers, you're buying a Ferrari to drive in a parking garage.

Editorial Disclaimer

The reviews and scores on this site are based on our editorial team's independent analysis and personal opinions. While we strive for objectivity, gaming experiences can be subjective. We are not compensated by developers for these scores.

From Sawdust Journey

Finished reading? Go make something.

Full builds from rough lumber to final finish, with the measurements and the missteps.