Game Analysis: Tower of Heaven

For our Game Design class, we were asked to analyze the tutorial level (or levels) of a platformer game of our choice. For this, I chose Tower of Heaven , A small, rougelike, platformer made by an independent developer, Askiisoft. The game itself lacks any form of true tutorial level. Instead, the game is roughly split into 3 sections, the first of which being significantly easier than the other two in order to prepare you for when they come.

If you don't feel like reading the rest of the post, I've included a video of me playing through each of the 6 stages within the first section of the game.

The controls are basic (wsad/arrow keys) and the objective is simple: reach the door of each room, before the timer runs out. All of this is explained in the first room of the game.











As you reach the 2nd room, you're faced with a more difficult pathway to the door, requiring much more precise jumps to reach the exit, the hazard of spikes is also introduced.

In the 3rd room, the door can be seen on the otherside of a short hallway, however, the hallway is blocked by moving sawblades on the ceiling and floor, requiring precise and, more importantly, well timed jumps to pass through and reach the next exit.

These first 3 rooms give the player an idea of the skills that are going to be required in order to progress through and ultimatly win the game: speed, precision, and timing.







The 4th room is where Tower of Heaven becomes significantly more interesting. It reveales airlifts,
which simply push the player up in the air, and is probably the most dangerous aspect of the game, The Book of Laws. As the player picks it up, the narrorator (who is presumed to be "God") tells the player that they must obey the rules written in that book, or be killed. This is a unique addition to the game as it means that more and more conditions can be added to each level increasing the difficulty as each new rule is added ontop of the existing ones.




For now though, it starts with the basic rule of "Thou shal not touch golden blocks". If anything, this is almost insignificant to how the player must play in order to progress though the game, as it basically just adds another "spike" hazzard for them to avoid.








However, the 5th room gives the player a real taste of how dangerous the book can be. A new law is added, "Thou shal not touch walls or blocks from the side". Meaning that you have to land on the top of each block/platform perfectly, touching the sides = game over. The difficulty of this is proven almost immediately, as the player has to jump up blocks set up like stairs, which would be quite easy, but actually ends up being a decent challenge due the paitence and precision needed.






The 6th room (and final room of the first section) is where the Book truly reveals itself as the real obstacle of the game. The player is placed fairly close to right of the door in a hallway similar to the one seen in the 3rd room. To the right of the player, a sawblade is positioned close as well. Beating the level seems easy enough, just move to the door before the sawblade reaches you, a seemingly obvious task, until the next rule is added: "Thou shal not walk left".

Once the level begins the sawblade quickly moves towards the player, and odds are they quickly die from stepping to the left, or jump and die by landing on the blade










Without any explanation on how to deal with the removal of a mechanic that seems somewhat essential, it takes most players some time until figuring out that you must jump to the left in order to reach the exit rather than walk there. However doing that is much harder than one would think as the sawblade forces players to be quick about the process, which usually causes them to mess up and step to the left before jumping, killing them.






Room 6 is the last room of the first section of the game, which continues with more rules and much more difficult stages to complete in the 2nd and 3rd sections.

What makes this game so unique is that instead of just adding more obstacles to challenge the player as it goes on, it removes the freedoms the player once had, and probably took for granted, forcing the player to be conscious of the actions that they do have, creating a much more interesting slope of difficulty depending on how valuable that action was to the player when it is taken away.

I believe this "tutorial" section of the game is effective as it teaches players the core mechanic of the game: movement and the speed, precision, and timing needed to use it effectively, as well as introdcuing almost all the obsticles the player would encounter in each room. The tutorial also does a perfect job of introducing The Book of Laws and just how drastically the rules set by it change the gameplay for the player.

Everyone should play this game.

Below i've included a layout of the first 6 levels I went over earlier in the post.