Highrisers

Oh boy, another tower sim game! Before you pass that statement off as sarcasm, we'll let you know that Highrisers is not a tower sim game. The title is misleading, and the art style certainly doesn't do first impressions any justice. But, here we have an RPG survival game based in a desolate metropolis. Skyscrapers are you're only hoping to protect yourself.

Honestly, at first glance, this game absolutely looks like a tower builder. But that underlines the statement that one should never judge a book by its cover. Highrisers seems to adopt similar environments to incorporate new survival mechanics. It's almost as if towers you built in other games faced disaster. Now this group of survivors has entered to forage the remnants. Let's make some sense of this game.

Survivors Have Entered The Building

We begin by outlining the objective of Highrisers. You are in control of a ragtag group of 4 survivors in the midst of a global disaster. The streets below are filled with mutants, and skyscrapers are the only means of protection. Your mission, which you have absolutely no choice over, is to escape the city by plundering the building's resources.

So how will we accomplish this relatively simple feat? By every means necessary, as traditional survival mechanics dictate. This 2D pixelated scroller will have you collecting items, crafting weapons and materials, and using teamwork to overcome obstacles. Not to mention the arcade-style combat you'll have to engage in.

Each skyscraper is procedure generated, so no urban adventure will ever be the same. For all its exciting undertones, Highrisers is incredibly frustrating for one significant reason - it's ridiculously cluttered. A survival game usually encourages the players to make their own choices in a liberal environment. This game throws packed environments, complex crafting mechanics, and unintuitive combat into a UI that a NASA engineer would even have trouble navigating.

Highrisers does have a cool concept, but it presents like designers got a little too excited in the direction they wanted to take the game. It's a mish-mash of survival, arcade, and simulation, all in a tower-builder setting. It's very likely to overwhelm a player on the first playthrough - it does get better, but not enough to justify it as a solid game.

The Harder We Fall

Highrisers concept is interesting, trying to take survival into the intricacies of an urban environment. The problem is that it's so packed that it would easily deter a player within the first 5 minutes. Trying to manage inventory while beating up some weird silhouettes from nowhere is the epitome of messy gameplay. Good job, it's not an arcade game, or you'd be spending all your quarters near instantly.

Pros:

• Intriguing urban survival concept
• Procedurally generated skyscrapers keep levels fresh

Cons:

• Mechanically messy trying to amalgamate different styles of gameplay
• UI and management is incredibly messy
• Environments overwhelm any player intuition