Lucky Tower Ultimate is a roguelike reimagining of the cult classic Lucky Tower series, a Flash Player duology composed of short 2D platformers in which you have to pick the right door to progress.
Ultimate seeks to expand the formula created by the first two games by translating the trial-and-error gameplay into a hyper-difficult dungeon crawler, all while keeping the cartoonish dialogue and visuals that the series is known for.
So, is Lucky Tower Ultimate a rage game? How similar is it to its Flash predecessors? Does the formula even translate well into a roguelike? Find out the answer to these questions and more in our full preview for Lucky Tower Ultimate.
For the sake of this preview, I actually went back and played the two original games, mostly to get a better understanding of what Lucky Tower actually is. The first game clocks in at about 10 minutes and feels more like an interactive animation than a real game.
In it, the player is given the choice between three doors and will die almost instantly by picking anything but the right predetermined path, so it’s a very linear experience where you are just checking out all the game overs you can get while the story plays out.
The second game is a much more elaborate RPG that clocks in at around one to two hours, almost entirely ditching the trial-and-error gameplay its predecessor relied on and instead focusing on questing and combat. Lucky Tower 2 is really impressive for a flash game, and its influence can definitely still be felt in Ultimate.
Playing the originals is definitely not a requirement, but it did give me more appreciation for Ultimate, as it shows how much of the design present in the original games has been polished and reused in creative ways. A good chunk of the first game’s deaths have come back as actual mechanics, still being incredibly lethal, but fair now.
Lucky Tower Ultimate pulls from both of its predecessors as an inspiration, keeping the formula of being presented with three doors to progress from the first game while also implementing the combat-focused gameplay introduced by the second entry.
This time, there are no unavoidable deaths, as each door is equally as deadly and leads to a room that might contain enemies, followers, items, or traps. There is still only one way forward, but you won’t be punished for exploring; in fact, it’s in your best interest to do so.
Lucky Tower Ultimate‘s main gameplay mechanics come from its items and how the player will use them. The game is filled with simple items, like weapons and armor, but there are also a wide variety of unlabeled potions, replaceable jewelry teeth, genie lamps, and more.
The player is expected to try out every item they get and see how it interacts with their character, enemies, and the environment. Not much is explained aside from the basic controls, so everything is understood by testing it out and seeing what it does firsthand.
Lucky Tower Ultimate is also very close to being a true roguelike in the sense where you don’t make much progress outside of your runs. Escaping the tower allows you to sell whatever items you managed to carry outside, and there are a few uses for gold, but there are no real upgrades, and losing items during a run is really common, so this system can only help you so much.
Lucky Tower Ultimate tries to sell you the idea that it is an unfair game, but it has a lot of consistency in its mechanics even when featuring randomized runs. Everything that can kill you has either an audio or visual cue for it, and you can almost always get the best weapons and armor available if you know what you are doing.
The game’s potions are unlabeled, but their effects aren’t randomized, so by trial and error you will figure out what most of them do and how to cook them. The timing for most traps when dealt with individually is also pretty generous, and they only become a real threat when stacked together.
There are some issues, like sometimes a banana peel being positioned in such a way that you’ll be trapped into dying if you step on it, but those feel like unintentional generation errors due to the game’s procedural nature, as they don’t happen often. Lucky Tower Ultimate is an early access title, so these things are to be expected, but it’s worth knowing they aren’t intentional.
Lucky Tower‘s protagonist is an iconic part of the series, serving as a delightfully stupid meathead that keeps finding himself transported into the tower thanks to a teleporter placed inside of a tavern’s bathroom. The main character is so stupid that certain dialogue interactions require the player to beat a platforming challenge inside of his mind just so he can formulate a good idea.
Talking is a very important mechanic in Lucky Tower Ultimate, as it can be used to order followers or get commentary on specific items—not always useful, of course. The game is entirely voice-acted, and both the dialogue and character performances are really charming. The follower NPCs especially have a good amount of charisma despite being basically disposable.
The cartoonish atmosphere and dialogue are a good part of what makes the game so interesting to play, as you can’t help but wonder what nonsense will be thrown at you next. Things like the giant enemy that breaks out of walls and squishes you with a mallet or the weird creatures that scream when you use their heads as a platform always manage to keep you both amused and on edge.
Overall, Lucky Tower Ultimate is a great reinvention of a Flash game classic, managing to update its mechanics to a modern-day standard and creating a very compelling roguelike. The game is incredibly fun to play through, and its difficulty is so insane that it ends up becoming an amusing part of the experience.
The game is quite solid for an Early Access release, and even though there are some bugs here and there, they aren’t frequent enough to really hinder the overall experience or lessen the impressive amount of voice lines and interactions that items have.
As weird as it may sound, the “unfairness” is what makes Lucky Tower Ultimate fun. Overcoming challenges that look impossible at first is what makes the game so engaging, and the cartoonish atmosphere is a great way to make the experience more charming than oppressive.
Lucky Tower Ultimate is available on Microsoft Windows (through Steam).
